February 12th, 2010

Planned major mantainance of the buoy is in progress

Last Monday 8 of February, the oceanographic buoy moored at the station OOCS, was detached from the mooring and was trawled to the Blanes port to perform major maintenance of instrumentation and main structure.

The buoy will be attached back to the mooring place as soon as all maintenance operations will be completed by the first week of March at the latest.

The following operations are being carried out on the buoy:

- The old GPS on the buoy that was damaged has been replaced by a new one.

- Data stored in the two inductive CTDs have been recovered successfully.

- Inductive system telemetry is being checked out in order to make it back operational.

- The upper steel ring in the mast has been straightened.

- A new inductive cable is expected from the Barcelona's provider in order to replace the old one showing deficiences of the outer covering.

- General cleaning and new painting will be made on the buoy structure.

- The chain below the buoy installed for providing vertical stability to the structure will be made shorter to avoid frictions with the very close attached inductive cable.