…it's great if you can fix it! Today, the overboarding block on the A-frame broke. We need it to re-direct the wire coming from the winch in the middle of the ship over it's side and down into the ocean. Many kilometers of wire have been running up and down over this block that is basically a very big wheel made out of steel. Right now, our stations are about 5000 meters deep, so there are 10 kilometers of wire running over the block every eight hours. And it's a heavy load! Depending on the depth that the rosette is at, the tension on the wire is between 1000 and 4000 pounds - hardly surprising that it breaks at some point! Luckily, we had a spare block with us on the ship and our experienced crew could fix it in less than an hour to get us going again. Thanks!
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