Well, today is my birthday (yeah!) and I’m on the boat for it again (Boo!) and it got me thinking a little. One would think that working roughly equal time on and off the boat that I would average 50% of my birthdays at home while on leave. However that law of averages doesn’t seem to have worked quite like that, as I can only think of 2 birthdays in the last 10 years that I was definitely on leave. And on one of those years, I was doing my offshore survival course, three days that don’t really count (in my eyes) as ‘days off’ but it aren’t classed as a work days (which is ironic, as an offshore survival certificate is a compulsory qualification for working off-shore in the UK and Norway). There are two years that I’m not sure where I was. I have a note of the number of days that I worked in May for those years, but not which specific days. However, as in both of those years I worked more than 20 days of May, it would suggest that I was probably offshore for my Birthday in them too. So this is the break down:
2007: On the Boat, Gulf of Mexico
2006: On the Boat, Angola
2005: On Leave
2004: On the Boat, Norway
2003: On the Boat, Norway
2002: On the Boat, UK
2001:
2000: On ‘Leave’ doing my survival course
1999: Travelling back to the boat.
1998:
So, 6 birthdays that I was definitely working (either ON the boat or en-route to the boat), 2 days that I was probably working, 1 day that I was doing my survival course. Leaving only one birthday in the last 10 years that I was not doing something work related 👿 I remember 1999 though, as Dazzle called me from the US before I started my journey back to Norway!
