Saturday 14 January 2012

No Mores....

Its the last weekend of this trip, so in offshore parlance its generally referred to as "No Mores" ie no more Fridays left, no more Saturdays left and so on and so forth until you get off, which in my case happens to be next Thursday 19th January.....reminder to Myself,  "Must tell the Wife I am on my way Home".
The words "get off", sound pretty damn innocuous to most people, unless of course you are an acne laden Teenager, who thinks your lucks in, after you've made the target of your affection drink 10 Vodka Red Bulls, whils't clubbing to the deafening sound of Chase and Status going through that vacuum held between your ears by your skull.

Dawn over Biscay

However, to us normal sane folks offshore, instead of a bus ride, train ride or car journey to and from work, we utillise a unique form of transport called a Helicopter, to "get off".
Now to actually get to the stage where you are thought of by your Company, worthy, deserving and damn well grown up enough to be able to use one of these wretched things, you have to do a Helicopter Underwater Escape Training course somewhere nice and cold like Aberdeen or St Johns in Newfoundland, preferably between the months of November and March.

Entrance to Las Palmas Port

 The HUET is a fairly basic drowning type of exercise, where you are strapped on a plastic chair (no luxuries for the condemned), in a metal tube with a window beside you half the size of a postage stamp, through which you are jokingly meant to extricate Yourselves, while the aforementioned Tube is chucked into the deep end of a water filled Tank, after first cracking through the layer of ice on its surface.
To complicate things further, and increase the pucker value of the exercise, they sometimes give you a bag to laughably blow into, as they turn you upside down, underwater, and strapped down in a seat inside this metal Tube. This Bag, allegedly give's you more time to get yourself out of your teeny window, as you (allegedly)can suck frantically on the diminishing atoms of Oxygen that you are frantically breathing in and out of this bag.
Now believe, and trust me on this, the last damn thing you want to do when you go underwater is to breath out, I am sorry, but there are a few rules in life which must be obeyed, and keeping your mouth shut under water, and not breathing out is pretty high up on my list of these.
They say by using this Rebreather apparatus bag, it can give you 5 minutes more time, or hope underwater....They are a fecking bunch of lying twats; as I emptied my bag in 10 seconds flat !

Early morning Ferry leaving Las Palmas

Anyway...to the Photos. The first is of a pretty dramatically coloured dawn over an absolutely flat Bay of Biscay, on our transit to Las Palmas, I didn't do anything to this picture except straighten it. The colours were amazing.
The 2nd two photos were taken in the early morning light, on the day of our entry into Las Palmas Port. There was a delicate pink hue to the sky which i tried to capture, not particularly successfully unfortunately, as all you get in the pictures is just a hint of the pinkness in the clouds. Again I had to raise the ISO a few notches as it really was an early dawn.

9 comments:

  1. Great shots and I especially liked the sunrise. Good thing I didn't have to do any of those "drowning" exercises, I don't think I'd have done too well. Actually I'd have probably done very well on the drowning part. . .

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    1. Scott, Thank you. I think next time will be my last time for the Drowning attempt, the odds are stacking up !!

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  2. Very nice shots. I wouldn't fare too well with the drowning exercise either.

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  3. Beautiful shots, and I certainly don't want to try that escape exercise.

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    1. Cheers Al, and remember never blow out under water !

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  4. I would love to try that exercise, hehe
    Very nice photos!

    Thanks for your visit and following my blog.

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  5. Clueless, Thank you. There are 3 years before the next Drowning attempt....retirement beckons !

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  6. Spiderama, I love the shots on your site, it gives me something to aim for. Oh...and thanks for volounteering to take my place next time !

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  7. Eugh! The HUET my biggest 4 yearly trauma. I definately found it easier before the rebreather.

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