Into the last week now. This trip has only been memorable for the wrong reasons so far. The weather has been really bad. I can’t think of any other times that we have spent so much of the trip “Waiting On Weather”. It’s probably also the worst weather that I’ve been out in… certainly on the Perseus. (I do recall one time in ’87… pause for “old sea dog” type story!) We’ve been in and out of port a couple of times (and into sheltered waters) Lerwick, Aberdeen and Peterhead. Work wise, we did get two products “installed”. I say that in quotes as all we actually had to do was lay them on the sea bed! But we’re at a different field to install a riser to an FPSO. We did get the job started when there was a lull in the weather, but there were problems with the FPSO, and we ran out of weather window. We had to lower the riser on a winch wire, hopefully just until the weather got down. Unfortunately the weather got worse and we had to abandon the riser by cutting the winch wire. Now we’re having to wait again for another weather window to recover the riser and complete the final installation of the sea-bed end. We did have one event that was a bit of a talking point for a few days while we were in Peterhead. Dazzle came up to Peterhead to see the boat (and me 😆 ) while we were there. She took the pups too and some of the guys came out onto the jetty to see the dogs. While we were there (and to let you understand, this was at about 10pm, pitch black, on an october night) Prue, who was fairly excited anyway, was buzzed by a seagull and she ran off across the jetty chasing it. She jumped through the barrier, presumably (and I might just be giving her the benefit of the doubt here) without realising that there was nothing on the other side of the barrier… apart, that is, from a 25 foot drop into Peterhead harbour. Not the most clement of places at the best of times, and trust me, 10pm in october is definitely NOT the best of times! So there we are, Dazzle, me, and four of the guys, peering over the side, trying to spot a black dog, in black water at night. I caught sight of her swimming round one of the pier supports, but by the time I’d got to the ladder and climbed down we had all lost sight of her again. One of the ships bridge officers had heard her go in and he switched on one of the searchlights and managed to light her up. I don’t know if that helped Prue, but she managed to climb out of the water onto one of the cross-members on the jetty’s supports. Of course it was at one of the other supports rather than the one that I had climbed down. One of the other guys, Mike, got to the other ladder first. When he got down to the waterline and called Prue (I don’t know if Prue could see him or just hear him) she jumped off the beam and into the water again and swam straight to him. He managed to fish her out and pass her up the ladder to the rest of us. Dazzle had got a blanket out of the car to wrap her up in and dry her off. Apart from a case of the shivers she didn’t seem to be any the worse for her adventure.. in fact, she seemed pleased to be the centre of so much attention. Needless to say, it was an escapade that the rest of us could well have done without. The one thing that it did leave me wondering though… What went through her mind, just at the point when she realised that there was nothing on the other side of the barrier???
