Ready Reserve Fleet

Suisan Bay, California.  The Ready Reserve and Mothball Fleet sits in Suisan Bay, whose migratory sand movement requires periodic reshuffling of the ships using tugboats.  When a tugboat lost its rudder in the bay, scheduled re-mooring of USS Iowa – the last active duty battleship – had to be delayed.  Matt and his coworkers were hired to determine whether the Iowa ended up sitting on the seabed before it could be moved.  Although it came close in a couple of spots, it never quite rested on the bottom.  They also located and retrieved the lost tugboat rudder in the bay.  Using a computer monitor on their boat deck and a sonar unit an underwater diver carried, Matt found the image of the lost rudder, figured out the direction the diver needed to walk, and guided him right to it.  A job well done, but for Matt the thrill was that he “actually got to put my hands on the hull of such a historic ship.”