Offshore Blood Sweat
& Tears
Contents
Norwegian wood
- Back in Norway
- Well here i am back in Norway. The weather has been
excellent with blue skies and sun. The vessel that were
on is from Finland and is used in the Arctic as an ice
breaker. Being only 2 years old everything is new and it
is more like a cruise ship, with good food, gym and sauna,
not a bad place to work. The equipment that we use is a
new generation, state of the art R.O.V. ( Remotely
operated vehicle ) with the best seats i've ever seen;
they're more like chairs out of star trek! The rov is
called a Stealth and moves very fast through the water. A
surprise work mate, on board, was Dugald Shaw from Perth
Western Australia. I know Dugald from our days in Perth
so its been good catching up on the gossip of mutual
friends. So far the weather has been great and i hope we've
seen the last of the winter blues. A few days ago we came
back to Bergan harbour and i managed to get a few photos
of the vessel and surrounding area. The job itself
involves going over the seabed detecting pipes that have
just been trenched. We have a large ( bit like a metal
detector ) pipe tracker fitted to the front of the rov
which scans for the depth that the pipe is buried. So it
looks like we'll be here for a few more weeks to come so
i'll update this page with any new photos that come along
on this trip.
.....
The vessel that we have to slum it on ( not! )
The Stealth R.O.V. that we fix, fly and f... along with
Dugald , then me and Martin & a confused survey tech
( Nico )
Inside the R.O.V. Control van with me and Dugald looking
the part , ( nae hair & grey hair )
Walking the walk
- Where's the pub!
- What a place , when the weather shines in Norway its
absolutely beautiful. We have now been offshore for two
weeks and have just come back to the coast for some
repairs. The ship is docked in a harbour called Monstadt
and the pictures i have taken are from nearby. Everywhere
you look there are wild flowers and picture postcard
scenes of mountains , pine trees and houses by the sea.
The sunrise and sunsets are full of reds , oranges &
yellows with the sky at midnight only dulling to a faint
green. The air is full of fragrant pine and wild flower
aromas with a slight crispness to the nose in the sun
filled fjords! The following two sunrises were taken a
week apart but every morning has been like this for the
last 10 days. Two work mates looking for a pub with
Martin on the right , adamant that its just around the
corner ( 1 hour later and in the opposite direction we
found the fisherman's mission which just happened to have
a contingent of philippino seamen! ). and Al on the left.
Under water Tractor
- What's it all about?
- So far you've managed to see what our equipment looks
like and us! , but what are we actually doing. Well our R.O.V.
is fitted with sensing instruments to detect the buried
depth of cables and pipes. Before we can do that they
need to be trenched first. This is done by a specially
built R.O.V. trencher. The thing is far larger than a
normal size R.O.V. and it takes more people to launch it
on and off the ship. When on the seabed it locates the
cable / pipeline and sits on top of it. Once on the pumps
are switched on which water blasts the seabed to create a
trench for the cable / pipeline to lay in. The whole
vehicle then moves forward on wheels trenching as it goes.
When finished we go down and fly along the seabed where
the burial took place and ascertain its burial depth. We
log the data as well as video from 3 camera's , 2 off
which are on booms on the port and starboard sides of our
R.O.V. The video tapes and trench data are checked and
processed then passed on to the client for final approval
then its off to the next location.
-
Back to the Artic
- Looks familiar?
- Well after a week long brake i'm back at work. This time
i'ts constant daylight being at the Artic circle and even
though i'm on nightshift it's more like dayshift. The
ship has been specially built for ROV's and is only over
1 year old. The equipment is inside a hanger with one ROV
being launched through the middle of the ship and the
other ROV through a side door. So no matter the weather
you can work on the systems indoors! it certainly beats
working on an electronics problem at 3.00am in a gale
whilst snowing heavily!!! If only all ships were like
this!
The bow showing the
helicopter landing deck
Side door launch.- The control room was internal as well so you only had to
walk down 2 flights of stairs and you were there , so
comuting to work took all of 20 seconds depending on
traffic jams on the staircase! The job was to connect the
pipelines on the seabed from the Heidrun Platform to the
subsea wells. All went well and the platform went "live"
producing its first oil & gas from this sector.
Not a bad place to make a
living
Heidrun Platform at 1.am-
West of Shetland
- Atlantic Swell
- Here i am back in sunny Scottish waters. This time its the Foinaven and Shiehallion oil fields West of the Shetland Islands in about 1500feet of chilly Atlantic waters! The boat i'm on is called the Grampian Frontier and whilst i was on it they recieved their 3 year safety record award and made the ships cook prepare a meal rather than take everyone out for a slap up meal in Lerwick , typical cheapskate B.P. wan**rs. All credit to the cook under trying conditions , just check out the food he prepared! During a rare calm day the boys took the rescue boat out for a spin and to get the Sunday papers from the nearby Petrojarl F.P.S.O.
Italy to Egypt
- Mellow Med Moods
- We have a job for you in Italy they said!. So off i flew Edinburgh to Amsterdam , Amsterdam to Bologna , no bags!! wait for next flight and practice my Italian from 5 years ago. Next i teamed up with two oher lads and we got the train to Ravena on the east coast of Northern Italy. We had a night in a hotel so it was beer and wine and of to a Sri Lankan restaurant!!? , well we would be eating pasta for the next 3 weeks! Next day we caught a supply boat out to the ship , there were 7 of us in total and one of the guys was Aaron from New Zealand. I had worked with Aaron about 3 years early and since then he had gone travelling to South America and met a friend of ours who worked as a driver for an overland bus company , its a small world! Aaron got a job with the bus company and had been doing trips from Equador to the bottom of Chile , this was his first job offshore in about a year.
So we got t0 the the ship which was a 300 foot rust bucket with more cockroaches than a chineese restaurant! So what was the job? Ah putting in an oil platform 20 miles of the coast of Egypt!!! Egypt! i had brought warm clothes oh no! Five days later sailing down past Croatia , Albania and round the corner of Greece out acroos the med to Crete then onto the Nile Delta to park up. The weather was hot real hot! but a good chance to catch up on the tan. at the end of the job 4 of us were kicked of so it was Egyptian helicopter to Port Said then 3 hours on a bus to Cairo. Three of us decided to stay an extra 3 nights and check out the sights , oh my liver and wallet took a bit of a hammering but it was worth it. The Cairo museum was fantastic and one day going around it wasn't enough. The lads got into the hubbly bubbly , honest it was apple and honey flavoured tobacco!
.....
The bow showing the
helicopter landing deck
Side door launch.
Not a bad place to make a
living
Heidrun Platform at 1.am
