Phew

Arrived back home, after about 8 hours of flying from The Kingdom.

Its always a great feeling to get back home, but when you are coming back from the puss pit of the World, its even better....

Immigration was as tedious as ever, with the Cretins in Dammam Airport doing everything possible to make you want to take them down a darkened alley, and basically beat the living crap out of them, if you ever had the chance in your fantasies. The sheer arrogance of these people is unbelievable,

if it wasn't for the huge numbers of Foreign hired help, this Country would still be one step below the Dark ages. There is something about that Country, their attitude to non Arabs, the way they treat their Women, the complete lack of distribution of wealth, that just gets my baser instincts rising to the surface.....but enough of that, I'm back Home for goodness sake, and Life is good.

The Wife looks great, and is even happy to see my Ugly Mug, a fact that always astounds and humbles me, especially after 30 hours of travelling on Boats, Buses, Trains, Planes and Automobiles. The Dogs went mad, they also even recognized me for a change, and it was a great welcome home sunset as well.......Life is good.

Later....

17 hours to go

After another succesful 5 weeks on the Ocean wave, its time to head home to my beautiful Wife in Scotland, and normality.
There are of course a few hoops to jump through to get Home of course, and i would normally say that thats half the fun of travelling, but when you have the grave misfortune of having to work in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia aka KSA, The Kingdom etc, it becomes more a feat of patient endurance, as you deal with Petty Officialdom, Moronic Immigration Officers who wear their trousers like Simon Cowell, and are about as well behaved as a 5 year old on E, and absolutely unbelievable driving..... The joys...... but not for too much longer, as we have nearly finished our operations in this part of the world, and other countries beckon.
Anyway, i leave you with some photo's of previous homeward journeys from the biggest sandpit in the world.
Next blog from the UK.....Inshallah !

The Locals in the sand

Lorries in the sand

Sun going down in the sand

Interesting eh ?

Later....

Catch a Fishie

Today, after 2 years of trying i'm proud to say we have caught our 1st fishing boat.
This has taken us a lot longer that we first thought, as they have been pretty sneaky, plus they have been very well advised by our Company over the last 2 years, about our operation, where we are working in their patch of sea, and even been given leaflets in every language under the sun, with pictures (for those who can't read) of what our boat looks like, even with a big red X through it, as an even bigger clue. So our chances of catching one were pretty slim as they have been given such a head start.
So we had to resort to such underhand tactics of tempting them closer to us, like that well known tactic of attracting them to us by firing flares as soon as we saw them, or even by using one of our 3 Chase vessels to round them up and push them towards us.
But so far, until today we had no success.
However, using our well used, but up to now, unsucessful method of attraction...The Flare, we suckered one of the Buggers to come right behind us, and to our joy he stopped and threw his anchor out, which as luck would have it, immediately caught on one of streamers being towed underwater by us.
It is hard to describe the look on their faces, or come to think of it, the aghast look on our faces as we saw this story unfold in front of us. I was so excited i nearly peed my pants !
All ended well though, as after playing around a little with them, we got bored and let them go, and watched them sail into the setting sun.
2 Days before we Crew change and i get off.....and boy oh boy it can't come fast enough !

later.....

Tanker Chicken

So the Nanny government of the UK feels it has a problem with mobile phone use by drivers of cars on UK roads.....huh, they should come out here and see what idiocy we sometimes have to contend with.
Just to briefly paint the picture (and hopefully not bore the pants off you), Seismic vessels tow streamers, which can be up to 10km long, and are run at a depth of between 7 and 9m in normal operation. Now these are pretty pricey bits of kit by anyones standards, each streamer and associated bits and pieces costing between 1 and 1.5 million US dollars. Most seismic boats tow between 6 and 12 of these noodles, so to put it simply, we would rather not damage, or lose them if at all possible, thankyou very much.
Where our vessel is currently operating there is a reasonable amount of Oil Tanker traffic, the majority of which are controlled very precisely by the relevant Port authorities, and crewed by professional Seaman. However in the last week, we have had so far one 335m Tanker circle away from us having decided for reasons known only to his Bridge crew, to change his mind about following the (clear) instructions we had given him and he had acknowledged, alter course, and use us as a Target.
A second smaller (only 150m this time !) Tanker, refused to acknowledge all instructions and warnings given out on Radio channel 16 (a marine offence in itself), and then proceeded to try and cut our streamers....luckily he didn't get them as we had dived them to 30m depth, although on his return journey a few days later he unbelievably made another attempt !
Now to be honest i'm pretty pissed by this, what right do these cretins have to be driving these fully loaded Leviathons around the world ? Who the hell gave them the Maritime qualification to allow them to even set foot on a boat ? We are obviously talking about people who are completely intellectually challenged even tying their shoe laces by the looks of things.
Look at the pictures below....thats what a gentle tap does to a small empty (luckily) Tanker when its hit by another vessel ( I would hate to see the other Guy !).....even more unbelievably the vessel that hit this one had (allegedly) a Pilot onboard, who by the looks of things was presumably on his mobile phone at the time....I just give up !!



Later........If I survive the next few days...

The R word

Well its all been bubbling under these last few weeks, but it is now certain that cuts are going to have to be made in the Workforce of the Company i work for.... not good, and unfortunately not that uncommon in these days we now find ourselves in.
This story is one which will be developed over the next few weeks and months as and when things of note happen....its certainly not going to be written about looking for sympathy (If i become one of the many), but, as I said before embarking on this blog, merely as a means of a bit of soul cleansing, and yes, a bit of yelling when i feel like it.
The industry I work in is Seismic Exploration, a sector which i have been involved in for some 20 years or so....We are the Guys (and Gals) who are generally sent out to remote areas of the world, to take records of the geology of the rocks underneath us, so that people who are far clever than ourselves, and who know how to make a computer work, can decide whether its worth putting an Oil Rig somewhere over where we have been, and punch a hole into the earth to find Hydrocarbons, or in most cases....different types of rock !
In the 20 years I have been in this Industry there have been 3 downs......Its a very cyclical process this relationship between Exploration and Production in the Oil industry, with each complete cycle stretching over some 6 to 8 years. However, I have never personally seen such a down part of a cycle as what i am seeing and we are experiencing now.
The Oil companies are sitting on their hands, and there is absolutely, and i mean absolutely, no investment happening in Exploration. The Seismic market in Marine has contracted more than 60% this year, My friends on the Rigs are seeing similiar statistics....mark my words, you heard it here 1st etc etc(yawn), this IS going to be the "Big One" and it will take more than a couple of years of Gordon to come out at the end of it......There is going to be devastation in the Oil services sector, so sell your shares in those companies, and start (secretly) buying petrol/diesel, as the price of oil is going to go through the roof beginning early next year.
Welcome to Mel and the Mad Max period....

Blimey, i don't know about soul cleansing, i think i'll just walk out on to the helideck and launch myself off after reading this back to myself !

Later....