Morning Report - Day 8 - Friday, March 14th

The Morning Report with AK Andy - March 15th 2014 ~ 04:00 (UTC +1:00)

Buenos Días! Fun time is over. Back to the rig! This is the way we like work to be as a D&M Field Engineer. Today I sent out a proper morning report too. Yesterday/today several of us Drilling and Measurements guys flew over from the island to the mainland in the morning. From there we took a 25 minute helicopter flight out the rig that I hope to spend the rest of my hitch on. I have had enough shore time for this trip, thank you.  :)  From here on out, I will be posting at the end of my shift, or close to it. Some days will be more some days will be less. My days are now centered around a 12hour work day from 18:00-6:00.

   Once we go aboard around noon we went through a quick safety induction and grabbed a quick lunch. Afterward I tried, unsuccessfully I might add, to take a nap in the afternoon in preparation for going onto night shift. Out here we call the shifts 'tours' (pronounced
the same as 'towers') so I will be calling them that in future posts. Before each tour there is a brief safety meeting where we also get a quick update on the rig operations before heading to our work units/stations.

   To explain a bit of the routine on board ship I should first clarify that I am working on a tender assist drilling rig, meaning there are actually two vessels. One is the Tension Leg Platform (TLP) this is the structure that the drilling rig is situated and where we are drilling the wells in certain defined slots. The rig is capable of skidding from slot to slot. There are active producing wells next to the wells that we are and will be drilling. Going across a bridge you get to the Tender. This is where most of the drilling support "stuff" happens. (Stuff is such a technical term.) On the tender you have the pipe deck where tools, containers, casing, and a whole bunch of other equipment sit; the mud room where you have your vats, tanks, and pumps to circulate the drilling fluid (we call it mud); the accommodations with rooms, galley, gym, rec rooms, offices, etcetra; and a whole bunch of other shops and work bays like the electricians, welders, cementers, ROV ops. There are also the main lifeboats and emergency rafts located on the tender. I totally forgot to mention the ginormous port and starboard cranes and high-line that move all the equipment around and over to the TLP. Ya, lots of activity going on around here! The number of people on board (POB) is usually over 120.

   Okay, so in the evening, after the pre-tour safety meeting I don my PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) and head out to the life boats on the tender. There I grab my "T" card. This card is what is used to tell if someone is missing in case of an emergency and we all have to muster at the life boats. I then place the "T" card in a similar case on the TLP. This just keeps track of who is where, and which lifeboat that need to be at. My logging unit is located right up on the drill floor so we can step outside and be in the action. It is great. The day tour MWD and I had a brief hand over of notes and he gives me a list of items, if any, to attend to during my tour. In this evenings case, I got the things needing done over the course of the night. (I prefer outside work after midnight because it is the coolest time of day) Besides that I spent time working on some other work items as they came up, reading,  and chatting with friends. (A group of us started a new blog out of our conversation and I will be authoring some post on there as well.)

   I also finished reading the last two chapters of yet another of Joel Salatin's books, The Sheer Ecstasy of being a Lunatic Farmer. A very short synopsis can be taken from the section titles of the book; Nurture the Earth; Produce Food and Fiber; Respect Life; Promote Community. The chapters go into the how and whys and the paradigm shift that occurs on the road to becoming a lunatic farmer and the ecstasy in doing so. In there he writes how this lunatic farming is definitely not industrial agriculture; it is localized. Nor is it calling people back to the 1800s in some neo- luddite manner. The type farming he cultivates has developed out of the organic movement (before big business co-opted that term) and has plenty of other modern ingenuity and development. A quote from page 248, "On our farm, he (his dad) went the opposite direction he saw most of them going. Small or no machinery. Portable instead of stationary buildings. Pastured-based rather than grain based. Perennials instead of annuals. Seasonal instead of year around. Carbon cycling instead of petroleum based fertilizer inputs. Direct marketing instead of wholesale commodity marketing. All this, of course, was total lunatic thinking."   Awesome! Now, on to a book by Wendell Berry, Bringing it to the Table.

It is good to be back offshore... for now