Sunken Crashed heli

Here's some pics of a copter that was crashed on bottom where we were working in about 1000 fsw..

Water Spouts

Today is a lazy day at port. I was going through some pics from the last trip offshore and I found these I had forgotten about. It is the perfect time of year to sight these waterspouts. These were about 2 to 3 miles from us and danced around for awhile then disappeared.

How I got into the BIZ

Well my affection with water has been a lifetime obssesion but I actually started making a living from the offshore industry in 98' after I went to a school in NJ for commercial diving. We learned all types of things, like underwater welding, pipeling construction, NDT, water survival, dive medicine and general offshore practices. This school is really what got me offshore, then I realized after a year and a half of diving that I really didn't like that side of the industry. I had a friend I went to dive school with that hired on with a co. that did diving and ROV work and with his industrial electronics background and schooling made an easy switch to ROV's. I however wanted to do ROVing but couldn't seem to get hired. The demmand was small then. After keeping in touch with my friend for years I got the opportunity to hire on with a new division he was starting for a major corp.. I started as a deck foreman, as I was familiar with offshore ops, rigging and cranes ops.. While I was working that end of the spectrum I always would spend as much time with the ROV crew as possible, learning and working. Showing your willingness to learn and work is a big part of any offshore position. Will cont.. gtg to work.

Another sucessfull hitch

The vessel arrived in Port Fourchon yesterday @ 19:30, after 24 hrs of transit from EB 160 in the GOM. It's nice to see the dry land after 3 weeks out, but I don't think I will be able to make my family reunion on the 17th as I had hoped. I called the office yesterday and requested a flight to WV to go and spend time with grandma before the reunion and our HR guy asked if I would stay onboard because we are short handed. Oh well, I really want to go but may not make it.....

Bottom of tree where we had to cut 1.5" steel casing and mutiple pipes inside.

The 30" casing

Sub sea tree removal complete

Today about 05:00 we brought the casing off bottom from the sea floor. We finally completed this phase of the job! What an experience.

This is our Control console. We operate the ROV from here on the surface. The pilot sits on the right and the co-pilot sits on the left.

3000 m ROV

Here is one of our 3000 meter systems. This is an ROV (remotely operated vehichle) on the bottom. On the top is the TMS (tether management system). When the configuration reaches 100' from working depth the ROV seperates from the TMS and operates remotely, from the surface but tethered to the TMS which is connected by a 10,000' cable on a winch on surface. The gray part is the LARS (launch and recovery system).

Tiger Fish

Here's one of the boats I work on. In the middle is a small grey "A" frame where the ROV is launched from.

Another day at Sea

Today was the day when we finally got the well casing blown with charges sub sea, below the bottom. Finally. We had so many problems to get to this point. We set off the charge about 11:00 a.m. just before my shift ended at 12:00. That was cool. Even though the charge was set inside 4 steel pipes, the biggest one being 1.5"thick, 20' below the bottom, 550' sub sea, we felt the boat shake and saw an area of water explode on the surface. After the initial charge had been blown we had the helicopter that had been flying over head just before the blast, in circles for about 1 hour, make another few passes over the site just to make sure there were no injured large animals. The helicopter was charged with looking for sea turtles, whales, porpoise, ect.. The only thing that had been affected was a few Lane Snapper, similar to red snapper but smaller. There was a shark cruising around cleaning those up very quickly though. We actually saw this shark swimming around taking mouth fulls of fish even before we could move in and scoop some for ourselves. This shark would come up to a fish, stick its head out of the water and gulp down a mouthful every time. That was cool to see. Anyway,the job should only go a few more days and we'll be on to the next adventure.