Weather

The view from my logging cabin isn’t so benign this Christmas Eve. An angry swell is rolling away from this side of the rig and although there are patches of blue sky, to the east the horizon is smeared with rain and there is a faint rainbow that disappears into battleship-grey clouds.

From the security of an oil rig, one gets to know the sea without the trauma of sailing upon her. A fact I am eternally grateful for because I get sea sick amazingly quickly. The last time I suffered from it was three years ago in Israel. If one is feeling queasy, it is by far better to get into the open air. My mistake was to come across a toilet en-route to the deck. A crewman found me, three hours later, hugging the bowl. At best I was semi-conscious. That didn’t stop them bundling me onto the personnel basket and being lifted skywards onto the rig’s desk, where I promptly collapsed onto all fours in a vain attempt to vomit up my own sphincter. Below are a series of photographs as to what is entailed in a basket transfer. Thankfully the past few trips have been less dramatic.

The seas last night were fairly dramatic. Wind speeds hit forty-three knots, quite a storm for the Mediterranean and since this rig isn’t really built to North Sea specifications, operations have been suspended. Currently we are Waiting On Weather. Despite the huddled looks of the Philippine crewmen, it isn’t cold. Air temperatures are still in the mid-teens Celsius. It is rough certainly, but that would be par for the course at this time of year in the North Sea. In fact, it would be pretty normal for most of the year. At the moment the rig is being hit with a Westerly wind and I would estimate it to be a Force Six or Seven on the Beaufort scale. Wave height is averaging two-three metres, with a maximum of about four.

For those of you landlubbers (Aharrrgh!) not familiar with the Beaufort Scale for estimating wind speed, I’ll leave you this link to explains it:

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/marine/guide/beaufortscale.html

Basically it runs from Zero – flat calm, sea state mirror-like – through to Force Twelve – Hurricane – I told you it was a bad idea leaving the basement and now we are all going to die.

I can’t say that from a rig one gets to know the sea as well a skipper of a yacht or even a supply ship. One certainly isn’t so aware of the currents around the rig for instance. But over the years I’ve seen a few sights. My first summer offshore the sun shone for six weeks solid and the seas around Norway could have been made of glass. Coleridge got it spot-on with his “as still as a painted ship / upon a painted ocean.” It was also off the Norwegian coast however, where I came across the opposite of calmness. North of Bergen there is an area of the Atlantic where the ocean floor rises steeply from very deep water, enhancing the wave height above. For over a week, the average wave height was eighteen metres (sixty feet). Fortunately the wave-length was long, enabling the rig to sit within the peaks and troughs. What that looked like was one would see a hillside of water approaching the rig; the rig would rise upon it and from the peak one could see miles. Then down again, with a hill of water moving away, the next one coming on towards you. Maximum wave height hit twenty-eight metres (over ninety feet).

I am sometimes asked if I’m ever scared by storms. If I was going to be, it would have been on such an occasion as those mountainous seas off Norway. But although there were a lot of nervous people on board, myself included, to say that we were scared would be an over-statement. Nobody panicked, nobody showed real fear and I think that is what kept everybody calm. The rig was moving a lot – pitching over ten degrees and people were getting sea-sick. But afraid? No.

Now, pop me into a thirty-foot fishing boat and a Force Nine gale and it might be a different story.

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Basket Transfer

(from boat to rig)

Approach the basket, luggage in the middle and don the floation vests

People on the outside, luggage on the inside. Hold on tight. Going up!

Still going up!

And safely round and over onto the rig.

Great fun!

Merry Christmas Everybody!

Watching the Waves

From where I am sitting, I have a lovely sea view. It is fairly calm, the dark water is lightly ruffled and the sky is mostly overcast; the occasional patch of blue showing through the fluffy swollen clouds. And it is warm, about 22 degrees Celcius maybe more. Which tells you I’m not in Scotland. Another thing that detracts from the overall pleasure of the scene is the noise: hisses, bangs, throbs and crumps are all around, causing the cupboard doors to oscillate, my legs to vibrate and the metallic box in which I am currently sitting to occasionally shudder. Yes, the joys of being on board a deep water oil rig.

As those of you who were kind enough to read my earlier blog “Air” will already know, I am a seismic engineer. When performing a survey, the equipment I use puts an awful lot of energy into the environment. Nowadays that means looking out for marine mammals, prior to using the equipment. Which is fair enough; with power comes responsibility.

Usually when on the look-out for marine mammals, I don’t see anything that would interfere with the job. Occasionally up in the Moray Firth, I have spotted the distant breaches of bottle-nosed dolphin or harbour porpoise. From a lifting chopper I even once caught a glimpse of an Atlantic white-sided dolphin. The only time I have even had to postpone a job (so far) was off Mauritania, when on the point of deployment about 400 common dolphin decided to pass the rig. That was some sight; it took about twenty minutes for the last of the animals to move out of range. But even then they didn’t come too close. The previous week a calf had got trapped in the moon-pool (in this case, the hollow centre of the ship through which the drilling apparatus passes through) and had subsequently died. So who can blame them for staying away? But that has been the exception: most days marine mammals are noted for their absence.

That is not to say however that one doesn’t see anything. In the North Sea one often views a wide variety of birds. Gulls of course, varying in size through greater black-backed (wing span a little under two metres), through less black-backed, herring and down to common and black-headed gulls and kittiwakes. Off the Shetland Isles, one has an excellent chance of seeing Arctic skua, the heavy brown pirate gulls of the north. Gannets, fulmars and auks are common sightings. Perhaps more unexpected are the migrant species that occur. Often one sees something small and brown flitting in the shadows without being able to get a positive identification of it, but on other occasions they are in clear view: starling, robin, blackbird, flycatcher have all shown up. On a rig in the southern North Sea I once saw a large owl on the helideck, and on another occasion even a heron! A couple of eagles decided to make the drill ship there temporary home ninety miles off Mauritania (and for those of you who like their omens, yes, a lot of oil was found on that well) but for me, the most memorable occasion was when the rig played host to a flock of brambling. They are a small, colourful bird: think of a fancy sparrow and you get the idea. Anyway, the weather was freezing and these poor things must have been hungry. The birds were approaching the crew, sitting on their shoulders even, just begging for food. And we fed them: bread, porridge oats, fruit and water. It is amazing to approach a flock of wide birds, not have them fly away and come to the hand for food. The brambling started to recover after about three days of this treatment; at least they certainly had enough energy to fly away at our approach. I have no idea if they made it to land. The odds were against them but one never knows.

So, what did I see today? In the Mediterranean sea birds do not seem to be so common. In fact I haven’t seen any today. What is on show are medium sized tuna. Last night there were hundreds of them around the rig, attracted by the bright lights. I’m not certain what species they are: maybe yellow tailed? They are not small: averaging a couple of feet long. While waiting for some crane lifts today I decided to take a walk around the rig. Sure enough, the tuna were still there, either being dark narrow silhouettes, with electric-blue pectoral fins or rolling on their side, displaying their deep, shimmering, silver flanks. About forty metres off the starboard aft of the rig there was a sudden formation of splashes, as if a volley of mortar shots had hit the water. Away about fifty meters aft, six or so of the tuna launched themselves into the air. Something was hunting them. A big crescent splash then a brief view of a large dark back. Porpoise? A terrified yellow-tail hurled itself skywards followed in a split second by a massive dark fish: and fish it was. About six feet in length, the blue fin tuna cleared the water completely, turned in mid-air and splashed back into the sea.

I uttered a soft, Californian-style “Wooooow!”