Kazakhstan

[tower]

Hi All,

First week in a new job on a Man made Island in the Northern Caspian Sea off the City of Atyrau, Kazakhstan. We have a very slow internet connection and I can not block the popups on this site without a supervisor password on the network, so please go to

http://www.shaniatwaincentre.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1003

For the latest and a few Photo's. Obviously with a slow Satellite Internet connection I can not post the bulk of my Photo's until I return to Timmins sometime in March.

Please post any replies on that thread as I will not return here until I get home again.

[Troll]

Thanks for the link Tom.

[jgw2001]

Hi Tom.


Remember to say hi your friend borat when your over there.

Thanks

John Watson.


Hi All,

First week in a new job on a Man made Island in the Northern Caspian Sea off the City of Atyrau, Kazakhstan. We have a very slow internet connection and I can not block the popups on this site without a supervisor password on the network, so please go to

http://www.shaniatwaincentre.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1003

For the latest and a few Photo's. Obviously with a slow Satellite Internet connection I can not post the bulk of my Photo's until I return to Timmins sometime in March.

Please post any replies on that thread as I will not return here until I get home again.

[Afonso]

Very nice pictures Tom ..Thanks for the link

[melli]

It's great to hear from you Tom...nice pics :great: !

[tower]

Hi Gang thanks for the good wishes, will try and post more photo's soon. Difficult for me to visit this site as no pop up ad blocker and slow connection this end.

Due to a Well test problem we were all sent to muster yesterday after a Toxic Gas detection and spent a half hour in Breathing Gear while the problem was checked out. I was called into the Radio Room during the alert as the bells would not reset and trying to work in a BA suit and lifejacket was not exactly the highlight of my life.

When the all clear was given I had just 15 min Air left in my tank... eeek!

[canoilers]

It's always nice to hear from you Tom. I'm glad to hear you're safe and sound.

[tower]

Yes I am hanging on in there between the Hot Water failures and the false Alarms and PA failures.... One heck of a first trip, but this job will be easy once I get my brain round the multilple faults. There has been a history of curing the symptons but NEVER fixing the underlying problem. I will change that given time.

[Troll]

Thanks for the update Tom.

[canoilers]

Time is all it takes sometimes. :D I'm sure it'll be ship shape in no time, no pun intended.

[tower]

No flights to shore now for 5 days so a lot of those due home for shore leave are getting a little fed up. Especially as the weather here offshore at times has been very good.

I am very tired, tried to get an early night last night only to be rudely woken at 10pm by a Toxic Gas Muster drill. Having done this for real just a few days before when we had a faulty HO2 gas detector set off by a nearby power plant, I knew the drill but half awake (or was it half asleep) it was twice the effort.

So we put on our lifejackets and BA sets, this time we did not mask up, to save a lot of work cleaning the masks and re charging the bottles and went to the Arktos rescue craft were they started the motors after the muster count was confirmed correct.

As I have been having a lot of problems with the hot water system I thought I would swing past on my way back to bed at 11pm to find the floor swimming in 32 litres of hot water… The jubilee clips holding on a hose had sprung and the hose to the primary hot water boiler pump came off flooding the room and cutting off the hot water supply with a low water level and high boiler temperature alarm.

So reconnected the hose and cleaned up the worst of the mess and got to bed again just after midnight only to be phoned by the duty Radio Operator at 0530 hrs with a serious PA fault… I tell you this is one trip I will be very glad to not repeat.

The good news is that slowly I am learning the systems and the work around for these problems. Curing the symptoms for now rather than fixing the faults, but that will come with time. The hot water system will be like new before I leave as the parts I need are being delivered as a priority…

0430 am and yet one more early start as the Fire alarm goes off. False alarm but as the Marine Technician it is my job to find out the reason. A smoke head has gone above the clean boiler suit area. Obviously it objects to the colour of our Boiler Suits (Bright Red) sigh. Well I have a Fire and Gas Engineer from a company called Tyco out on the Rig today who is going to do the annual Fire and Gas detector tests, so that will be my job for the next week or so, helping him in any way I can and all these faulty detectors are going to be swapped out as we find them.

As I mentioned at the start, Yesterday at 0530 am my early morning call was a Public Address (PA) fault that sent a 1 KHz alarm tone around the site for no good reason. When I got to the Radio Room I found the duty RO somewhat tied up with one finger on the PA mute button and the other hand waving at me to do something about it. What a fun trip this is.

Good news however is my Tyco Fire and Gas engineer and a new pump for the Hot Water system did indeed arrive today as we had 4 flights in total so things are beginning to move at last. I am running out of toothpaste and shaving Gel so hope the catering staff get out today as one of them is hand carrying these little items to us from the shore as we have no shop on the Island due to Kazakhstan Custom and duty regulations which make it a red tape nightmare for the Camp Boss were he to sell these items offshore in the Caspian Sea. Food is good here though and getting quite a taste for Russian cooking which is not half bad and similar in many ways to traditional Scottish fare. So my morning looks something like this, get the Work permit signed and then with the Tyco engineer go under the drill floor to the roof of the cellar deck and test two IR flame detectors one of which is showing faulty, then move about the drill area testing every manual call point, smoke, toxic or combustible gas or flame detector we can find before they start flowing the well and flaring off and the whole Rig end of this island becomes a no go area for us due to the hazards of HO2 gas produced when burning H2S. Boy am I looking forward to my shore leave or what.

[Troll]

Sound like an interesting adventure Tom.