Lazy

Have you ever had a day you just didn’t feel like doing anything?

That’s what I’ve been feeling like today. Everything has finally caught up to me and I just didn’t feel like doing anything.

And I didn’t. 🙂

 

10 Maritime Blogs- Plus 1 For Good Luck!

Just so you know, I haven’t been purposely neglecting my blog and my faithful followers. 😉

I’ve been hard at work on the DSV Mystic Viking and my access to the internet has been extremely limited.

After my experience on the tuna boats, I promised myself I would never take another job offshore where I didn’t have internet access. Even the IMO recently came out with the ‘news’ that internet access offshore is “important for attracting and retaining crew”!

I meant to write this post a few days ago, to get into the spirit of ‘Maritime Awareness Week’. I’ve been working in the maritime industry almost my entire life; in commercial fishing, party boats, yachts, oil & gas, tankers, research. I still haven’t even really broken the surface of all the different aspects. I think most people are pretty unaware of how important the maritime industry is.

Yeah, I guess most people know about the oil and gas sector. That is where I’ve been most involved in the last few years. The transport sector is one part I’ve never really been involved in, other than tankers. There’s a good book about that part of the field. It’s called Ninety Percent of Everything. Check it out if you can, it’s really pretty interesting and I bet you’ll learn something!

In an effort to promote Maritime Awareness Week here on Captain Jills Journeys, I want to share a few of my favorite maritime related blogs. I want to try and show the huge variety of what goes on out here at sea where most people today never venture. I hope you’ll take a look and enjoy these blogs too.

Here’s one that’s just about everyday life on the water. The writer lives on a longboat along the canals of Great Britain. She writes about living aboard with her husband and their cute little dog.

Here’s one from Lisa, she sails around the world and has the most amazing adventures. All on OPB’s (other peoples boats). 🙂

Here’s one from Paul B. A guy who’s basically just starting out on the journey I started more than 30 years ago. Yes, I am also a hawsepiper. 😉

Another hawsepiper at Blue Ocean Mariner has a different perspective on the journey.

Here’s one from Augustin, another mariner. He’s sailed some really cool ships, including a couple of tall ships (which is how I got sucked into this too!). He writes mostly in Portuguese, so I can’t really understand all of it, just enough to get the general idea.

Here’s the Captains Log from the barque Picton Castle. Another tall ship (where I actually sailed with their captain back when I was a cadet and he was a mate). 🙂

Here’s an interesting blog if you like the scientific side of things. Southern Fried Science always has something new to see.

Here’s one from Ben at New England Waterman. He writes about working various vessels working around the harbors in the Northeast of the US among other things.

Here’s a link to Barista Uno’s Maritime Café Blog. He always comes up with some good stuff. Lots of art lately. 🙂

Here’s another all around interesting blog with lots of good art. Bowsprite is one of the first blogs I found when I started my own blog here.

Don’t think those are a complete roundup of good maritime blogs online. The few I posted are just a few I could come up with and link to from here. There are SO many more of them out there and (I think) they’re all pretty interesting. The world is covered in water and there are people all over the world who spend their lives working out there.

Not to forget, here’s one for the families we leave behind when we go to work. Thanks Callie!

Explosive!

How many days do you get to go to work looking forward to blowing something up?

I’m looking forward to blowing up something today!

Really.

Yeah, really. I’m still here on the Mystic Viking. We finally got all our certs so we could leave port, so we loaded up on fuel and got the hell out of town.

We did one quick test job and then moved over here (SP) to do another quick job using explosives. There are hundreds (maybe thousands) of old platforms out here in the Gulf that have become obsolete and now need to be removed.

Instead of leaving them alone to continue serving as artificial reefs, the powers that be have decided they must be completely removed, the legs must be cut below the ‘mud line’. Thankfully, that gives us a lot of work, cutting them all up and then putting them on barges to bring them in for scrapping somewhere.

We’ll eventually be working with the Versabar 10,000. They’ll do the heavy lifting after we do the cutting.

For this job we set up a ‘bomb’ in order to blow up the leg of an old oil platform off the coast of Louisiana. The top has already been removed, so we are using the ROV to run the ‘bomb’ down the leg and run the detonation cord up to the ship.

Once we get the thing set up, we have to wait til the turtle watchers can come out and ensure that no turtles are harmed in the explosion. (Yeah, seriously).

I want to see something blow up!

Still Busy

We’re still at the dock and still busy as hell. I’m hoping we might actually get the hell out of here some time tomorrow.

It’s been a rough week. I haven’t really stopped since I got here. Not much time to relax or do anything other than work. Trying to get this old boat through all the inspections, audits and etc so we can go offshore and actually start the job the boat was hired to do.

We’ve been having drills for the last couple of days. Trying to get everyone used to their emergency muster stations and duties. It’s a little more difficult than usual since we’re pretty much all new to this vessel.

Hopefully, we’ll pass our Coast Guard inspection tomorrow and then we’ll be free to depart for sea trials. 🙂

DSV Mystic Viking

DSV Mystic Viking

PS- I noticed someone had been searching online about who bought the Mystic Viking and that’s how they found my blog. If you’re still around, all I can say is that I’m not quite sure. Crowley or Deepcor. We’re working for both on here, so I’m not real sure who actually owns the vessel now. Deepcor did buy a few of the other old Caldive boats.

When Is Crew Change?

I haven’t even been here a week yet and I’m already ready for crew change!

We’ve all been running around like a bunch of chickens with our heads cut off. It’s been non-stop since I got here and I’m wondering how much longer it will continue like this?

It’s ALWAYS rough when a vessel has been laid up for a while. Or when it’s new and just coming out of the yard.

I didn’t know the whole story when I took this job. If I did I think I might have turned it down. Yeah, even knowing how slow things have been lately.

As it is, I’m glad to have the work, but jeez, I wish it was finished already!

Mystic Viking

I made it to my ‘new’ ship this morning. It looks like it’s going to be a long 28 days. If my ride hadn’t already left, I might have turned right around and gone back home. 🙁

And we haven’t even got started yet.

DSV Mystic Viking

DSV Mystic Viking