all aboard!

The day at Bull Arm was fun! This is where they built Hibernia. A whole city appeared out of nowhere... in the middle of nowhere :P We got orientation and ID cards... our crew is officially allowed to work there :)
It's a bit on the slow side now... but they use the place to test sub sea equipment before actually putting it sub sea... Which some of us will do on down time, or during our vacation for extra $$$.

There was a news conference today, to give update about the crash... not much was said... and the choppers are still grounded.. that means most ships are doing passenger runs.

Since the Osprey is not coming back in harbour any time soon, it was decided that half of our crew would meet it in Argentia (google map it to see where it is and no, sadly, it's not Argentina... :P). What we'll cause of course I'm going... out-of-townies are always first on the ship :) be doing is still up in the air (HAha! how very surprising :P)... but, rumors are:

-Rig towing, because the ice is surrounding a couple of rigs (Cool pix alert!! might get to see icebergs from very close!)

-Passenger runs... and it was said that we might have to go on the rig Sunday, for a couple of hours, while they're transferring people... not sure why we would have to get off the boat but the cool part is that we'd do a frog transfer!! That's going from the boat to the rig in a suspended basket controlled by a crane!!! I'm all excited yay! cool free ride!!! like at Disney!!! woohoo!!!, the guys are not so amused.. wusses...

-no matter what, except in case of extreme weather or rig tow, we'll be catching up on GAMMA (the computerised/automatised list of maintenance things to do on the rovs) because, for obvious reasons, the last crew didn't touch it for the past 3 weeks...

I'll take notes and pictures... but I have no idea when we'll be coming back in sight of an internet connection, hopefully it wont be too long... it's a big ol' logistic mess down here, with no choppers flying, icebergs floating around and everybody trying to meet deadlines anyway...

The next few days should be interesting... if only for the unknown they are bringing :P

this hitch will be another strange one

The plane landed at 2am last night.. I was in the shop at 8am today... I'm tired!!!

The helicopters are not flying, so all boats are doing passengers runs to the rigs and back... which means that the Osprey is somewhere out there and were here :P

Tomorrow were going to Bull Arm to check the facilities there (they test new equipments and practice installing them together there.. before doing it undersea).

We might get on the Osprey Friday... confirmation will come... eventually :P It shouldn't be the whole crew again, some will stay to work at Bull Arm, while we, outsiders, will sail back and forth, towing rigs if the ice comes too near or doing standby.

I also have to do the sea day portion of the water survival, that was canceled last time. The only date that fit is on the 24th... so I will not be off on Wednesday April 22nd... I'll arrive home 2 days later, on Friday night.. after spending the afternoon floating around in iceberg water... woo... hoo??

The guys that did the helicopter recovery told us a bit about it... not a joyous task... I wont tell details here, it wouldn't be appropriate. They were great though...

We were in a meeting almost all day... getting up to date on everything... now I'm back to the hotel and I'm glad the Habs aren't playing tonight cause I'm dead tired!!!

boooo!! nasty east coast weather!!!

On my way to St.John's again.... the flight from Toronto is delayed... if I'm lucky I'll be at the hotel around 2am.. don't know why I bother, might as well go straight to the office for crew change... 4 hours of sleep do not qualify as sleep :S

green shirts, green beer, green hats...

My pics are up from the Parade today... beautiful day it was... a bit cold but sunny and nice...

The crowd gets bigger every year... will they ever give up and close the main streets for longer than just the parade?! Come on! Close Ste-Catherine between Mackay and Peel!!! no cars can go through anyway with the amount of drunken revelers walking all over the place...

plus, we'd get more police officers on segways... that'll keep everybody in a laughing mode and no one will start breakin windows :P

it brings a smile to my face everytime!

I love this song... and this version is just too nice!!!! (thanx Mui for the link)

Wear green today!!!

I was in Glasgow last year so nothing went on... I'll be celebrating double this year!!! XD

I'm alive, thanx for asking

Friday night and Saturday morning a lot of newscasts mentioned that there was a woman amongst the victims of the helicopter crash in St.John's... but they didn't release her name!!!

Since the offshore ratio is about 5 women for 1000 men, I received messages all day yesterday and today from friends and co-workers in the USA, asking me if I was alive...

yes I am, I was at home when it happened.

It is a very strange feeling to think that people thought I could be dead...

very strange...

:S

update

I got more news this morning from the people in St.John's. No one from Oceaneering was on board the helicopter that ditched yesterday, but the offshore industry is a closed knit one and everybody knows each other... so St.John's is not a good place to be just now :(

They found the life rafts yesterday... empty... by now, the chances of finding survivors are... well... zero. The immersion suit mandatory to wear when you fly above freezing water gives you about 24h (instead of 6 minutes!) before hypothermia sets in... it's been 30h...

They are sending out the Osprey (the ship I was on!) to look for the helicopter today (it sunk not long after ditching)... so the other crew will fly the rovs around until they find it. It will then be salvaged so they can study it and find what went wrong...

I wish I was part of the search and recovery crew... but at the same time I don't... Doing salvage work is my ultimate goal in the rov world, but I was thinking old sunken ships/planes/submarines with no one on board... not heli wreck with 16 people inside you hope to find and bring back so their families can have closure...
I don't know how the guys are going to deal with this I'm suspecting massive amount of drinking will be involved once they're back in port, my thoughts are with them.

crash

Just heard that an helicopter has crashed in St.John's this morning... well not IN St.John's, in the Atlantic, 90km out.

They were going from St.John's to the Searose FPSO and the Hibernia platform... that's where I spent the last month.. by the FPSO. You can see pictures of it in my Newfoundland album.

Latest news were one man found alive, one dead and two life rafts recovered... empty...

16 persons are still missing :S
I don't know if any of them were Oceaneering guys...

gulp...

Strangely, I'm not so keen on going to work on platforms anymore... can I go back to the Osprey please?

It does put some perspective on all the safety training I've been doing...

International Women's Day

If you had any doubts that women's situation has evolved in the past 50 years, here's a sample of what was law in Quebec around 1930 :

l'homme peut divorcer si sa femme le trompe. Par contre, la femme peut divorcer seulement si son mari entretient sa maîtresse sous le toit conjugal, car "la blessure faite au coeur de l'épouse n'est généralement pas aussi vive que celle dont souffre le mari trompé par sa femme".
~~~
A man can divorce his wife if she cheats on him. However, a woman can ask for a divorce only if her husband's mistress is living at home with them, because "the pain caused to the heart of the wife is usually not as strong than the pain suffered by the husband that has been cheated on".

This piece-of-crap-law was abolished in 1954!

Another jewel, from 1917, written by Henri Bourassa, opposing women's right to vote:

«La fonction de la femme est la maternité, sa place est au foyer et l'inégalité politique est fondée sur la biologie. (...) la femme sera inévitablement souillée si elle descend dans l'arène politique, les familles seront divisées (...).»
~~~
A woman's function is maternity, her place is at home and political inequality is based on biology [...] women will be inevitably defiled if they enter the political arena, families will be divided[...]

Doesn't that remind you of something else? ... something very 2009... Something like, Women shouldn't be educated, or allowed outside without a man present...


50 more years to go?

wasted weekend... and not even the good kind of wasted

I have, once again, a stiff neck :S
Woke up with it Friday morning...
Could someone somewhere find a way to fix me?
I already saw doctors, chiro, osteo, physio...
nothing works for more than a couple of months! >:(

And I had plans this weekend!! really cool plans!!! seriously... really REALLY cool plans!!! :(
and instead I'm spending both Friday and Saturday nights in yoga pants and t-shirt, on the couch or my bed.. cause my neck finds it too hard to support my head!!!

this is so f-r-u-s-t-r-a-t-i-n-g!!!! aaaaarg

shopping spree II

I kept on spending today... I will stop tomorrow I swear!! :P

I found jeans that are TOO LONG!!!

I repeat: I found jeans that are TOO LONG!!! did you hear me? TOO LONG!!!

Even when wearing my highest heels I'll have to shorten the hem... I am hysterical with joy!

Tall women of the world use the website to order online and of Montreal, go to Grandheur boutique, 4131 St-Denis, and stop whining about the injustice and inconvenience of being a foot ok 6 to 10 inches taller than everyone else!

:)

too long!!! woohoo!!!

shopping spree

I went to buy a pair of winter boots, because mine are dead-dead-dead...

I spent my entire boot budget on clothes instead...

I will keep my dead boots until next year...

In my defense, I didn't find any boots that were nice and the clothes were on super-sale and look AWESOME! and I had nothing left to wear that I liked anymore and I haven't bought anything in a month.. the whole time I was on the boat :P hehe

so it's not exactly like I was being completely unreasonable... :P

brrrr

I tried! I really did!!! There was so many different activities I wanted to look up...

but -14c is just too cold to spend the night outside and enjoy Montreal's annual Nuit Blanche... better luck next year... maybe I should bring my orange getup home next year and wear it for the night.. ugly as hell but warm :S

:(