It was back to Brazil again, as it is likely to be for the foreseeable future, after my leave.
Crew changes in Brazil, so far, have been by one of three methods. Walking on or off while the ship is in port. Water taxi, if the ship is in Guanabara bay, or by ‘paraffin budgie’ as British off-shore workers refer to the helicopters. For this trip again, I joined by helicopter, although departing from a different heliport.
As I said, this crew change was from a different heliport, Cabo Frio, instead of Jacarapagua that I had traveled from before. Cabo Frio is almost three hour drive from Rio de Janeiro as opposed to the 30 minutes to Jacarapagua, so travel to and from this heliport tends to be a little more tiring. Still, the view from the helicopter on departure can be stunning.
As we went into Guanabara Bay, we passed this Drill Rig which was idle at anchor.
Guanabara Bay in the twilight. Guanabara Bayis a large, sheltered Bay with Rio de Janeiro to the west and Niteroi to the east. Because it is so sheltered, there are always a lot of ships at anchor.
The nature of the projects that the Seven Oceans is currently doing, risers from the seabed to Floating Production and Storage vessels, means the the deck is always congested with an array of buoyancy modules and other equipment.
Periodically, a Tanker comes to the FPSO, is connected to the large hose that is on a reel on the bow of FPSO and the produced oil is transfered to the Tanker for shipping to the refinery. When this happens, the Seven Oceans is restricted in movement near them and ends up on paid ‘stand-by’ time.
Sometimes we’re on stand-by because the weather is too rough to operate close to the FPSO.
This is a large development area, and there are lots of vessels doing other work in the vicinity.
At night, and in the half light of dawn and dusk, all the lights on the horizon show how many installations and vessels are around us. My eyes are not what they used to be, and I counted 34.
At the moment we are bouncing between two development projects, Mero 4 and Buzios 8. This is the other FPSO that we have been installing risers for.