Day 9

We've completed our mission. The last couple of days were, I'll have to admit, grueling. Our fatigue added up to make us count the days, then hours, then minutes until the end of our job. Fortunately, the equipment continued to work and data continued to flow. Had there been significant problems, we'd have been hard pressed to devise clever solutions.

Our last work day began early - a 7:00ish arisal, back to the schedule from the beginning of the mission. Matt and I had returned to the habitat by 8:00 PM last night so that we'd be clear to get into the water by 8:00 this last morning. Waking and getting prepared to go was brutal, but we had ambitions to pick up the last round of plaster models, do a final set of flow measurements at the plaster model sites, bring in the last of the electronic equipment, and as much of the stainless steel bracket materials as we could.

We made it out of the wet porch by just after 8:00, picked up the models and made the flow measurements. By 9:00 we were beginning to disassemble electronics and cable assemblies. Dancing around support divers from the surface, who were beginning to rig things up for decompression, we shuttled those bits back into the habitat.

So, amazingly enough, we were able to begin disassembling our "swingset" instrument support by 9:15 AM. We tipped the entire frame over onto the sand to avoid hitting corals during disassembly. With socket wrenches and spanners, we (with help from two surface divers) were able to pull the whole thing apart in 15 minutes. After the four of us shuffled the concrete-based S4 flowmeter base towards the habitat, we were done. With 15 minutes to spare, we'd managed to clear up more than we expected.

Back into the habitat, we spent the next couple of hours packing equipment for return to the surface, and cleaning up.

By 4:00 in the afternoon, we were ready to begin the long "trip" to the surface. We would spend the next 18 hours locked into the habitat while the pressure was slowly reduced to be equivalent to that at the surface. The habitat stays on the bottom, but the air pressure is manipulated (after sealing off from the open water) to decompress us.

A NURC staff member, "Otter", joined us to oversee the decompression. We sealed the inch-thick door leading from the entry lock to the wet porch, and began the "ascent". Our speed was timed to bring us gradually to surface pressure over those 18 hours, and we resigned ourselves to our little can until then. A bit more cleaning, a bit of dinner, and then we settled in to watching DVD movies played on one of the habitat's laptop computers.

It's more than a touch surreal to be calmly watching "The Truman Show", sealed in a steel tube 55 feet under the ocean, while a habitat tech occasionally taps the caisson gauge (giving our current "depth") and adjusts valves.

Day 10 - Emergence

At 7:30 in the morning, while all of the aquanauts (including Jim and Mike, the two habitat techs who'd been down with us for the whole mission) slept, Otter got our pressure in the habitat equivalent to surface pressure. By 8:00 we were awake, and feeling lousy. The exhaustion of the mission, combined with the physical stress of decompressing from saturation, left all of us feeling like walking death.

Coffee, slumping over the table. A little food. And some final little bits of packing and cleaning. A bit after 9:00 in the morning, we were ready to go. Support boats were overhead ready to pick us up, along with the last of our gear. The habitat techs went about shutting things down. Four of us went into the entry lock and sealed in (I was one of the three remaining in the main lock). Those in the entry lock used the gas system to "blow it down" to ambient pressure at the Aquarius habitat depth in a few minutes. They then opened the door to the wet porch, exited, and shut the door behind them.

Next, we let the higher pressure from the entry lock into the main lock where we were, equalizing the pressure so that we could open the door to the entry lock. Finally, the last three of us went into the entry lock, shut ourselves in, and took a few minutes to blow it down to ambient pressure.

Exiting to the wet porch, we met up with Tim, a surface support diver. We geared up (just our tanks, fins, and mask - no soggy wetsuits!) and slowly popped up to the surface.

Sun! Light! Un-canned air! We dropped off our gear at the support boat "Sabina" then swam over to the "Manta", which whisked us back to the NURC base. Jim, the chief habitat technician who'd been down with us, immediately lit up his first cigarette in 10 days (after a brief moment of... um... concern about whether there was a lighter on the boat).

And that was that. We rather sleepily blinked at the sun, and smiled into the breeze coming over the Manta's bow. Wonderful though it had been to be down there, it's awfully nice to come out, too.

At the shore, Chris Finelli's parents, as well as his wife Amy, were there to meet us, along with Dave Wethey and Chris Kalinowsky (our "dry guys"). Everyone in sight on the dock was holding a camera. A touch intimidating, given that I certainly didn't feel as though I was in my most pristine condition.