View the broken Vineyard wind turbine blade from above. Video.
On July 15, a wind turbine blade broke south of Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard, releasing fiberglass, foam and balsa wood into the sea.
At 260 metres above sea level, a GE Haliade-X wind turbine shouldn’t be too difficult to find, especially with 24 of them lined up in rows. When I first flew to the Vineyard Wind site on April 29 this year, pilot Chris Siderwicz was flying his Cessna 300 metres above Marstons Mills to the south and we could see the turbines on the horizon. I assumed at the time that the next time I would see the project would be on a media tour by boat as it neared completion.
But on Saturday, July 13, one of the rotor blades on tower AW38 failed, splintering and spewing large and small pieces into the sea that looked like a peeled banana. Ocean currents carried the blade debris to the shores of Nantucket and the disaster became an international headline.
Given the location of the site, getting there is both expensive and time consuming, so another charter flight was booked from Cape Cod Airfield. The flight day was calm, with hardly any haze for an August afternoon. This flight was in a late 1940s Piper aircraft. Instead of a window that opened for photography, the entire door was locked, giving me a larger opening for photography, but putting me in the slipstream of the aircraft, resulting in a windy photo session.
Looking south on takeoff, the outline of the Vineyard was visible, but the haze blocked the turbines from being seen. As we flew down the spine of Chappaquiddick, the haze thickened and the wind farm, now about 12 miles away, was still out of sight. Finally, we were able to locate the site. How hard could it be to find a broken turbine? We flew along the eastern edge of the site and looked west, no sign of the damaged blade.
Now we were about 22 miles south of the Vineyard and nearing the end of the track. The haze had gotten thicker and had it gotten much worse we would probably have had to turn back. Finally, to the west, the furthest turbine, was AW38. A workboat was nearby. It was time to open the door. I thought everything was stowed, our two life preservers were between my knees, the camera straps were around my neck.
On the first pass, I learned where the light was and checked for loose items like the baseball cap and water bottle. The second time, it worked and on the last pass, I got brave, pulled the phone out of my pocket, took a quick video and then sat on it, afraid it would fly out. Thumbs up to the pilot, door locked and silence returned to the cockpit, mission accomplished.
Thank you to our subscribers who make this reporting possible. If you are not a subscriber, please support quality local journalism with a subscription to the Cape Cod Times.Here are our subscription plans.
