Same shit, different ship

[Edmond]

He hit the letter c by mistake.

[Joe 90]

Did you know that your pints of Butcombe will have been brewed about 300 yards from my mum's house, where I'll be staying in July. The brewery is on the site of an old hay barn that I used to play in, back in the day. It's also against an old railway embankment where I used to go ferreting.

The 'Flippo chef' is a female, by the way.

TMI

[DrWilly]

Cold corals…?

[Mendip]

On a lot of boats there's a bowl of biscuits next to the coffee machine in the mess, which is pretty damn annoying if you're trying to lose a bit of weight. I've yet to master the skill of making a cup of coffee without stuffing a couple of biscuits in me gob while waiting for it to pour, and then taking a couple more back to my office to dunk in the coffee while thinking about doing some work.

Not so, this boat. They leave out these things.



I'm no linguist but I reckon that Flatbrød means flat bread.



And here's why. It tastes like grilled cardboard but without the flavour and I suppose I should be glad of having this to snack on instead of chocolate hobnobs considering my perpetual diet. But it's shit.




But anyway...

Cold corals…?

We have environmentalists on board to ensure no corals will get damaged during an upcoming template and pipeline installation. They are a complete waste of time as I am familiar with deep, cold water corals after spending so much time working in Norway, and if there are any I can't identify I just look on Google. But, oil companies have to be greener than green these days so the expense of a few environmental boffin types is small fry compared to any adverse publicity.

Deep water, cold environment corals are a relatively new discovery as the oil industry has moved northwards in Norway but just like buses, once the first were found now we seem to see them everywhere. Many areas with hard, glacial soil conditions have extensive coral reefs across ridges, where they can attach to the seabed and filter feed away. They reckon that many of the larger reefs may be several thousand years old and the oil companies take great pains to avoid them and not to cause any damage. The fishermen with bottom trawling nets however smack the absolute fukk out of the coral reefs and it's rare that we find much live coral. Usually we just find the carbonate foundations of dead and broken reefs with the occasional single live corals dotted about. I never understand why Greenpeace and the likes focus so much on the oil industry when the fishing industry causes so much more damage to the ocean environment.

Here's a typical area of deep, cold water coral from another project a few years ago. Probably in around 200m to 300m water depth.

The white coral is called Lophelia but I'll have to check Google for the names of the orange and red corals.



And this is your typical coral reef/mound that we encounter, comprising mainly dead coral and the carbonate concretions that form the base of these reefs, that should be constantly growing upwards. It's not unusual to find mounds of tens of metres across and sveeral metres high, the size of a bungalow, maybe.



The seabed across the Campos Basin, off Brazil is littered with chunks of dead coral/carbonate material and many years ago on a nightshift I told the ROV guys that I needed a piece of the carbonate for the project we were on, to do some analysis on or some-such. After a lot of time spent grabbing a piece in the ROV manipulator they brought it up at the end of the dive and I pretended to be interested, but stuck it straight in my bag... to take home for my fish tank. It's still sitting in the tank in our living room in Korat 15 years later and looks pretty good, although it's gone a bit black now probably due to the shitty bore hole water we get.

Despite the 'experts' saying that these corals take centuries to colonise an area and develop into reefs... we often see it on subsea infrastructure, which seems a bit inconsistent. These corals can't be more than twenty years old...yet another example of the oil industry providing an artificial home for marine life.





And just to show the kind of size these coral mounds can achieve... from a previous project, a huge mound across a proposed cable route off the Norwegian coast. You could fit an office block inside of this one. The cable was re-routed, of course.

[Edmond]

Very interesting, Mendy.

Those pipes, how fast would whatever be in them (oil/gas) be flowing at? Something like 1 meter per second, 10 mps, 1000 mps?

[BLD]

Aw shit I just posted up in the dinner thread about my monkfish that I heard was akin to the poor man's lobster? Them damn environmentalist forcing bld to pay to much for seafood. Fuckers
Thanks for a realistic and truthful post on it mendy.

[Mendip]

^ Just one unpopular viewpoint from over three decades of watching the fish all but disappear in the underwater desert that is the North Sea, seeing kilometres of dumped mackerel washed up against subsea pipelines and now only getting bothered by fish noise disrupting data acquisition during surveys within platform 500m safety zones, where both pelagic and benthic fish and other benthic shellfish and organisms still thrive due to the absence of bottom trawling.

Those pipes, how fast would whatever be in them (oil/gas) be flowing at?

Pretty fast I would say, but not as fast as my walk along Sukhumvit next week to the nearest bar I can find, once I get off this awful job.


Another sorry indictment of what this industry has become in the molly-coddled environment of the modern offshore world.

There is a short pathway designated 'PPE free' on the back deck of this boat to enable people to walk across the back deck to the entrance to the gym, below decks. The back deck of most vessels is a PPE zone but this has been put in place here so that you don't have to get dressed up just to do a bit of exercise.

Yesterday the pathway was blocked by a scaffold tower as the ABs did some painting, so you would have thought it quite normal just to walk around?



This was obviously too complicated for some, who had decided it was necessary to clamber under the barrier and through the scaffold towers. What is wrong with people these days? Anyway, it was deemed necessary to add a couple of signs to solve this seemingly insurmountable state of affairs.



I've had more than enough of this job and will be looking elsewhere for the future, although will probably do one more trip in the Autumn... as a freelancer you never burn bridges, fulfill commitments and try to keep thoughts to yourself. This place isn't the answer for the few more years I need out of this industry and I'm even considering West African construction projects again...God forbid.

But for now, the only real question on my mind is whether Swiss Air do metal cutlery or not? I fear the worst.

[cyrille]

Those pipes, how fast would whatever be in them (oil/gas) be flowing at?

Slow day?

[Reg Dingle]

^

This was obviously too complicated for some, who had decided it was necessary to clamber under the barrier and through the scaffold towers.

You mean those skinny bastards who could fit?

[Mendip]

^ They're all skinny these days. Back in the day I wold have just limboed under that barrier but I've gotta watch my back.


Another trip done and we're heading to lower latitudes for the crew change.



The seas became too rough for work and instead of waiting on the weather for a 10 minute weather window, the powers that be kindly decided to start heading to port. It would normally be a 24 hour steam to Kristiansund, but they're taking it easy at 5 kts for the sake of comfort, and this voyage will take two days.

Bye bye Arctic...



The driver... he looks pretty young, but they all do these days.



The ship's compass. I would probably have been keel hauled for checking the ship's compass in Nelson's day but things are a little more relaxed in the 21st Century.



It's not often you head due south for two days to reach an isolated northern port such as Kristiansund... we should arrive in the early hours of Wednesday.



Once ashore our itinerary will be Kristiansund-Oslo-Zurich-Somewhere on Sukhumvit. I say 'our' because after six weeks on this damn boat I'll be sharing the journey with a couple of pints of little swimmers.

[Looper]

The driver... he looks pretty young, but they all do these days.

I thought you were a stickler for naval terminology Mendip. I thought he would be the helmsman or skipper or pilot or something?

Those pipes, how fast would whatever be in them (oil/gas) be flowing at? Something like 1 meter per second, 10 mps, 1000 mps?

Flowrate is usually measured in m3/s for a gas pipeline.

Usually up to around 1000 m3/s for a large 1m diameter pipeline

But that nominal flowrate is for volumetric flow at STP, whereas the pressure in the pipeline may be around 200bar at the pumping end so the the gas will be much more compressed and dense and flowing at a much lower actual volumetric flowrate of around 5 m3/s. It works out to an average of about 5-20m/s in true average velocity for large gas pipelines. (about 20-70km/h)

But, consider also, that the fluid is flowing at a different speed depending how far away from the pipe-wall it is. i.e. fluid flow is at maximum velocity at the centre of the pipeline, and slowest adjacent to the pipe-wall, due to frictional drag.

But this velocity gradient is more pronounced in laminar flow. Laminar flow is more common for higher viscosity fluids such as oil. Natural gas is a low viscosity fluid so it has more turbulent flow characteristics rather than laminar flow, and the velocity in turbulent flow is more uniform across the pipeline cross section.

That is all I can remember from my pipeline fluid dynamics course from 1987

[david44]

. fluid flow is at maximum velocity at the centre of the pipeline, and slowest adjacent to the pipe-wall, due to frictional drag.

Is this the reason for ribbed condoms? Asking for a fiend.

[Mendip]

I thought you were a stickler for naval terminology Mendip.

You are perfectly correct Looper... I usually am but was asked to dumb things down for the landlubber, bus driving contingent.

It wasn't the Skipper driving because was in his office one deck below, and it wasn't the First Mate because he would be driving during the night.

I'm going for Second Mate.

Flowrate is usually measured in m3/s for a gas pipeline.

Usually up to around 1000 m3/s for a large 1m diameter pipeline

Interesting stuff Looper. What goes on inside a pipe holds little interest to me unless pigging a newly laid pipeline. I'm more interested in the outside of a pipeline and stuff like vortex shedding, vibration and freespan creation.

In actual fact, that yellow pipeline with corals a few posts up is what they call a bundle... a steel outer protective pipe contains maybe small diameter gas and oil pipelines, maybe a methanol line and maybe electrical and hydraulic umbilicals. That must play havoc with your flow rate calculations?

Those bundles were usually around 5km to 6km long and have structure at either end called a towhead. The fabricated bundles were towed out from shore and the chains you can see attached every few metres were for ballast. The bundles were pretty much neutrally buoyant and while being towed would sink slowly down to the seabed, at which point the hanging ballast chains would touch the seabed, thus reducing the weight of the bundle, that would then rise up in the water column before the weight of the chains again pulled it down again, and so on.

Once on location, buoyancy was released and the bundle would settle onto the seabed to later be connected via spools at one end to a wellhead and at the other to connection template, often leading to an export pipeline. It's old technology now but there was a phase in the late 90s/early 2000s when bundles were all the rage to connect satellite wells to existing infrastructure.

Yes, I have nothing to do tonight and am bored. We're still transiting in awful weather and I can't go to back to bed because I'm sharing a cabin, and I had a shitty sleep yesterday and am knackered. My mind is now off work and on Sukhumvit bars but I still have another shift and a half to go.

I think I'll have a sneaky 'on shift' sauna tonight to help acclimatise for Thailand.

[Joe 90]

dumb things down for the landlubber, bus driving contingent.

Not long now till that first pint!

Glug glug glug!!!

I bet it won't touch the sides

[DrWilly]

Easy bet

[Mendip]

Only one more night of this view...

[baldrick]

What is it about poms and their cottaging

You could have at least closed the curtains

[Edmond]

It works out to an average of about 5-20m/s in true average velocity for large gas pipelines. (about 20-70km/h)

Cheers.

Quite speedy, for me and me pink Fino.

[baldrick]

They do use pigs , so you might be in for a look

[Mendip]

Twenty-four hours to go...

Shitty weather, shitty transit, shitty shift.

My Isaan acclimatisation didn't do as planned. My Polish workmate asked if I wanted to go for a sauna around 3am... never have I backtracked on a plan so quickly which is a shame because I was looking forward to it as well.

He's a married guy with kids, but even so... is it really normal to have a sauna with another bloke? That's not for me, I'm afraid.



Maybe tomorrow night... I'll get this up to 45 degrees and 80% humidity and it'll be just like home.



Now, if the Filipina night cook invites me to share the sauna I'll be down there in a heartbeat.

Edit: wrong pic...

[baldrick]

Now, if the Filipina night cook invites me to share the sauna

Remove the towel sign

[Molle]

is it really normal to have a sauna with another bloke?

It is a thing only for those who have a strong self-confidence and not brought up in a Victorian society

[klong toey]

I thought it cum under raising the Headsail training.

[Mendip]

It is a thing only for those who have a strong self-confidence and not brought up in a Victorian society

That explains it then, I had a very sheltered upbringing in rural Somerset.

I think that these Continentals are much more comfortable stripping start bollock naked and sitting next to each other.

[malmomike77]

Only one more night of this view...

You watch people sleep?