Goodbye for Now

For a period of a few months I will be shutting this Blog down, or rather not contributing to it anymore, as I have several projects ongoing which require my full attention, one of which is beginning to move my growing Photographic portfolio to another hosting company, and once that has been done (along with with the completion of some other Projects !) I will begin blogging once more, although no longer with Blogger itself.
Thanks for everyone who has taken a peek these last few months, and many thanks for your kind comments. All the very best to you all in your continuing adventures, and I hope to see you all again towards the end of Summer.

I say Adieu for now, with a photo taken from my "Fragments of Colour" collection hosted by Photobox

Later...

Farewell Peru

Well it was finally time to take my leave of Peru, and what better way than the Airline that is the Pride of Holland - KLM.
If you are vertically challenged, or under 12 years of age, then this is the Airline for you, as they have tailored the seat size and knee room specifically for Persons under 4' tall and sylph like i.e. its non existent. It was to put it mildly, a pretty miserable flight. You first get a hint of what is to come, when you go onto their website a few days before your travel so as to "manage your flight". Here you will find an amazing amount of options for seating, all of which come at an extra cost, for example  a seat in a row of 2, that will be an extra 96 Euros Sir, thank you so very much, or maybe a seat at the emergency exit with some legroom, as opposed to no legroom ? certainly Sir, please stump up 125 Euros. If you don't fancy getting ripped off, then its just the standard seat for you, and you better show some gratitude for that as well.

Air France, who allegedly have KLM as a Partner, used exactly the same Aircraft ( a 777-300ER for those who are even slightly interested), on the way to Lima, which had a seating plan in Cattle class which reads 2+4+2, where the Budget Airline partner KLM has a seating plan 3+4+3, and has more rows....Hmmm, even with my rudimentary understanding of Maths that did not herald glad tidings for the journey to come !

Once onboard, and shoe horned into your Seat beside....now how can we delicately put this....a Fat, Sweaty, Smelly example of the Human Race, who promptly put the seat back to recline before we had even taken off, KLM then assaults you with their Food. I can honestly say, I have absolutely no idea what I was served with, in fact, I would have preferred sucking the little hand towelette that came with the meal, and in retrospect, maybe I should have, as a) it had more taste (lemon!), and b) certainly more nutritional and calorific content, than the crap that was hidden under the foil of the plastic tray, actually, come to think of it (and I really would rather not), whatever that offering was, was stuck more to the underside of the foil when I peeled that back, than in the tray itself....oh yummy !
Amsterdam Schipol Airport could not have arrived soon enough, even the obese Object beside me must have thought so, as immediately upon landing and the Aircraft turning off the Runway, he wanted to crush me, as he tried to get out of his seat and open the overhead locker as the Plane continued to head towards the Air Bridge. It took 2 cabin staff to wedge him back into his seat while trying to explain to him in words of no more than 2 syllables that the Plane still had 2 miles of taxi way to traverse before coming to a stop....Knob !

Taxi Coming

So the moral of the story, is don't travel by KLM unless there is no other option, they really are the Pits. I would probably prefer to stick pins in my eyes before experiencing the quality of their service again !

As you can see from the photos, Crew change day was welcomed with a wonderful sunrise, smooth seas and baking hot sun, as we headed into La Cruz on our small Crew Change Boat. Once at La Cruz, it was a 2 hr bus journey to the airport at Talara, heading down the Coastal plain (see the last picture), before flying to Lima, and then back to Europe. Unfortunately as the day wore on, more and more haze became visible, so many of the Photos taken from the bus journey will need some post processing to make them reasonable.

Speaking of Post Processing, I use Capture NX2 for any touch ups I may do to my images, although I am now seriously tempted by this new version of Lightroom (4), as Capture NX2 is getting a bit long in the tooth. I am still struggling with Adobe products though, as I do not find them particularly user friendly, so I would be interested in anyone's opinion of LR4 before I waste any time and effort looking seriously at the 30 day trial on offer that Adobe currently do.
Have a good Easter for those of you who celebrate it, and for those of you who don't (Myself included), then have a great Holiday.

Almost Crew Change.

Well we are almost there, because on Wednesday early morning I shall be heading into La Cruz on our Crew Change Boat, and from there, a Mini Bus will take us to Piura airport, and away back to Arbroath, via Lima and Amsterdam.
As always towards the end of trip, time just flies by, and you find all the work you have been putting off to the last minute, now comes back to bite you in the ass as you start running out of hours. This is also complicated by the fact that something always goes wrong in the last few days, so your attention is diverted elsewhere sorting that out, and dealing with various inane emails emanating from the Office.
The Big (Its certainly BIG in my case, as i am getting off !) issue we are dealing with right now, is that allegedly the Fishermen in the area are currently blocking roads and Ports, apparently in protest at some type of Government census that is due to take place in the coming days, over which period of time their Vessels have to remain in Port, and not out on the Prospect area interfering with our operation........ Wonderful !
Our poor Agent is running up and down the coast right now, trying to find a jetty sticking out of somewhere which will allow us to get off the Crew boat, and where in addition the road is not blocked for our onward travel. His job needless to say is just made a teensy bit harder, as he keeps running into the various road blocks as he tries to travel round. We are obviously not putting him under any pressure to find a solution....he just better had by Wednesday !

For the last week we have been sailing close to shore, well 5 miles from it, but that's close enough for thrills in a Boat like this, trying to avoid the various obstructions in the area such Oil platforms (Working or abandoned), small Tankers and various mooring buoys that are scattered around  in no apparent order, or pattern. So that's at least enabled me to get some pictures of the Coastline itself, and the Cloud formations we have been seeing. So for now I shall leave you, and say good bye to Peru with two contrasting Cloud pictures, and you will next hear from Me in April, by which time I had better be back in the UK.........or the Agent will be feeding the Fishes (Just kidding......Not).

Later.....

Flying Dolphins

Its been a little busy this week, as last Wednesday we did a partial Crew Change, where approximately half the crew got off on our Crew Boat, while the remaining crew looked daggers at them as they headed for Shore and onward freedom.
So for me, there were a few new faces, and names for me to promptly forget 10 seconds after being told.....a growing sign of "old timers" disease inexorably advancing through what passes as grey matter between my ears these days.

Dolphins

What was unexpected though was the send off they had from a pack of Dolphins, who seemed to take the opportunity to play around us, as the two Boats were together doing the actual passenger transfer. Unfortunately I had only bought my 35mm lens with me for this brief trip out here, so the two Photos you see, have been zoomed up 50% or so from the Original.

Flying Dolphin

I say "unexpected" in the above sentence, as its pretty well known on the Vessels that I work on, that I am always the last Person on board to actually see anything swimming. Its a running joke on board, that whenever I am called to the Bridge to see something interesting, it's invariably disappeared by the time I arrive, breathless and red faced on the Bridge, having climbed about 5 flights of stairs. Only to be then faced with the Smiling (leering ?) face, and helpful comment from the Officer on Watch, that "I have just missed the Shark, Whale, Seal, Turtle, and they were really close to the Boat as well",
However, on Wednesday I beat the odds, and it turned out a lucky, and privileged day for me, and hopefully the luck will continue for the remainder of the trip.

Peruvian Sunrise

I thought I would add a quick Sunrise photograph to the post as well, as its not often out here, that I have the opportunity to have some sight of land as a back drop for my Maritime Sunrises and Sunsets. I hope Scott at  Just Used Pixels will approve, as he does take some absolute stonkers of these over on his Blog.

Just as a footnote, thank you to those of you that have visited the Triple P Imaging page and emailed me, and yes I know the most recent photos are not included for sale yet; but the bandwidth and various firewalls that are in place while I am Offshore, prevent me from downloading the images to the portfolio. They should all be there within the next 2 weeks, when I finally get off this Floating Palace.

Barnacles ahoy

Well its been another, lets see how best to phrase this...."interesting" week in Seismic, or as the French would say eloquently, "merde". The main issue being not the Fishing Boats, but the fact that we have been, what is fondly refered to, as barnacled.
Balanus balanoides, or Barnacle to you and me, is a very successful little Beastie, often found in surf zones on Rocks and sea cliffs, and on the bottom of Boats, where it attaches with something akin to superglue, and then starts filter feeding, growing and reproducing madly (Not a bad life, come to think of it). The upshot of this, is that it creates a lot of drag and weight on whatever its attached to, which if its a rock is neither here nor there, but if its on our damn streamers....well that's a different story all together.

Insane Noggie

 If you let the little Buggers keep growing, then you will find that the tension on the streamer increases pretty dramatically, the upshot of which, is that you could find that you start the day towing 10 streamers and finish with, lets say 3 dangling behind you, and at 1.5 million dollars a streamer, that's an awful lot of money to have dropping off the end of your Boat, and heading deep six.
Seismic companies throughout the years have invested in many ideas on how to tackle these little rogues and prevent them from pulling off our streamers. Some of the ideas they have come up with, are more amusing than effective ie covering our streamer in a stocking type of material (kinky, and completely ineffective), slapping an anti barnacle gel on the streamer (fairly kinky, but it proved to be a barnacle attractant), and painting the streamers red !! I mean which bright spark came up with that last idea ? Barnacles have colour vision, and are warned off by the all things red ? That's got to be clutching at a fairly large straw to think that that's going to work.

Trainee !

 The previous company I worked with, came up with a power washing contraption which you put in a small boat, the idea being that you would lift the streamer with its offending barnacles to the surface, drape the streamer into a box with these power washing heads on the Boat, and then drive along the streamer happily washing away the barnacles to your hearts content. Great idea in theory, and absolutely bloody useless in practise. Firstly, even with headphones on you would be practically deafened by the sound of the power washer on its full wash cycle, and secondly bits of barnacle would be blasted everywhere, to such a point that for 2 or 3 days following a sortie, and with every shower you took you would look down at your feet and still see barnacle parts floating around the shower tray, and wonder to Yourself where the hell they had come from !

Fishing Boat at Mancora

 Anyway, to cut a long and dreary story short, we had to bring in all our streamer and basically scrape them clean by hand....not a quick job by any means, and after a few days an extremely smelly job as they all began to rot in the heat, no matter how often you washed down the decks and the Reels upon which our streamers are retrieved and deployed.
Right.... on to the Photos, and i should say I have an apology to make for the first 2. These were taken on a previous boat, with a Previous Company, and are included purely as a reference as to what these damn creatures look like in reality. The quality is not great, as naturally i was in a hurry to take the photo and then vamoose as fast as possible ! I also have to apologise for the quality of the Models that were used, but i don't have the big bucks of Mario Testino, and therefore Beggars can't be choosers. I can however assure you that the Model in the first picture really isn't insane, he's just Norwegian. I would however question the sanity of the Model in the 2nd picture. The T on his hard hat is to signify he is actually a Trainee, and not a Tit as you were probably all thinking.
The 3rd more normal photo is of one of the Fishing boats that are currently sharing the sea with us these days.

Till the next time....