A hui hou
Posted: Tue Feb 24, 2009 6:36 pm
All,
Thank you for all the fond wishes. And a general thank you to each and every one of you NWDC'ers.
My time in the Seattle area was unexpectedly brief but I couldn't have asked for a better way to spend the last year. That was entirely due to the gang at NWDC. I fell head first into a gracious and thriving community on and off the Internet. I made friends by the bunch and improved my diving tenfold. No place I've ever lived comes close to the embrace I felt in Seattle, scuba or otherwise. For that I give you all my deepest gratitude.
Originally I sought Lynne out on Scubaboard and then posted this introduction. It was nothing but fun after that.
For those who have been asking, my wife and I packed up our belongings in a 20' container and moved to the Big Island of Hawaii to a town called Kamuela. We're living up on the north Kohala coast about 40 mins north of both Kailua Kona and Hilo. We haven't found a permanent place to live yet but we'll probably be living at about 2500 ft elevation. This means that it isn't all that warm up there. In fact the wet side of the town is rainy and chilly just like Seattle. The dry side gets pretty cold at night too and wood burning stoves seem to be the norm for the winter. However I'm working down at sea level in the driest area in the whole state. I wear a sweatshirt in the morning and peel off layers as I head down the mountain.
And since most of you have asked about what the hell I'm doing here... it couldn't be more exciting. I was hired by Liquid Robotics which is a company who designs, manufactures, and operates unmanned autonomous surface (as opposed to a submersible) vehicles. They're sorta like a wave propelled robot surfboard. The New York Times had an article about them yesterday. There's an image in the article that explains the technology a little bit. With a background in unmanned deep submersibles I'm pretty psyched to only have to worry about something floating on the surface, not down 3000 meters. The company has a 30' rhib with twin 225's which I'll be running about 3 days a week. (life is good at ~25 knots) Most days are spent in a bathing suit.
The job also requires that people get in the water to recover/launch, maintain, or inspect the vehicles. Liquid maintains a pretty well stocked dive locker full of poodle jackets and tanks. While it is seldom that we will be scuba diving on them, there is a heavy free diving requirement. Predators have been known to show up now and then, so there are written safety procedures to mitigate the risk of attack. That's right, there's extensive mention of sharks in the employee handbook. Whenever we perform an inspection (video or still) the working diver gets in with a shark spotter. Each of us wear all black and have a shark shield attached to our ankle and threaded through the long freediver fins (I get funny looks from instinctively trying to frog kick in them). It emits a pulse every second or so and if it happens to touch you your leg gets a shock. It's pretty annoying to say the least.
As the Times article mentioned Liquid Robotics started with a couple guys who wanted to listen to whales. And this is full-on whale season around here. There isn't a day we're on the water that we don't see at least a dozen of them playing. This past Saturday one of the folks I work with invited us out to take photos of them to catalog and ID them from the company boat. In the 6 hours we spent on the water we must have seen 35 whales performing all manner of antics. You can listen to the whales real time that is broadcast from our buoy a few mins from the dock. Of course if you really want to hear them all you need to do is put your head in the water.
I'm sure I'll post some underwater photos as soon as I take some.
If anyone ever heads to the Big Island please let me know. I'll have all the dive spots in the North Kohala coast all scoped out by then. I'm happy to provide tanks and weights to anyone who wants to come visit. (Like single HP100's right Sounder?)
A hui hou,
-Eric
Thank you for all the fond wishes. And a general thank you to each and every one of you NWDC'ers.
My time in the Seattle area was unexpectedly brief but I couldn't have asked for a better way to spend the last year. That was entirely due to the gang at NWDC. I fell head first into a gracious and thriving community on and off the Internet. I made friends by the bunch and improved my diving tenfold. No place I've ever lived comes close to the embrace I felt in Seattle, scuba or otherwise. For that I give you all my deepest gratitude.
Originally I sought Lynne out on Scubaboard and then posted this introduction. It was nothing but fun after that.
For those who have been asking, my wife and I packed up our belongings in a 20' container and moved to the Big Island of Hawaii to a town called Kamuela. We're living up on the north Kohala coast about 40 mins north of both Kailua Kona and Hilo. We haven't found a permanent place to live yet but we'll probably be living at about 2500 ft elevation. This means that it isn't all that warm up there. In fact the wet side of the town is rainy and chilly just like Seattle. The dry side gets pretty cold at night too and wood burning stoves seem to be the norm for the winter. However I'm working down at sea level in the driest area in the whole state. I wear a sweatshirt in the morning and peel off layers as I head down the mountain.
And since most of you have asked about what the hell I'm doing here... it couldn't be more exciting. I was hired by Liquid Robotics which is a company who designs, manufactures, and operates unmanned autonomous surface (as opposed to a submersible) vehicles. They're sorta like a wave propelled robot surfboard. The New York Times had an article about them yesterday. There's an image in the article that explains the technology a little bit. With a background in unmanned deep submersibles I'm pretty psyched to only have to worry about something floating on the surface, not down 3000 meters. The company has a 30' rhib with twin 225's which I'll be running about 3 days a week. (life is good at ~25 knots) Most days are spent in a bathing suit.
The job also requires that people get in the water to recover/launch, maintain, or inspect the vehicles. Liquid maintains a pretty well stocked dive locker full of poodle jackets and tanks. While it is seldom that we will be scuba diving on them, there is a heavy free diving requirement. Predators have been known to show up now and then, so there are written safety procedures to mitigate the risk of attack. That's right, there's extensive mention of sharks in the employee handbook. Whenever we perform an inspection (video or still) the working diver gets in with a shark spotter. Each of us wear all black and have a shark shield attached to our ankle and threaded through the long freediver fins (I get funny looks from instinctively trying to frog kick in them). It emits a pulse every second or so and if it happens to touch you your leg gets a shock. It's pretty annoying to say the least.
As the Times article mentioned Liquid Robotics started with a couple guys who wanted to listen to whales. And this is full-on whale season around here. There isn't a day we're on the water that we don't see at least a dozen of them playing. This past Saturday one of the folks I work with invited us out to take photos of them to catalog and ID them from the company boat. In the 6 hours we spent on the water we must have seen 35 whales performing all manner of antics. You can listen to the whales real time that is broadcast from our buoy a few mins from the dock. Of course if you really want to hear them all you need to do is put your head in the water.
I'm sure I'll post some underwater photos as soon as I take some.
If anyone ever heads to the Big Island please let me know. I'll have all the dive spots in the North Kohala coast all scoped out by then. I'm happy to provide tanks and weights to anyone who wants to come visit. (Like single HP100's right Sounder?)
A hui hou,
-Eric
