A little of this, a little of that.

Greetings. No major news since my last post, but I thought I’d just provide a few short updates on a number of topics. For starters, we’re making good progress in wrapping up the change I referenced in my last post. Though not quite finalized, it looks very good that we’ll be moving forward with the added 6′ in the next week or so.  When we get that finalized, we’ll be sure to update our General Arrangement Drawing (GA’s) on our website. The new GAs look great, by the way, and I’m looking forward to sharing them.

We had our first meeting with our friends from University of Rhode Island today. We discussed how they’ll be involved during the construction process and how things might go during the transition of their ship. We had a few different ideas on what that might look like, and, if you know me at all, you know I like different ideas! I find that the best plans and ideas are usually not the first ones thought of, but, rather, the ones that grow from the original idea into something smarter and better.  I looking forward to working with URI– they’re going to bring a lot to the table.

In a few weeks, OSU will be hosting the National Science Foundation review panel for our first “Annual Review.” In advance of that, we’ve provided the reviewers all of our project documents so that they can really look under the hood and see if we’re doing our jobs like we said we would.  This kind of oversight, though somewhat of a pain from time to time, is very important to ensure that we’re all being good stewards of the taxpayer’s money. In conjunction with our annual review, we’ll also be hosting a few representatives from Gulf Island for our normal Quarterly Review.

On the technical side, we’re making steady progress.  Rapp is making headway on the main crane selection, for example. This has been a challenge since the design phase of the project.  In our specifications, we require a telescoping crane that covers the entirety of the back deck and has the ability to tow light packages over the side.  And we need that to be light and preferably not use a crutch to support it during towing operations.  Thus far, the crane selection has been either complicated or facilitated by the recent merger of Rapp and MacGregor, I sometimes can’t tell which.  Larger ships often employ two cranes on the back deck.  In many ways, this is actually easier to design and build as neither crane needs to do everything. But smaller ships can’t fit two cranes.  One of the drivers is that the crane needs to be able to load cargo (such as portable laboratory vans) from the pier. Two smaller cranes wouldn’t give that capacity.

We’re also to the point in the process where we’re starting to pick colors for lounge furniture and the booths in the mess.  We’re going with brick red booths, a choice you often see in old 50s diners.

Lastly, we’ve chosen a name for the ship! And, we have a sponsor line up for the keel laying.  Stay tuned for more info on that in an upcoming post.

As always, thanks for reading. If you have any questions, comments, gripes, or suggestions, feel free to drop them in the comment tool above.  Until next time, have a great summer!