Re: so quiet in here...

In article <dpoe59$8qk_001@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, wrote:
> <grin> Thanks. If it's a steel casing, is it noisy? Can you
> hear the outside messing about with the bubble of air? Or
> is the machinery noise too loud to hear lapping waves and clunks
> of fish headbutts?
>
Pretty noisy. All the machine noise (from the mega-watt of
diesel engines as prime movers through the pumps and the drawworks and
the mixing machinery and the cuttings transport system and the cranes
and the containerised equipment being moved around) transits through to
the accommodation, to some degree, where it has to compete with the
noise from the HVAC (heating/ ventilation/ air conditioning) and the
water-tight doors slamming shut and the slap of waves hitting the
columns or even the underside of the main structure. But you tend to
get used to that. This particular rig has a adaptation of the telephone
system that will put out a series of Morse-code-like beeps over the
announcement system when a particular specialism is being called for
(toolpusher, one short beep; geologist 3 short, two long; mud engineer
2 short 3 long ... lots of others), and that beeping system is very
effective at penetrating through the general noise without really
adding to it. In comparison, most other rigs have a tannoy every couple
of minutes for "assistant driller call the pump room" or something
similar. I find the beep code to make for a quieter rig, even if
hearing your callsign go out can rip you untimely from the arms of
Morpheus in the middle of the day.
Waves in the North Sea don't generally "lap". We spent over a
day waiting on weather to re-run the BOP stack through the splash zone.
More than 3m mean wave height? Can't lower the BOP through the wave
zone because it'll suffer too much shear loading. We had about 18~20m
of "air gap" between sea level and the underside of the main deck, but
we had slaps on the underside on several occasions before Xmas.

> Is it cold insdie (remember you're talking to a female)?
> Do you have to go outside at any time to do some work?
>
We turned the HVAC up from 14deg C to 15 because most people
were feeling a bit of a chill. (Can't have natural ventilation - got to
be able to force, or shut down, ventilation in an area in the event of
fire. Not because you could use this for fire suppression, but because
you can control, to a degree, where the smoke and any toxic fumes goes.
And since your accommodation is also your temporary refuge in the event
of problems ...)
You can't, generally, avoid going outside completely, but you
can cut it down to the occasional short dash through the horizontal
sleet. A couple of years ago I was working on the Henry Goodrich, which
I gather is now working in Iceberg Alley down the east coast of Canada.
That rig was designed so that everything except loading/ unloading the
cranes can be done without leaving the enclosed spaces - derrick
completely enclosed ; all machine spaces, storage and workshops in a
big square-section box girder connecting the tops of the columns, and a
pipe deck with an opening at one side and an over-head crane which can
unload or re-load any of the pipe bays from the small area accessible
to the external cranes. I think the same area was used to load/ unload
the sack store. I can't remember where the hoses for bulks (mud, pot
water, fresh water, diesel, cement, bentonite, barytes) attached - I
think you'd have to go outside to service them too.

> DVD...my, things have changed.
>
3 helicopter companies, 5 types of chopper, 3 different types of
flight suit, presence or absence of thermal insulation garment, 3
different types of lifejacket, and 3 different "types" of re-breather
(emergency underwater air supply to give you a minute or so to get out
of the helicopter ; LAPP, AirPocket, or none) ... I make that just over
400 plausible combinations. Unless the medic is going to spend 15
minutes away from his toilet-cleaning duties to continually swap
videocassettes, you need a DVD player where you can program a series of
chapters in advance.
There was one guy there running a DVD piracy operation too. A
better advert for buying kosher discs, I've yet to see. Terrible
quality, I'd be ashamed to put my name to something that bad!

--
Aidan Karley FGS
Aberdeen, Scotland,
Location: 57°10'11" N, 02°08'43" W (sub-tropical Aberdeen), 0.021233

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