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

Mathilde

The loadout, happily, proceeded very well. Better than I thought it would, or even dared hope. Just goes to show, I'm almost always wrong. Glad to be so in this case. Goodness it was a wet wet wet rainy day though. Shipyards are bleak places at the very best of times, in the rain, they morph into the stuff of manic depression. The sun's out again this morning, hooray!!

 

Is it me or is that thing a bit bent? A brief sunny spell allowed us to lift in the dry.

With  a bit of luck the good ship Mathilde will sail away this afternoon and that'll leave enough time to drive the hire car  back to Edinburgh and catch a flight darn sarf. Fingers crossed.

Bro's over to Blighty on Sunday and at allatsea towers we're getting jolly excited indeed. Oh the fun we'll have. With a bit of luck.

Rain-delays-rain

I've just been out to the building shed to see if they're ready to site-move the module to the quayside. The large yellow unit that should have been shifted out of the way at 0400 this morning, hasn't been. The yard Honcho was handily placed to approach and ask what time we'd be shifting our bit of kit, all 157 tonnes of it. His answer wasn't helpful and I noted a distinct hint of irritation in the delivery. It doesn't bode well.

The yard here at Burntisland is suffering the effects of 24 hours of heavy rain and is reminiscent of a Lagos swamp. Mercifully without the stink or heat. Water and loadouts/sitemoves don't share a bed easily and I fear the worst. Watch this space.

On the media front there is much hullaballoo about the cricket result from Lords, this is a tadge annoying considering all the many other newsworthy items which are being ignored. Parking outside my house for a start.

And A levels too.

Overheard in’t office at the ‘post’ section.

Person 1; The parcel weighs 650 grammes.

Person 2; Ok, is that more than a kilogramme?

Blimey!!!

Have rung the owners of ‘Waterfall’ only to be told they’re not sure where it is. Crikey, talk about being chilled. Their brand new 2 million pound pride and joy, whereabouts unknown.

 

Still quiet on the office front and now, to add frustration into the mix, the Burntisland trip next week may be postponed too. Need something to look, and soon. There is a Loadout at Felixstowe on Saturday but there are chaps a lot closer (geographically) to that then me. Besides, it’s only a 31 tonne skid module, it’ll take all of 5 minutes. Hardly worth the effort of getting there in some respects, although its owner won’t agree with that sentiment I’m sure.

 

Very often these small modules (normally part of a production platform or FPSO) cost millions and are always crucial to the completion of much grander and vastly expensive capital projects. Hence they tend to be ‘worried’ over by the interested parties. As most of us have an interest in the success or otherwise of these projects (through our pension funds and equity based savings) I suppose we should all be fretting.

 

Right then, “Oi you, crane driver, stop what you’re doing and let me check the load curves”.

 

See, I’m interested already.

 

Twiddle twiddle

Foolishly the other day I muttered words along the line that we’d ‘gone a bit busy’. Silly, stupid boy. There’s a whole bunch of us sitting here and twiddling thumbs this afternoon. Yesterday was no better.

I’ve got the whole week here in Lundun Tarn before a busy few days in Burntisland next week followed after that by three weeks holiday. Bruvver is over from the Oz on the 26^th and I’m taking the time off to spend with him while he’s here. In between times we have to squeeze in a suitability survey of the fastcat support boat ‘Waterfall’ (bit of a dodgy name for a boat if you ask me) but shouldn’t take long. It’ll be in Ramsgate so nice and handy for me as a Fannitite.

The recent warm weather has been a boon to us keen gardeners. I say keen, which we are (sort of), keen but inept. I think our policy is to let everything that wants to grow, grow. We water and fertilise with great gusto and passion. The result of course is that the whole garden is simply a green mess with neither of us really knowing what is weed, flower, plant or shrub. If something looks passably attractive or useful it stays. If not, it get’s jobbed, eventually, usually after much soul searching and deliberation and argument. Eeeh, life at allatsea towers, wonderful. That said, it does provide me with a pleasant place to sit on summer evenings and drink large gin and tonics. Not that I need a special place to imbibe so, it just makes it that much more pleasant. And more-ish.

Tunnel..light..end of the..at

Fully aware that I may bring it all crashing down around our ears, the purchase of the  Drunky Nunky abode is proceeding nicely (so far, touch wood, cross fingers, stroke black cat, kiss rabbit's foot give a passing nod to the local church etc etc) and the man himself seems quite happy to go there. Cooo, who'd a thought it? Anyway we're all very hopeful that all goes to plan and everyone's the better for it. Time will tell, as always.

Below is a  piccy of a barge, ballasted to displace 1740 tonnes, hanging off the OSA Goliath's brand new Liebherr crane. All very nice it was, and not a sphincter shrinking moment to note. Well, just the one, when the crane driver luffed out an additonal 3 metres without telling us. This intoduced an extra heeling moment of 5220tm into the equation that the anti-heeling gear wasn't really expecting (nor indeed, was I). Now although the intial GM was in the order of 7.5 metres (ooh er madam, what a big one?), by the time the 1740 tonnes acting through the top of the crane mast (94.4 metres up!!!!) was factored in, we didn't have that much to play with. Thank goodness for drip dry underpants.

 

Another view of the Goliath and her giant Liebherr.

 

Guidance from Gord

Just back from the Rostock crane tests (ooh er madam, it was big one), will update you on that little number a bit later. In the meantime I must share a letter from our illustrious, megabrained and much loved PM.

10 Downing Street
London  SW1 

  Dear People of the United Kingdom

Due to the current financial situation caused by the slowdown of the economy, your Government has decided to implement a scheme to put workers 50 years of age and older on early retirement. This scheme will be known as RAPE (Retire Aged People Early).

Persons selected to be RAPED can apply to the government to be eligible for the SHAFT scheme (Special Help After Forced Termination).

Persons who have been RAPED and SHAFTED will be reviewed under the SCREW program (Scheme Covering Retired Early Workers). A person may be RAPED once, SHAFTED twice and SCREWED as many times as the government deems appropriate.

Only persons who have been RAPED can get AIDS (Additional Income for Dependants & Spouse) or HERPES (Half Earnings for Retired Personnel Early Severance). Obviously, persons who have AIDS or HERPES will not be SHAFTED or SCREWED any further by the government.

Persons who are not RAPED and are staying on, will receive as much SHIT (Special High Intensity Training) as possible.. The government has always prided itself in the amount of SHIT it gives out. Should you feel that you do not receive enough SHIT, please bring this to the attention of your local MP, as they have been trained to give you more than you can handle.

Sincerely,

Gordon Brown

Another two years

Pleasantly surprised to be issued with a cert giving me another two years of playing offshore when required. I was quite convinced that I'd fail the medical but had actually improved on the results of the previous one. Cooo, well fan my brow.

So the German trip on Sunday will go ahead, crane testing off of Rostok is the name of the game. The only 'down' bits' are having to

1/Travel on a Sunday 

2/Go through the cesspit of an abyss that is LHR 1

The London office is acertainly a busier place than ity was a month or so ago. There's a mariner shortage again and the diaries for the enxt few weeks are chokka. Nice but just a tadge irrtiating at the same time.

I have decided to lose 10kg over the next 6 months but  this has just suffered an early hiccup as Jo has brought in a tray of Krispy kreme doughnuts in and I've had one already.

A second is a distinct possibility.

Offshore medical

Yuk!!

My least enjoyable bi-annual experience is about to start.

The dreaded 'Offshore Medical'.

Edinburgh aggport

Safely berthed back in the pool of London but no thanks to the charmers at Edinburgh aggport. Perhaps it was the close proximity the the Royal Highland Show or maybe they wanted to get nominated for the title 'World's crappiest airport' but the 7 yes SEVEN hours I spent there last saturday will certainly go down into the annals of travel misery. Ghastly lot. They make the oiks at LHR 3 look positively radiant in the efficiency and charm stakes.

I feel very much for the unfortunate foreigner arriving at the place for the first time. At least us homers are well used, in the main, to the atrocious indifference that most 'Borders' Scots take to be good service but your average charm effusing Italian or Spaniard is in for a huge shock. Poor sods. Come on, lets get up to Wallsend and start building that wall again.

Back home and I decided that in a gesture to looking more like a honed body temple than Europe's lard mountain I'd get the trusty Scott ATB out of the shed and pedal Thanet's famous coastal path. All went well until I cleared Palm Bay heading back home on the cycle path. In the distance I saw the tell tale weaving from side to side of the archetypal aftrernoon drunk, fresh out of Wetherspoons, wallowing towards me. This one was replete with similarly bladdered female oik companion and cute but uncontrolled puppy-dog.

As sure as eggs are eggs the puppy spotted me on the bike and homed in for fusses and strokes, tongue dangling and tail a wagging. Now 115 Kg of allatsea riding at the best part of 20mph did his very best to avoid collision by deft manouevring but the puppy was not going to be easily put off and in the end a full emergency stop and hurried dismount was called for. All very undignified but it got the job done and the puppy appeared to find it all highly entertaining. So too did its Stella-fuelled moronic owner who, instead of apologising for the boistrous behaviour of his mutt, proceeded to shout 'Got him' which was immediatley followed by an ear splitting cackle of laughter from the accompanying crone.

Thanet folk at their side splitting best, don't you just love them. Anyway it's nice to know that we've got a lovely socialist government that provides a benefit and housing system that rewards such heart warming and sociable behaviour instead of eliminating it. I must drop a line to Gord and Alistair and thank them.

In the Lundunn office this week, pretty busy too for once. Off to germany on Sunday to spend a week watching a giant crane being tested on its mother ship. At one point they're going to lift 2400 tonnes so I hope they've done the stability sums right. I'll check that for sure, either that or spend the entire programme watching from the liferaft station and wearing an immersion suit.