Well strange to think we have so much stuff under the vessel right now, gas fields and pipe work and all sorts of special platforms taht are sitting on the seabed working away. As I found out a bit more about it in the morning meeting and pretty surprised how much you learn before you start the job, before I have had to find out for myself by asking all sorts of questions, this time shown videos and everything, cool..

In other news.. Lost my appetite completely .. ended up having a lunch tmie full english and then a banana for tea.. NOT GOOD..

Then a muster and to sleep.. god I get a good sleep this rough weather

Zzzzz

Well stayed up a bit later than normal and chatted to Angel on the phone, before we lose the phone (no mobile masts out here you know ). Then checked out some TV (I was REALLY bored) while watching started to feel the boat changing it’s heave I guess taking on water for ballast? Anyway went to bed and woke up to a swaying room.. Hmm bit rought then lol..

Talk of laying pipe tomorrow, hmmm..

Had a bit of a bad back which wasn’t helping much.. think I twisted while in the bath, last time I try playing remote twister again I can tell you!

So tomorrow they change out a lot of crew and strangely I’m now an extra person ??

I did question this as it would seem prudent to send me packing as I am agency and the reply was no.. Hmm.. So they have one exra person who is now costing them money and they are keeping me on here.. Seems a bit strange but hey ho..

Found out that I will not be running the equipment after all, visions of me running the pipe-lay equipment on day one wee pretty vivid truth told.. No it seems I will just be helping out (hmm).. anyway a weight off my mind I guess..

Going to sea tomorrow afternoon, and expect to be laying pipe Thursday or Friday, weather permitting.

In other news, using this connection on board is like going back to the 1980′s and using a Modem with a C64 on Compunet.. Ahh those were the days .. Shame I was such a complete prat when I was younger…

…Things never change eh?

Yep this trip is going to be a grind I feel as not even done a week yet and feel like I have been here for a lifetime!

Anyway plus points so far.. The guys on here are pretty good to get along with, the food is much better than I have had before (no seriously it is good, apart from the breakfasts.. I think I’m going to be sick of Full English soon ) Sly TV (some of it) and errr.. thats about it lol.. Negative points.. One bog between 20-30 people on shift as two others put aside for catering staff and such (huh?), my jeans taking a walk (no they didn’t smell that bad but just never returned from washing ) and err.. Full English every day

Signed up for a twitter account (sod knows why but thought might be interesting) my HASHTAG (HA!) is CH41N not that anyone gives a monkeys, if you do can I have one of those cheeky ones that slaps people you don’t like and comes with a lifetime supply of bananas?

That’s the problems with working the night sift you never know which day it is as you wake up the day you got off work to go to work and then work until the next day. Still at least it is work I guess.. After this trip I only have to do another 70 days for the year, not bad really that’s works out and a trip and a half.. I will most likely end up doing more than that but it is a nice target to remember Anyway not a lot going on tonight done some planned maintenance and that is about it Looks like we will be going out to lay the pipe in the ext couple of days too

So for this shift I had a little bit of work to do, which was interesting and a bit of pressure so good and bad I guess

Made the it go quicker if nothing else.

Been looking at RAID 5 or RAID 10 systems as had a lot of problems with the servers at home of late, although they have come down a lot in price they are still pretty darn expensive to buy, although I think a lot of that is down to the technology (and high disc prices still). Something I will probably end up going for though as it reduces the amount of pain when something goes wrong, and will probably save energy as no need to run a huge PC based server in the long run too.

Another thing I found myself checking out is greener ways of producing and storing energy, or to put it another way a way of reducing the bills. I have been looking at Flywheel based storage of electrical charge combined with solar panels and a heatpump of some kind. The idea being to spin up the flywheel in the morning and then try and use as little energy from the grid as possible, maybe even injecting some back from the panels on good days. Of course this requires a bit of land, which to be fair is what I would like anyway (great for antennas etc).

Going on from that was thinking about keeping chickens (for the Eggs not eating hehe) and growing our own fruit and veg in a small poly tunnel of some kind.. You see this is because I’m fedup finding all the fruit and veg in the shops only lasts 2-3 days at most! I remember buying fruit and veg and it lasting two or sometimes three weeks. I think this is the shops trying to make more money forcing people to buy food every couple of days.. But hey that’s just me.

Anyway got some more jobs tonight so off to make some earthing cables and fiddle with a light on the crane.. wooo hoo..

Ok so I am in Norway but alas on a vessel in port so not a lot I can tell you really.. Quiet like the way they have huge tunnels linking various sections of the land together and how everything has that crisp winter feel (hell it is cold, the night before I arrived it snowed for heavens sake). The hotel I stayed in was pretty cool too.. Had a wet room with motion sensors for the lights and glass walls.. the lights were all low energy and the windows were triple glazed.. On the negative side anything costs at least twice as much here (a beer for 7.50-9.00 anyone?).. Mental

Anyway I’m on a vessel.. this one is a Pipelay vessel so a bit different from the norm as no silly little cable and dinky toy plough.. oh no just a huge Ramp and massive reel with the pipe on it. And for a change the crew is mostly English, I’m not being negative when I say that I’m saying it is not the norm that’s all… Well actually even that is not true as have Polish, and Filipinos on here too.. but I think the English outnumber the rest.

Food is ok, nothing special but have had far worse.. And everyone (so far) seems fair happy enough with the state of play, although I get the feeling that someone is going to explode in short order as is always the case on vessels like this.

Anyway.. looking forward to going and only on the second day.. so not that great I guess..

Well finally on shift and spent most of it finding out where stuff was before cracking on with a job.

Now although I have been working like this for sometime even I can fall foul of simple mistakes, like looking before rushing into something.. And today was no exception, I was asked to do something and ended up wasting a lot of time doing something I didn’t need to..

If I had taken the time to look before cracking on I would have noticed that I only had to spend about 30-45 minutes fiddling with something and that would have sorted it, but alas.. being new I made the fatal mistake of just doing what I was told (shocking).

Anyway not sure what to make of this job pretty certain I will not be back though and for the first time in a long while I’m dreading actually doing the job proper (going out and running the kit), mainly because I haven’t yet.. as soon as I have I expect I will be fine though

For now it’s off to bed.. More tomorrow I guess.

Inductions, why do they take so damn long to arrange and seem to cover stuff that is not that important?

Nothing of use but I guess that’s because I am getting used to them now. Which in a way is bad, as well the idea is to learn where things are and how to approach various issues if they arise..

And if you get bored then you are not taking any notice and that’s a bad thing for everyone concerned.. hmm

Anyway off to bed now.. night all

Well up mega early (3am) to get ready to go, jump in the taxi head to the airport and then bump into someone I worked with 9 years ago lol!..

Anyway onto one flight then got delayed going through passport control in Amsterdam airport and nearly missed my flight, before getting on another in Oslo after going through customs (Zzzz) arrive at the hotel and find out that no one has booked me in.

Then made the mistake of turning out Data roaming on my mobile (Pay As You Go remember) and watched in shock as £10 went in 10 seconds!.. Opps!. Thank goodness for Wifi in the hotel.

Oh and transferring between planes was easier than expected.. I asked for the bags to be checked to destination (means they are expected and labelled to go right to the end of the journey ). once in Amsterdam I just got on the next flight and my bags followed me.. However in Oslo I had to collect them and go through Customs and then recheck them in before going to wait for the next flight, was pretty easy and all signed everywhere.. So cool.. you can also ask anyone at all and they will help as best they can. The only thing that is stupid in my opinion is all the security checks you have to go through (three times I had to get everything out of my bag and take my jacket off and belt blah blah.. )