30 November 2011 Meet the Healy!!

Journal

Yesterday's journal explained who the Healy was named for...this journal will allow you to get to know Healy and what makes her go! Members of the Science team got the GRAND tour of the United States Coast Guard IcebreakerAn icebreaker is a special purpose ship or boat designed to move and navigate through ice-covered waters. Healy from Engineering Officer, CDR Laura King. For more than an hour and half we climbed up and down ladders, went through hatches and ignored the Authorized Personnel Only signs. We WERE authorized to be in the engineering spaces!

Authorized Personnel Only - we WERE authorized!

We started our tour in the winch room. The winches are what allows our science operations to occur. Winches provide the means to get things into and out of the water. There are 3 working winches and 2 spares aboard Healy.

The winch that has been giving us so many problems!

The Healy has two hydraulically activated rudders. In the event of computer failures, the rudders can be manually activated with huge torque wrenches.

Rudder casing — The casing that holds the top of the rudder

The torque wrenches that can be used to manually activate the rudder

In Repair 3, we saw firefighting equipment used aboard Healy. It is exactly like the equipment used on land to fight fires. CDR King also showed us the plugs that are used to plug holes in the Healy. Holes are typically NOT repaired until the Healy is back in Home Port, Seattle Washington.

CDR King holding a plug that could be used to patch a hole in Healy

The Healy has 2 main motors that convert the energy from the engines into usable power. Each motor is 30,000 horsepower and generates 6,600 volts of electricity. If you were to receive a shock from this equipment, you would be vaporized! There is a process where the energy travels though a transformer and is stepped down in the cycloconverter and then stepped down again to create clean power. Dirty power (power that has extra stuff in the line, not a clean sine wave) can be used in big motors and pumps, but will “fry” computers.

The prop shafts for the Healy engines are HUGE. Each prop shaft is actually two shafts connected with a coupling. The line shaft goes from the motor to the coupling. It is 25 feet 9 inches long. The prop shaft goes from the coupling to the propeller. It is 54 feet 7.5 inches long. While the diameter fluctuates along the length of the shaft, at the location pictured below it is 25 inches in diameter.

Section of prop shaft - 25 inches in diameter

Where does the water come from? The Healy makes 10,000 gallons of water per day. Saltwater is brought into the Sea bay and from there the salt is flash evaporated out of the water. This provides fresh water for the Crew to use in showering, cooking, drinking, laundry, etc.

Water purifier - capable of producing 10,000 gallons of freshwater per day from seawater!

There is a sewage system aboard the Healy that treats raw sewage before it is released into the ocean. The black water (sewer) and gray water (laundry, sinks, showers) is pushed through a filter. The holding tank can hold 14,000 gallons of waste water. The treated water is discharged into the ocean. If it has been treated, it can be discharged 3 miles from land. If it is untreated, raw sewage, it can be discharged 12 miles from land.

The bow thruster is a 4,400 horsepower thruster with an impeller inside. It is used to position the bow of he ship. It sucks in seawater and then shoots it out in order to position the ship.

If there would be a fire aboard the ship, Carbon Dioxide is one of the main firefighting agents. This room of Carbon Dioxide tanks was right off the Main engine rooms.

There are 4 Sultzer engines; 4200 cubic inches per cylinder, V12, 50,400 cubic inches per engine for a total of 201,600 cubic inches. Each of these diesel engines is capable of generating 11,000 horsepower. Typically one engine runs the Healy. Once on this mission during heavy ice, we had 3 engines running. The Healy can hold 1.3 million gallons of fuel and can burn between 8,000 and 10,000 gallons of diesel per day. It takes healy 5.3 gallons of diesel to travel her own length in open water. Healy uses about 57 gallons of diesel per mile.