Day 2 - Saturday/Sunday

This is going to be a short post, as I need to get some sleep before being woken up for the Sunday afternoon fire drill.

Saturday 1700hr:

I woke up later than I usually do and really didn’t have time for much more than a short shower and going to the pre-tour safety meeting. I grab an orange from the galley and head to work, I will eat a full meal come midnight. (The mid night meal was surprising good today!)

We have been drilling ahead smoothing pretty much all day, and it is looking like a good evening of drilling operations without any hiccups. The rate of penetration (ROP) into the new formation has been really good, and we are drilling about 28 meters in just under an hour and half. This means that the time in between the burst of activity I mentioned in the last post are quite useful for tending to other things that need attention. During this time I work on the computers and do some personal stuff. A little bit about my work station. Typically on a offshore rig, Schlumberger (SLB) would have its own modular logging unit with all out computers and other systems. On this rig we are in one of the rigs units below and to the left of the drill floor. It is a long room with mud loggers and geologist on one side and SLB on the other. On SLB’s end there is the DD station and then the MWD spot where I work. Beside my work laptop, there are three other monitors up with various programs running for doing the job and a modem cabinet with other sensor acquisition devices and printers. On one computer we have a data processing program which monitors and translates the signal received from downhole into meaningful numbers for the other two computers. The two other computers process the data from the first and display it onto the logs that I mentioned in yesterdays post. Also from these two we have displays sent to the operator company man and to the driller so they can monitor what is going on in the well.

It is a quiet evening and I spend some time talking with a friend on chat. Within SLB we have a chat communicator that is really quite nice. We usually have good conversations about questions of life and the bible. This conversation was no exception. We talk back and forth until I have to go again, and she finishes here work half way across the world. I spend the rest of my time busy with various things throughout the evening. The day MWD has let me grab some music from his hard drive so I get a couple of albums that I have wanted to get for a while now.  

This morning I decided to stay at work a little longer and work on cleaning up and organizing my laptop files. I have been meaning to do this for a while. I am really glad it did. Around 0700 I went up to the rig floor and on my way back I got to enjoy the beautiful morning. It is a particularly clear morning and not only can I see the coast line but the mountains several miles inland. Typically there is a thick haze that obscures the coast line. Today it is a glorious morning, the kind that you realize how cool it is to be alive. It isn’t too hot, the sea breeze is cool and refreshing, and the ocean is gently lapping at the base of the rig. Yet another day in paradise or something close to it. 

Later! 

Photo thanks to my co-worker.