This is the 15th blog post in a series about ICEX 2011 by Jeff Gossett, Arctic Submarine Laboratory’s ICEX 2011 Exercise Director written on March 22, 2011.
In the last post, I talked about our water Works Team. We also have a “Marvin Gardens Team” for CONNECTICUT’s through ice surfacing. What is different about this team?
Picking the right place for a submarine to surface through the ice (Marvin Gardens) is a balance between several factors. It has to be big enough for the submarine to fit in with a little bit of elbow room. It needs to be thick enough for people to walk on safely but thin enough that we can clear the ice from the hatch in a reasonable amount of time.
Before CONNECTICUT arrived, we identified two good surfacing sites for her. The best – Marvin Gardens 2 – was over a mile long, a quarter mile wide, and about 2 feet thick. CONNECTICUT used that for their first 4 surfacings. But, by Monday, the continued ice growth in that area made the ice almost 3 feet thick so we found a thinner area – Marvin Gardens 3.
When CONNECTICUT is going to surface, Hector Castillo’s Marvin Gardens Team goes out ahead of time to prepare the area. In addition to the homing beacon and underwater telephone, their most important took is a shovel. For this Arctic mission, Arctic Submarine Laboratory equipped CONNECTICUT with an upward-looking underwater camera. By shoveling a mark in the snow, the Marvin Gardens Party can designate exactly where in the feature they should surface. This mark is normally a simple “X” but, on Monday, we used a “22” reflecting CONNECTICUT’s designation as “SSN-22”.
After CONNECTICUT breaks through the ice, the ice clearing team from APL/UW (as I’ve talked about before) removes the ice from above their deck hatch. So, with the deck covered with ice, how do we know where the hatch is? Simple – before the boat sailed, we took a string and measured the distance from the aft end of the sail to the center of the hatch. Works every time. Very often in the Arctic, the loc-tech solution is the best solution.
