"Allatsea", on the road with Britain's most popular marine warranty surveyor.

Boats, piles, trunnions and trains

Coo, what a few weeks.

No sooner off of the good ship Resolution (once the wind had died away) courtesy of the ably driven/beautifully handled crew-boat Offshore Performer and I was away again. This time on the Sea Jack. Smaller, cramped, noisier, cramped, dirtier, cramped and generally more cluttered than her bigger workmate. The marine crew, mainly Danes, noticeably more up their own bottoms than their seafaring Kin on t'other boat too. Odd indeed, a few man management issues to resolve on there methinks.

I was on the Jack to watch and approve (hohum) the first of the trunnioned monopiles being installed. Why trunnioned? Well, it's a cunning engineering ploy by the gingerbeers (engineers) upstairs to get round the crane's woefully limited (in this case) load/radius capability. Don't pick it up from the end, pick it up halfway ish along and bob's your uncle. They said. It all looked terribly tight to me, 370 tonnes of steel, 57 metres long and nearly touching the crane boom at one end and the barge deck, the other. There was nowhere to run either. If I'd had some brown trousers, I'd have worn them........over my head so that others weren't panicked by my beaconish fear.

After two long, very long I have to say, days, the pile was in, vertical and driven to depth and the Meriel D was sent out to get us (my colleague Damian was with me). Meriel D is nealy identical to Offshore performer in all respects except the most important one. Her Skipper! Oh deary deary me, what a woeful display of boat handling it was, it took him an hour to get alongside, citing the strong current as a problem. He didn't seem to notice the fact that Offshore Performer managed to do exactly the same manoeuvre at the Resolution in a third of the time, just 400 metres way. Poor chap. Some of them are born to it and some are not. I know I wasn't.

Yesterday, a beautiful morning, spoiled somewhat by catching the 0629 to Cannon Street and realising (too late) that the Herne Bay Breath Monster had sat behind me. The joys, the joys.

Blow blow, blow the man down

TP in. Grouted. Sorted. Next one please.

We can't though, because the wind's a blowing a hooly from the Northeast. Not that the direction's got much to do with it really, except that it's very chilly from there. The jacking limits on this large vessel are as modest as the limits on a much smaller one and we won't be going anywhere until wednesday at the earliest. I quoted the hourly spread cost in an earlier post, three days of that, doing nowt 'cos of the wind....hmmmmmmmm. The words water and eye and make and your spring to mind.

Now that the first one's been installed my job is done, time to get off. The weather that's stopping further ops here is also stopping boat transfers so I won't be going anywhere either. So be it.

Tp or not TP

Sunday, beautiful weather, the TP is on the monopile  but it's not quite level yet. There are tide issues and the wind will start building to gale force in about three hours. To an extent, the pressure is on. The rigger chaps have been toiling away with the jacking system for some time now but are still 0.1 degree out of tolerance in the E/W plane. Could we accept that? Could they start grouting while they re-adjust the jacks? Well effing hell No! Why ask such a daft question? Tut tut. eeeeh, it does make you wonder sometimes.

Thanet actually looks rather lovely from out here, with the sun out and the sea flat (ish). Perhaps it's not as bad to be living there after all. A change of perspective, a change of view, in more ways than one.

I had an email the other day from Sarah, the gushing, gosh, jolly hockysticks wife of one of our subbies. It was sent with a signature that included their home address which went along the the lines of ' The Paddocks, Bedfordshire', all very modest. The email asked if I was free to meet her hubby (and our subby) for a lunchtime drink in the coming week. This no doubt to discuss future work.

I had of course to decline the invitation because I was sitting out here on the good ship Resolution doing the task that I'd asked the very same subby to do just last week. The task that the subby was 'too busy' to attend. Hmmmmm. Well, guess who WON'T get anymore work through me. Job done.

Not so bad

As is so often the case, the terminality of the terminal failure of the crucial kit wasn't quite so...terminal. Hooray.

Some frantic repairs followed by a bit of diligent testing with old allatsea acting as witness and we're up and running again. We need divers in the water for this first bit of the operation and they can't be in the water when the tide's running hard. Just as it slacked the Sea Jack, a mile away, started piling. Can't expose the lads to that either so more hanging on.

As I write these last words (of this post at least) the divers are getting in their cages preparing to go in. Rather them than me on a cold and blustery evening.

Fingers crossed, rub rabbit's foot and a few words to the Lord of sailors and off we go. It's all very scientific you know.

Small failure...big hold up.

A small (in the measure of things) bit of kit was doing a very ordinary thing. It was extending the boom. The operator (it seems but this still unclear) did things a bit wrong and in a unique sequence. The outcome was the complete failure of this bit of kit in a very (they say), terminal way.

However, despite the hours and hours and pounds and pounds spent on risk analysis and hazid identification, there is no contingency and no mitigation. Blow me down with a baby's burp, who'd a thought it?

The clock's ticking and the spread cost is £5,500 an hour. Tick tock that'll be five hundred pounds please. Crikey, this really is a good example as to why wind turbines should be built on land methinks. The Brits tend to kick up a right old stink when such building is proposed, to such an extent that even the fascists in power right now run scared and opt for sea construction instead.

Funny old thing but Denmark and the Netherlands are full of land based turbines and no one complains, in fact the Dutch and the Danes were recently found by a UN study to be the happiest people on the planet. My own experience of them is that they're certainly far more environmentally aware in general than the NIMBY Brits (and better dressed, better educated, less yobbish, more altruistic and nicer overall, sadly) and seem to realise that land based turbines add to the beauty and ambiance of the terrestial setting rather than detract from it ....................... IMHO of course.

The answer could of course lie in the power of the pound? Those that demand that the turbines be built at sea can pay 5 times the price per kWh for their lecky that those of us that champion land turbines, pay (because that is the difference in construction  and maintenance costs) and then we'll see just how important the 'view from here' really is.

In the meantime I'll cheerfully and hypocritically carrying on taking my daily shilling for being out here, 8 metres above the murky water od the Thames Estuary.

Hey, come on, a chap's got to earn a living :o)

Beneath us the waves

Water depth at position A07 in the Fannit wind farm is 17 metres at LAT. They pushed the legs down 29 metres so we're a good way above the oggin. It feels odd, being on a boaty thing and yet being above the waves. What is spooky is seeing the other maritime traffic passing close by (too close in some instances) and realising that there's not a jot we could do if one of them misjudged the distance a bit and headed our way. We'd just have to sit here, in the sky so to speak, and get clobbered.

Nice folks here nad the food is of the highest order, thus, I'm as a happy as a happy chap can possibly be happy..............in such circumstances. My 3 broadband dongle, which positively fails to work most of the time on land is performing wonderfully well out here so not only am I well fed and nicely looked after but I've got the tinterweb too. It doesn't get much better than that. Sigh!!

The weather's forecast to be pretty horrid on and off over the coming days but that said they hope to have the first transition piece happily installed onto the monopile bytomorrow dindins time. Well let's hope so, there do seem to be a lot of last minute 'administrative' hurdles to overcome, many of them seemingly produced 'in-house'. Odd.

All at sea

All will be quiet from allatseabecause he's well, allatsea.

 

The Good (some say) ship Resolution is my new short term home and the tinternet connection is a bit dubious from where I stand.

That said dear bleaders, I'm thinking of you all, and, pausing to shed a tear or two, looking forward to blogging again soon.