Archive for the ‘jackup’ Tag
I’m back at work tomorrow, flying up to Inverness and then hire car to Invergordon, I’ve never stayed in the town of Invergordon before, always on a rig, so I might have time to explore a bit, If I do i’ll try a snap a few off and show you the place.
I’m joining the Maersk Resilient which is a large Jack-up, it’s one I was on a couple of xmases ago.
Here’s a shot of Invergordon from a rig’s point of view.
Here’s a shot of the Jack-up in the first picture I took a long time ago, I’ll be surprised if its still there.
Some of the locals just carry on as if nothing is happening.
Like this:
Like Loading...
Digging through some old photos I found a rig move we did out of Dundee, I haven’t spent any time in Dundee so don’t know much about the place except what I just read on Wiki and it does sound like a pretty cool place.
We joined a jack-up called the Rowan Viking, this was brand new and wasn’t long here from Singapore, however if I remember it did sit in Dundee for a few months before I joined, due to red tape.
It a pretty big rig, 264′ in length and 289′ wide and can accommodate 120 people and can drill to a depth of 35000′.
At last we are on our way.
And I couldn’t resist a HDR of Dundee.
Like this:
Like Loading...
I’m back on dry land after 14 days at sea, it was a good rig move, all went well and nobody got hurt.
This shot is from a rig move I was part of, starting in Amsterdam, we had a couple of days before we left and found this really nice steak house, we would order beers and steak and sit outside and watch the world go by, mainly on boats and bicycles, very relaxing.
Have a great weekend.
I’m having some problems with WordPress at the moment, I find I’m having to log on each and every time I wish to comment or ‘like’ on anyones blog, this gets really annoying after a while, so if I don’t comment I’m sorry and I hope they sort it out soon, I have contacted them and each time I do the responses I get is always the same, “turn on cookies” which I have done but its still the same but with the added hassle of around 40 spams a day.
Like this:
Like Loading...
This has been the first Christmas I’ve spent at home in 5 years and it has been fantastic. December is a busy month for us, last year while I was away I missed,(In order) My son’s birthday, our twentieth wedding anniversary, Christmas day, boxing day, my birthday, New years eve, and new years day. The worst thing was, the weather was so bad we didn’t do anything.
But it’s not all doom and gloom off-shore at Christmas, everybody knows that we are all stuck out there so we make the most of it, movies and games, go to the gym or just chill.
Christmas day lunch is to die for, last year we had two sittings, we were on the first, we took our seats, read the menu, had a choice of starters, followed by a large choice of main dishes, deserts were out of this world, all washed down with non alcohol beer and wine.
But the evening meal is when the staff onboard really go to town, it’s a cold buffet, I won’t tell you about it because I wouldn’t be able to give it justice, here is a shot of part of it.
This all goes on during 128 knot winds, 10 meter waves. now we are on a jack-up so we don’t move around that much but the noise from the wind whistling through the legs was really loud.
This photo shows the weather, these waves are suppose to be 10 meters high but the wind is so strong it’s keeping them down around 7 meters. I took this shot from the pilot house which is about 7 stories up.
After doing nothing for 28 days we were allowed to go home, the day after we left they decided to move, as they started to jack down into the water a weld on one of the legs failed, properly due to the very high winds and stress of the legs flexing. The jack-up was immediately towed to shallow water for repairs and checks on all the legs, a big job, here is part of one leg.
A month later and guess where I was, yeah back onboard, we towed it to where it should of gone and sat it on the seabed. Job done.
We have a fiftieth birthday party tonight (not mine) My birthday tomorrow (not fifty yet) then New Years eve, so have a great new year and I’ll post again next year.
Like this:
Like Loading...
****WARNING ENGINEERING GEEKY STUFF****
This is the jackup that was berthed next to us in Amsterdam, it’s a Jackup barge, properly built for wind farm installation, like the one I’m on, this is a DP2 class barge, DP (Dynamic Positioning) users GPS satellites to get a position and large thrusters to stay on that location, it’s accurate to about 10cm. Here is a shot of the complete barge taken from ours, in the shadow of our helideck is their bow (pointy bit on a boat) and you can just make out the bow thrusters.
Here is a closer look at the thrusters, as you can see these are lowered at the moment, in this position they can swivel 360 degrees giving great movability, when in transit the thrusters are raised for less water resistance, but the clever bit is the big holes, this is so when the thrusters are up they can still be used, by switching the large electric motors from forward to reverse the position of the bow can be moved in any direction.
Like this:
Like Loading...
For the last couple of days I’ve been having to sit outside on the stairs and connect to the wifi from the rig parked next to us, it was very slow and would not let me view some sites, so sorry if I haven’t been to yours lately. The thing is, I move rigs right, so when I join the rig it’s going to be moving, this normally means it’s going from one client to another, it’s seem really daft but when one client leaves they take everything with them, this includes the wifi, that’s why I sometimes don’t post, because I can’t. Now you know.
This is the thing I’ll be moving tomorrow morning, is it a boat or a rig? Well it sails out to location under its own steam, then once on location it lowers its legs and lifts itself out of the water, cool ah.
This is the one next to us, the one I’ve been stealing the wifi from. There has always been a problem with jackup’s, the legs get in the way of the cranes. But this is really cool, they have built the crane around the leg. (that’s the large round black thing with red and white on the top) I think that is an awesome bit of engineering, but then I’m strange.
Here is the same smoke stack as the Amsterdam post, but first thing this morning, not a breath of wind, you might have seen it on Instagram if you follow me, @rigmover
Like this:
Like Loading...
Keeping up my transportation theme, here’s a shot of an AHV (Anchor Handing Vessel) towing a rig into Invergordon. Invergordon is where rig’s go to die. A lot of the rig’s in the North Sea are very old, some around 40 years old, and this is where most of them will end up, stripped, cut up and crushed. See my other post.
These aren’t just big hunk’s of metal, these have been second homes to a lot of good, hard working people, some have been on the same rig for all it’s life.
When we towed the J.W. McLean into Invergordon for the very last time, the death march was played over the loudspeaker system, the shore was lined with people (I might have imagined that bit) It was a sad time.
Here you can see a cruise ship carefully navigating it’s way between the condemned rig’s.
Some get stripped and just the leg’s are left behind.
Like this:
Like Loading...
I shot this as we moved a very large Jackup along side a platform, this is the flare burning off waste gas. Again this was tweaked with Snapseed on my iPad.
Like this:
Like Loading...
I took this photo in Invergordon which is Northeast of Scotland, its a place old rigs go to die, some are lucky and get a bit of TLC and work again, other's just seem to stay here forever. I tweaked this on my iPad with Snapseed which i think is one of the best on the iPad.
Like this:
Like Loading...
