One of those days!

You know the sort, don't you?
Having lined up your working day already the day before, just to make sure you will be able to get it all done and dusted, and made everything in order to go on holiday in two days.
You even wake up an hour early to really get a flying start and be a little bit ahead of the game, because you know it's going to take time and effort, and the extra hour might be your reward when the evening comes, and things like that.
So, that's what you think and plan for, right? And what do you get instead?

See? Wouldn't this be a whole lot of fun to play with? One of our jobs is obviously to check and make sure that all our fire equipment works as intended. There's a lot of stuff on board, as we're supposed to be kind of self dependent out at sea. In between we also try to have some fun, obviously. At least when possible. Testing the water cannons always is. That was until the helideck itself disappeared because of the heavy seas out west of Shetland, ofcourse. Now there's more or less nothing at this spot. No canon, no helidec... but we soon got a new one to be fitted, so stay tuned.

I went down this morning, just to grab a cup of the best coffee made onboard this ship. You'll find it in the engine department, just to inform you should you find yourself on board this lump of steel at some point. I almost got there, but ran into some funny smell, one engineer, two laundry assistants and a couple of ROV workers standing like a mob in the hallway between the engine room door and the laundry door. And that's when I understood my day was totally ruined. 
A bloody washing machine had caught fire, and that will, just saying, mean a few people will need a report on the table. Soon! Sometimes it seems they want the damn report even before the fire is out, but they behaved a bit today, the report readers. 
The report writer suddenly wanted to be home and away, to be honest.

Hellyeah!! I love the feeling of this! Trouble is that I had to get so close to the water because I was stupid enough to put that 21mm very wide angle lens on one of the rangefinders that not only my camera was totally drenched before we had finished this session. I had to go straight in and change clothes. And wipe some water off the camera. Sea water and all, you know. But it's fine. 

Well, it's now 21.25 in the evening, and my report is not only finished and gone but also reviewed and acknowledged by all the top guys on board. Next is the shoreside, which I fear a lot more. Maybe, but only maybe, a washing machine is something they have seen enough times to understand what I'm talking about, but I will certainly not hold my breath.
Each and every time I write a report and send it off to the Brightest Brains in Britain, they seem to come back to me with the most unbelieveable questions. Why is that? I have been thinking a lot about it, and the only answer I can actually come up with is that they are not marine engineers. Not that marine engineers is that bright, that's not what I mean. I think it's more or less the same whatever your profession is. 
Sometimes I would love the things to turn a bit. Make them write reports from their daily work, which I obviously got no clue about, then they send them over to me for review. And I would, ofcourse, not understand a single thing about nothing, and start to ask a million, for them, silly questions. 
Why can't they just try to understand that we are not speaking the same language, and if they want things to be simple they got to have some top shot marine engineer or something similar sitting in the chair waiting for reports sent in by us. I still can't see the point in writing a report that no one understands, and which always seem to end up with a lot of e-mails going back and forth, and in the end they want a telephone meeting to "clearify" stuff. And then, after a week or so, they basically can't find any better question than asking if we're sinking...

See? These are the simple things we deal with every day. Nothing like rocket science at all, as it happens. Foaming up a helideck is easy enough I would believe, even for a hot-shot technician on the shoreside. I wonder more about how I managed this snap without foam on the lens. It was pretty darn close on a few occations there.

Well, enough vomit for the day. It's just the fact that it has put me a bit off. I did not need this only a couple of days before I'm going home, but I will make it. I always seem to do, no matter what :)

I will need to talk about pictures some other day!