By daylight, helped with our dynamic positioning system, we were backing up (literally) towards the end of the horizontal directonal drilling conduit around 20m water depth. We dropped our grapnel on the seabed one more time and headed offshore looking
for debris along the planned route. One more pre-lay grapnel run.
By early afternoon we reached the 100m water depth mark, and completed the southern cable route. It was now time to head back to shore and repeat the same operations, this time along the northern cable route. Almost done!
Tomorrow is our first big day! We will be landing the first OOI cable. It will be the southern cable first.
–Cecile Durand, the OOI Regional Scale Nodes Marine Maintenance Manager at the University of Washington, reports from aboard the TE SubCom Dependable.