On Tue, 13 May 2008 05:49:40 -0400, "Roger Long"
wrote:

wrote

Here is the owner's website. Very interesting vessel.

http://www.aquasurvey.com/


It's not a new vessel at the OP indicated. The hull is basically a steel

Oops, the article said it was christened 6 weeks ago so I assumed it
was new, not renamed. My bad. Maybe they shouldn't have renamed it.
Bad Luck.

barge so there's no way it broke up due to wave action. I think the key in
the post above it that it sometimes took them several hours to pull the legs
out of the mud. If one or more were stuck and the hull was in the water,
the great leverage could have broken the hull due to lots of previous
stressing and corrosion due to age.

You would be in a tough spot with a boat like that with shortened legs if
the waves got bigger than forecast and started hitting the hull. Can't go
up because the legs are too short, can't go down because the waves will
start throwing the hull around with legs stuck in mud.

Too bad. It was a good research program. If only they had put the full
length legs on deck for the delivery north.

Or they could have listened to the weather forcast and got that
sitting duck out of there. They had plenty of warning this storm was
coming. It's the same storm that caused all those tornados in the
midwest. Winds along the Jersey shore were gusting to hurricane
force. There's no justifiable reason for it to be out there. You're
not going to be counting birds in a storm like that.

Steve