The Ones That Got Away

My work did not follow a regular pattern of 12 hours on and 12 hours off like most crew on the oil rigs.

In the North Sea, due to the deep nature of the drilling, each of our surveys would take about 6 hours. So five surveys would take about 30 hours continuous work. That’s if one or two didn’t have to be repeated due to equipment failures.

Once on board the rig, with all our equipment checked and calibrated, it was a waiting game until told to start surveying or ‘wire line logging’. I have sometimes literally waited weeks before getting the clear sign of the drill pipe being totally retrieved to the surface for us to start work.

Besides eating in the superbly catered canteen with for example cornflakes and strawberries and sirloin steak and chips available 24 hours a day to cover day and nightshift workers what else was there to occupy your time?

Sleep was No1 for my crew, we knew when we started it could be a long time before we saw our beds again.

Cards, table tennis and the inevitable VHS videos of an adult nature.

In the early days fishing was allowed and exciting. The size of some of the cod being hauled up 100 feet to the rig floor was enormous. But what to do with all this tasty catch?

Most Norwegian crew worked two weeks on and three weeks off.

A few Kroner to the mainly Portuguese catering staff (three months on and one months off) secured the bountiful catch frozen in the canteen freezers until the helicopter ride home…

I was travelling back on one Sikorsky 61 helicopter and always sat in the rearmost seat beside the small emergency exit. I watched the other 18 seats fill up with men hauling their two sports holdalls of ‘clothes’ on board.

With the door shut the pilots wound up the turbines and the rotor carved its flashing cone in an attempt to lift us from the helideck.

Tottering about a bit, the chopper wasn’t going anywhere.

Bumping back down on the wheels one of the pilots came back into the cabin and I heard the word ‘Fisk’ amongst his loud Norwegian.

Many kilos of beautiful frozen cod were thrown off the helideck into the sea far below. Probably a strange sight to the off duty men fishing from the lower decks!

Now within maximum takeoff weight (MTOW) we elevated, dipped forward past the static cranes, turned and started the one hour 20 minutes journey back to Stavanger.

Soon after, fishing was banned due to this and also the problems 120 lbs breaking strain, tangled, lost fishing line and hooks were causing the maintenance divers deep down on the oil rig legs.