Another lockdown… another commute

[David48atTD]

can pigs be relied upon to take clear shots?

https://ak.picdn.net/shutterstock/vi...animation.webm

[Looper]

^are your pipes worthy of inspection, looper? Heh!

I fear I am being assailed with innuendo and lascivious lewdities from a leery lady from Luzon

Let it be known that my pipe is inspected and pressure tested regularly as part of a rigorous and exhaustive health and safety directive

I'm afraid your monorail idea is a non-starter... maybe your time would be better invested in developing a mat finish for bathroom scales?

A fella has to inspect his undercarriage as part of routine maintenance!

[Joe 90]

Can you guess which Istanbul team play here (the badge and the colours should help )?

Surprised you didn't go deep into bandit country and the bowels of Hell visiting Galatasary...

[katie23]

@looper - good to know that your pipes undergo regular maintenance. I'm not implying anything, since I have a set of pipes that I regularly inspect. It must be your lurid imagination. Heh!

But yes, I am a lass from Luzon. How's Miss Mindanao?

******

@mendip - Most of the travel vloggers that I've watched have raved about Turkish food. I hope you get some shore leave and show us food pics!

****

My first encounter with Turkish food was when a Turkish guy set up a shawarma kiosk in my town many years ago. It was a hit, and some years after, several shawarma shops came out. This Turkish guy also modified his menu and served shawarma rice. The others followed. Despite the competition, his stall is still there - I'm glad that his business has survived.

When I was younger, I never thought about it. But now, I wonder what his visa status is. Maybe he's married to a local & the business is in her name. He used to man the store in the early days. Now, it's mostly his employees.

Cheers and good day/ night to all!

[Joe 90]

Cheers and good day/ night to all!

You have such a wonderful sense of humour and grasp of the English language Katie!

[Edmond]

Run Katie, run.

[armstrong]

That's a smashing blouse you've got on, Katie.

[Topper]

How's things going, Mendip?

[Edmond]

Has quite possibly pulled Chitty.

[malmomike77]

I fear he's either having to put in a shift, important given he needs follow-on contracts - needs to leave a good impression.

OR

He could also be a Turkish guards playing thing, one that is likely hairier than Mendip, you can almost envisage hairballs and static electricity.

I hope for the former but fear for the latter.

[happynz]

Interesting...the Black Sea is deeper than I assumed. How far down do you sink that ROV (not sure if this has been asked already)?

[armstrong]

Do I win if the boat sunk after docking?

[malmomike77]

i'm still waiting for my nail clippers

[katie23]

I watched this and thought of Mendip's thread. I hope he's just shopping for shawarmas & nail clippers.

[Mendip]

A few questions here... I've been a bit remiss in updating the thread for a few days.

As MalmoMike mentioned, I've been putting in a few shifts lately... the boat hasn't sunk, I didn't pull Chitty and I haven't been a Turkish Guards plaything. I don't know which would have been worse... although I guess Chitty wouldn't be so bad so long as it wasn't a dinner date.

Nah, I've just been busy, that's all. We're short of personnel which has put a lot of extra work on us... and all thanks to Covid. I'd love to blame it on Brexit but can't... Covid has made crewing boats a nightmare with last minute cancellations due to a family member or contact testing positive, and all that good stuff.

Also, for about three days I couldn't log on to TD... it kept timing out and giving the the message that 'Teakdoor was taking too long to respond'. This happened on the vessel Wifi and the work network and I thought that TD was down (all other sires were OK), but obviously not. Anyway, it seems OK again tonight. Any ideas what can cause that?

Anyway, we're well underway with the inspection of the two TurkStream pipelines and periodically have to break off inspection to install temperature sensors at designated locations. These were the equipment we had to pick up off Lowestoft all those weeks ago, en-route to Istanbul.

I mentioned before that the Black Sea is anoxic, suphurous and dead below about 150 metres water depth. This is what the seabed at 500 metres down looks like if the ROV disturbs it (by the way HNZ... we're inspecting the subsea pipelines on this job so the ROV will be just a couple of metres off the seabed, regardless of water depth - I think the maximum depth on this project is around 2.2km). Instead of the usual sand, silt of clay comprising normal sediment, here we have anaerobically decomposing organic matter... I guess to put it bluntly, concentrated Turkish, Bulgarian and Romanian decomposing turds. This stuff is really soft and the slightest disturbance ruins the visibility. There is no bottom current to speak of to clear the visibility so we have to be very careful.



Early on last week we had unseasonal bad weather with cold nor-easterly winds. Loads of birds took refuge on our boat but sadly once on a boat the usually die... I guess a combination of drinking contaminated water off the deck, no food and the cold soon finished them off. It's very sad to see and I stopped going outside for a couple of days.



There were dead birds everywhere. If they try and make a break for it, seagulls swoop down for an easy meal. They're pretty well buggered once they come on to the boat and just get weaker and weaker.



But the good news was, we had to go in to shore to clear customs to allow us to work within the 12 nautical mile limit (territorial waters). We had started the work well offshore, but as we worked towards land a lot of birds took their chances and flew off. Hopefully they had good luck.



As we worked towards shore I saw my first fish of the trip! Usually the seabed alongside subsea pipelines is full of fish and crabs and the like, but the only fish you see in the seabed in the Black Sea is dead fish which have sunk to the seabed from the oxygenated upper levels... and then there is nothing to eat them so they just rot.

This one looked a bit fresh...



But they usually look more like this. These black nodules are also common which I think may be precipitated hydrogen sulphide nodules... or something similar.



Strangely enough, I also spotted this. It looks to be a baguette that must have been chucked over the side of a boat, got waterlogged and then sunk 200 metres down like a torpedo and become embedded into the soft seabed. I guess with no oxygen down there a French stick won't rot. This was the first time I've ever seen a baguette sticking out of the seabed.



We sailed into Igneada a little north of Istanbul to clear customs.



The first land I'd seen for a few days.



And then we waited for half a day for the immigration officials to come out to the vessel.



This meant yet another stamp in my new passport (and also a second when we left Turkish territorial waters)... and it'll be the same at the Russian side. Along with all the stamps now needed for work in Schengen and the pages that Thai immigration seem to use up with these extensions, I can well see another passport renewal coming up early next year!

This place looked nice. I haven't spent much time in this part of the world and you could easily mistake this Turkish coastal village for being on the north coast of Devon, but instead of a village church these guys have a village mosque.



Once customs was cleared, we could work within the 12 nm limit and we inspected the pipelines in to shore, to the Turkish landfall.



You can see the two trenches at the beach where the two 32inch gas pipelines make landfall and then tie into the Turkish land network. The pipelines are around 10 metres apart, and parallel all the way from the Russian coast. We managed to inspect in to around 800 metres from shore when we had to stop due to the shallow water. Around 15 metres depth is our limit.



And this was just about as far as we got on one of the pipelines (we surveyed out from shore on one, and back into shore on this one). It was importnt to complete all of the 12 nm limit work in one operations as we had a limited time allowance to stay within the territorial waters and it would be costly to have to return.



There... job done.



And then back to immigration to exit Turkey.



Since then we've been working further offshore, and after installing more temperature monitors, will gradually work our way across to Russia on one pipeline, finish the Russian territorial work, and the work back to Turkey again on the other pipeline. No port calls or crew changes will be carried out in Russia... visas are just too problematic.

There was more bad weather yesterday and the boat became inundated with little land birds. I hate to see this.

They were all sitting along the mess window sill watching me eat. I felt a bit guilty.



Poor things.



A robin sat on the MOB boat.



And a little chaffinch (I think) sat in my office port hole and watched me work.



A bit later, while engossed in my work I kind of 'sensed' something, looked down and saw this little greenfinch (I think) hopping around my office.



No way was this one going to die... so I rescued it and dribbled some water down it's throat before wishing it luck and sending it on it's way!



That was last night... tonight the weather is much better and all the birds have thankfully disappeared. We're still working reasonably close to shore so hopefully they decided to risk the journey at night so the seagulls don't see them. I wish them luck.

But probably the most disturbing thing I've seen so far this trip was this mystery sack weighted down by a breeze block, sitting on the seabed... I dread to think what gruesome contents were inside.

[Buckaroo Banzai]

And then we waited for half a day for the immigration officials to come out to the vessel.

You didn't feed them did you?
I told you, once you feed them they'll never leave.

[Saint Willy]

Also, for about three days I couldn't log on to TD... it kept timing out and giving the the message that 'Teakdoor was taking too long to respond'. This happened on the vessel Wifi and the work network and I thought that TD was down (all other sires were OK), but obviously not. Anyway, it seems OK again tonight. Any ideas what can cause that?

Probably the firewall or IT Manager noticed that TeakDoor is full of porn and smoochi.. .they are onto you!

[ootai]

Mendip You said in your post:

"We managed to inspect in to around 800 metres from shore when we had to stop due to the shallow water. Around 15 metres depth is our limit."


Does that mean the 15m is the limit for the boat or the ROV?

How does the last 800m get inspected if it is the limit of the ROV?

Glad to see you are still standing.

[Headworx]

I dread to think what gruesome contents were inside.

Did that pic and X-Y get passed on to the local Navy or Cops?

Seriously, there could be something in there that could help someone with closure (Maddie McCann sort of thing).

[pickel]

Did that pic and X-Y get passed on to the local Navy or Cops?

Seriously, there could be something in there that could help someone with closure (Maddie McCann sort of thing).

Good point, but it makes me wonder what the limits would be for the cops, in regards to the effort and costs of an operation to retrieve a mystery bag 2km deep in the Black Sea.

[bsnub]

But probably the most disturbing thing I've seen so far this trip was this mystery sack weighted down by a breeze block, sitting on the seabed... I dread to think what gruesome contents were inside.

That is disturbing.

[OhOh]

^

US$ ?

[Mendip]

Mendip You said in your post:

"We managed to inspect in to around 800 metres from shore when we had to stop due to the shallow water. Around 15 metres depth is our limit."

Does that mean the 15m is the limit for the boat or the ROV?

How does the last 800m get inspected if it is the limit of the ROV?

Ootai, you live and learn!

I've just discovered we surveyed down to 13m water depth, which gave another 300m of inspected pipeline towards shore.

The vessel draught is 6.7m and procedure is to keep at least 5m of water between the vessel keel and seabed (with a safety margin). The ROV is on an umbilical so could travel slightly further inshore but it's hard to maintain acoustic navigation within shallow water (between vessel and ROV) so it couldn't travel too far in front of the vessel.

We use a nearshore contractor with a small boat to carry out the shallow water survey. Hopefully they will overlap with our offshore inspection to allow for some comparison of results.


And as for the sack... all findings are reported although I doubt anything would be taken further. There's an awful lot of crap dumped at sea and it's most likely just a sack full of rubbish... I was just trying to make the job sound exciting.

There's not many police forces with the budget to allow for underwater recovery anyway.

[malmomike77]

I can well see another passport renewal coming up early next year!

Every cloud

The ROV is on an umbilical so could travel slightly further inshore but it's hard to maintain acoustic navigation within shallow water (between vessel and ROV) so it couldn't travel too far in front of the vessel.

I was wondering why the ROV couldn't carry on in as the umbilical is so long.

[Mendip]

^ Two main reasons really.

The umbilical is steel-armoured so sinks onto the seabed immediately. It's just too heavy for the ROV to drag along the seabed. In normal configuration with a decent water depth, the umbilical will be suspended above the ROV so most of the weight is taken by the vessel.

And as I mentioned, the parameters are all wrong to position the ROV using hydro-acoustic positioning (using multiple sound pulses from a pole attached to the vessel to a transponder on the ROV). Without the obvious risk of losing an ROV with no navigation, there is also little point in inspection a pipeline if you have no position for any findings... that is if you could even find it in the first place.