[BITList] Drillship stuff

[fs]

On a couple of the drill ships that I was on we had Flume tanks to give 
us extra stability which I seem to remember had mixed blessings in the 
hands of some of the lesser experienced operators
I joined the "Ben Ocean Lancer" in Singapore around 86 while she was 
refitting, never sailed on her though as when I went home on leave I was 
offered a job on a production Platform offshore Spain which sounded much 
better than New Guinea where the lancer was heading, turned out to be 
another of my mistakes as she went from there to Greece for a couple 
years whereas the job in Spain finished up after a year, story of my 
life if there's a choice to be made I can always be relied on to make 
the wrong one
frank

On 1/11/2010 11:55 PM, HUGH wrote:
> I'm afraid I didn't sail on a drillship - Scotts built them, mid to 
> late 70s, and I did the downhole stuff and BOP handling.  Expertise in 
> that field on the Clyde was not commonplace, so, when the orders were 
> placed, those and such as those of us went to lectures, so we could at 
> least talk oilfield until our skills caught up.  The first ship 
> delivered, Ben Ocean Lancer, was to a Dutch hull design for an 
> American company overloaded with cigar smoking supers and convoluted 
> channels of communication.  They hadn't a clue about the difference 
> between a ship and an oilfield in Texas.  Nor had their approved 
> suppliers in the US of A.  We got used to receiving documentation 
> warning us in red type that the pump should be installed by a 
> qualified electrician.  Also common were drawings sent in advance of 
> equipment delivery, wholly lacking in anything that would tend to let 
> a draughtsman work out where the hell to put it, and how to secure 
> it. "We'll weld it down ourselves," was often heard in response to an 
> inquiry.  All of this crap, and more, had to be sorted out, and was, 
> though only at the cost of overloading the poor chap who spoke 
> something like the same language as us. We learned that, shortly after 
> she left, they burned the four BOP handling winches off the seats they 
> were welded to and put them over the side on the grounds that they 
> didn't like them.
> The second ship, Pacnorse1, was a dream by comparison, and regardless 
> of comparison.  There was one super, Sverre Barmen, with an 
> assistant.  He only talked to the people actually doing the work and 
> had regular meetings with them.  Great.
> All my drillship stuff is in the loft, somewhere.
> Hugh.
>
>
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