Everything comes to an end

The Subsea Viking alongside Hatston Pier in Kirkwall, Orkney. Seems to be the last time we will be bothering this peaceful corner of the world. I hope to be back some day!

Every era has it's beginning, and end. 
This time it's my ship, the Subsea Viking, having to go elsewhere for work. We have been occupied around the fields west of Shetland since back in 2003, which means we have been struggling up there for the best part of 13 years. That's close to 5000 days as you should know, without one single incident leading to any employee on board the ship having to be off work due to accidents and stuff like that. We are quite proud about that fact, as it happens, as we are miles ahead of the next ship on the list.
But no matter how many times they have told us this is the best thing ever, important for the contract and all the bla bla, the fact is they have put us off the contract anyway for some reason. A different ship is coming in to take over in just a few days. 

The plan now is to go out there for the last time to do a few minor jobs, then go to Peterhead in about a week or so to demob the equipment from this project. 
The good thing is that we will mob up for a new project as soon everything of the old stuff is on shore. New client, new stuff on board. A new start, sort of. At least that's what we hope.

I just came on board this morning, and we are now preparing for startup and leaving Kirkwall. That also for the last time, as our new contract will be based out of Peterhead or Aberdeen if you are a believer of rumors. 
I actually hate to say I'm leaving Kirkwall for the last time, to be honest. It has become kind of my second home, even though I have not been here that much if you're counting days and weeks. Still, I know the place well, and I have friends here. It's a lovely place with a bunch of lovely people living here. I will miss that, a lot!

You will be updated!

My good friend and reporter in the local newspaper "The Orcadian", Mr. Craig Taylor. Here at work during the new years Ba-game 2016. I snapped him up on a frame of film inside the Nikon FM2, I think. Or maybe it was the german thing...? Nice snap, huh...?

Bonus day!

That's what I like to call them, the days you actually should have been off for work but still have to stay at home one extra day because the ship is still at sea. New tickets are now received for tomorrow, Friday. 

I snapped this one a while ago. Me and the daughter was on a short road trip and found this small but weird place to get ourselves some food. I had my very big Nikon F3P and luckily put it into some good old use. Nikkor 85mm lens. The big one with the heavy glass inside, you know.

So, what did I fill this day with then you may think?! Since everything else was ready for me to leave, as you should know. 
Well, I was in the darkroom as it happens. Printing prints on delicate paper, as I do, waisting nothing much for a change. 

I got this telephone call a few days ago, on Monday evening I think, with a question if I would like to do some snaps of their younger son as he is getting his confirmation soon. Since the next day was the 17th of May, which is a very big day over here in Norway, he would be dressed up in the same clothes as he will use on his own big day in about a week from now. 
So, I agreed to do the stuff and found a nice place outside to do the snaps. I had to track down my digital Nikon which has been sitting in my sons apartment for a year of so, and did a serious number of exposures of the young man. As you do when snapping electronically.
I have not even bothered having a very short look at them other than the usual staring at the back of the camera during the shooting session. They looked like crap, I have to admit. Over exposed crap, to be absolutely honest. I pressed a few buttons every now and then just to give an impression of knowing what I was doing, but I don't think they got any better still. I will need to have a closer look, but will bring the memory card to work. Hopefully I can get a few quiet evenings to see if something is worth saving of the huge bunch of electronic files.

I'm soon going over the sea to see these guys, and a bunch more. Here they have seated themselves in the small pub on Sumburgh Airport, Shetland on their way home a year ago or something like that. 

Luckily I also brought a Rolleiflex TLR from 1957, and a Mamiya RZ67 medium format. Real cameras, as you know by now. I snapped out the end of two films. 9 exposures on the Mamiya, and 1 single frame with the Rolleiflex. The plan was to wait until I got home from work in four weeks before I had the rolls developed, but as soon as I heard the crew change was delayed I went home from the cottage for a few hours yesterday evening to throw them into some chemicals mixed with water. The negatives looked good, so I decided to go for it and get something printed today. 
I am currently crossing fingers, hoping the boys mother like the handprinted B&W stuff to such a degree that there will not be any further questions about the digital files... 
Strange feeling it was, doing that portrait job with a digital camera. I did not recognize it, could not make the thing function the way I wanted... everything seemed to be struggling against me, until I picked up the film wasters to do what I'm used to do. Simple equipment for simple souls... that's probably the essence of the learning from yesterday, it seems. 

And the prints? They look like a million dollars, so I put my last few norwegian kroner on the bet that the mother will be going for the B&W's. 
If not, I will certainly not be asked to do some simple snaps another time... that's for sure!

The last frame of some roll of film. It used to be stuck inside that incredible noisy Canon AF35 or whatever the name printed on that thing was. I had it delivered to my post box together with the Diana F+ quite a while ago. Payed next to nothing for the two combined. I duly snapped my work bench, as you might see? Or the bench with a lot of stuff on top of it, as it actually is. Probably no room left to do anything at all around there anymore. 

A tiny girl and some huge, heavy walls in Oxford

It happens to me all the time. You want to take a snap of something, and into the frame walks this person from out of the blue somewhere. This time I thought it was kind of OK, though. She looked very good from all angles, and also managed to give some sort of scale to the big picture. A bit unlike most of the other snaps where people seem to come from out of the blue and into the frame. And they must have used a lot of stone to build them walls over there, in Oxford. 

See, I have been around this area as well, walking the streets of old Oxford just to get a very tiny look at how things seems to be around that part of the world. Stone upon stone, as any other old town, I would say. The stones are plentyful though, and put together in nice patterns by someone knowing what they were doing, back in the days.
The first university was built here in 1320. Or, so they say, anyway. There was education at high levels going on a few hundred years before that as well, but let's just keep things simple and say that the first university was built around 1320.
I mean 1320! 
At that time over here in Norway we were still knocking each other in the head with stone tools, and the first university were still 500 years away from seeing anything close to daylight. 
No wonder I felt a bit like stepping on old and historic ground as I moved around inside this area. 

And when I finally get here, and want to make a decent snap of one of them old and fantastic buildings... this car was put there right in front just for the heck of it. That's what I think, anyway. I spoiled a frame and never looked back!

The first time we wanted to go to Oxford, four or five years ago, we missed the whole opportunity big time like. I went off the M-something where some road sign told me the Oxford direction was, and before anyone knew what really had happened we were rolling on the same motorway once again. Heading for London, or wherever. I still blame the reader of the map sitting in the passenger seat. The reader of the map still seem to blame the driver... 
Anyway, we decided to give it another try this year just to get some first hand knowledge if the town was just a fiction or not. 
Very much real it was, I must admit. 

Another week, another course to attend

So, as you might understand I have been a bit busy lately. I suddenly had to attend a three days safety repetition course, so there has been a real hole in my blog posts as you might have discovered. I was scheduled to do the course later this summer, but suddenly got the chance to do it right now instead. So, instead of ruining a good part of one week of the middle of summer, I jumped on this one. 
I will soon be back on some kind of a track though, as we managed to persuade the teacher to take two long days instead of three shorter ones. That means I don't have to go there tomorrow. More importantly it also means I now got all courses needed to apply for the new type of certificate I will need to still have a job after new year. Might sound a bit definitive, and it is... in fact. Rules are rules, and any norwegian engineer holding the old type of certificate will not be able to get hold of the new and shiny thing we actually need to still work as engineers after the 31'st of december this year. Might sound like a long time ahead, but bear in mind that they will need a few months to go through all the applications that is coming their way these days. I can only hope my application will be high enough in the pile to make it through the system in due time to have the thing in hand before said date. 

We went over here a few weeks ago, my son and I. Went to see that old derelict house and all, and I don't expect it to still have some kind of a roof and all four walls standing like this a year from now. It still might manage to stand upright, but I doubt it. This is a good blend of film having gone through some serious software on my phone, by the way. I ask you to not take too much notice of that fact. It's just that I like to play around with things inside an app from time to time. It's nothing that's going to last, mind you...!

And, I'm soon to leave for work. Only one weekend to go now, and I will be off some time late next week. 

The same house seen from the other side. Same camera, same lens. Most likely that old german M6 camera, and definitely Elmarit 21mm lens with an orange filter. 

So, last course done for this time with some boring classroom stuff and some fun outdoor exercises in the water just finished. 
First aid stuff, where we repeat how to stitch people together, putting needles carrying all kinds of medicine and stuff inside the veins of the patient, putting on bandages and taping them together and all that sorts of nice things to know when you're out there at sea. 
Then we learn about fires and how to lead fire teams. Or, actually it's more or less all about how to make life easier by use of simple things to turn the odds a bit more into your advantage should you be in the position of being in the middle of nowhere having a huge fire on board. A chief engineers worst nightmare, to put everything down to just a few simple words. 
Then it's the usual water stuff. As we are surrounded by water in my daily work it's simply a fact that if everything else fail we will need to abandon the mother ship and get our feet wet out there in the north atlantic ocean, or wherever we are in the moment of any given disaster. OK, it's a place nobody wants to be, but we still need to be prepared to go there should that famous shit hit the fan. It's just a part of everyday life when we are at work. So that means I have been into the sea today, in a survival suit way out there... The good thing is that it was a nice day for it as the sun was shining and everything. I still got wet though, but was never very cold or anything. 
And, I finally got the chance to try something I have wanted to try for a long time. It was not a part of this actual course, but we managed to persuade the instructor to test the free-fall lifeboat they got on most rigs and some ships these days. OK, our fall was not quite as high as the one I linked to, as that one shows the quite recent world record set by Harding in Norway, but you could still feel your lunch moving upwards for a few seconds there before all the fun was over. 
And then there was the usual stuff. Laying like ducks in the water using all kinds of techniques to be able to stay alive out there if all other resque equipment for some reason should fail. 
Things nice to have learned and tried in real life, as you probably understand. 

A more or less typical norwegian beach as we know them over here. Some sand at times, but also big stones scattered around the place just to make it different from elsewhere in the world. German M3, Summicron 50mm or 35mm. I think this was Kodak Tri-X drenched in Kodak HC-110 developer.

And no, I did not bring any of the german rangefinders or any other cameras... I might go there some time to see if I might catch anything interesting when other people are doing the course. Maybe.

And I had my phone in pocket this evening just as I returned home from a long day at the training field. The wife had a good fire going over there at the cottage, and I decided to use it for something nice. So I found some food to put on top, and it was very good as well. And yes, it's digital... and yes, shame on me!! 

From the grounds around that old factory

Just a couple of quick snaps from one of the recent trips outside together with my son, Glenn. We were over to the old wool factory in Langevågen, just on the other side of the mountain just behind the cottage. Not a very long drive by any standard. 15-20 minutes or so, and you are there. At least from here, where I am right now. 

There's a lot of buildings belonging to the old factory. Some of them are now turned into shops, outlets and other things I'm not the greatest fan of. Anyway, it's nice to see them old buildings getting into some good use. Other buildings seems to be in a rather bad state, to say the least. I hope someone  with a lot of money will put some of their cash into the place and get some work done on a few more of the buildings. 

My son told me he would buy one of the buildings, if he win the NOK 250 millions in the lottery one of these days. Turn it into a darkroom and a photo studio he would. Chances that it will happen is fairly low, I would say :)

Lovely structure on this wall and the old fashion glass with reinforcement in the form of steel wires inside. This is one of the buildings that will have to be knocked down at some point, I would guess. Snapped using a german rangefinder, M3 style with no light meter or any other fancy gadgets. Summicron lens 

A well camouflaged pole standing among them trees beside this ruin of a building. Probably another part of the same factory as above, since it's located quite close to the main buildings. I might go back to take some more photos another day, but I also still got a few on a roll still inside the M6. I might get that one done some day to see what's lurking around on that roll of film. Nothing very interesting I suppose, but who knows...

In the Aftermath

I finally got the chance of having a day of breathing quite well again, as I was going through some kind of a personal nightmare during the weekend. You might heard of the helicopter crash over here in Norway on Friday? Well, it was one of them totally surrealistic ones. Mechanical breakdown in a way you thought existed only inside nightmares and very bad movies. Probably a blown gearbox, but we will not know that for sure for quite a while yet as the people working on those issues will need some time to find out. 
I don't know if you have seen the pictures in the news wherever you live, so I give you one single link just to give you an idea. It was filmed, as it happens. Not the actual crash itself, but a few seconds later as the rotor of the helicopter was flying through the air with no helicopter attached. I mean how often has this happened, that the entire main rotor of a helicopter has been blown away from the rest of the thing like this, and filmed? Good thing is that the people putting the puzzle together to find out what happened will have evidence they never would dream of, just because a young man knew where to find the record button on his mobile phone quite quickly. 

The names of the last victims were finally released Monday. As this was an offshore transport helicopter there was a fair chance I knew someone on board that thing, but I could not be sure until all names were officially determined. Just to add to the entire horror I also know a number of pilots and technicians working for this helicopter company, as many of my fathers former colleagues from his life as a helicopter pilot inside a different division of the same company had their daily work in CHC. There was this pilot, 57 years old from Bergen... which I suspected very much I knew too well. 
OK, names out Monday evening, and it turned out he was not flying this helicopter at the time it decided to totally self destruct.

I have spoken to one of the victims a few times, as he used to be a service man for a company we use a lot on board the ship for checking bearings and changing special parts from time to time. Another one of the victims was from the same small island on where my company got it's head office, and a lot of my colleagues will most likely know her very well. 
The area the helicopter fell down is just in the neighborhood of where my last ship (the Viking Energy) was based, and a lot of my friends from back then was living and had grown up in this area. Two of the casualties was living within only a few kilometers from where they went down.

There's a lot of my colleagues and people I know who have lost close and more distant friends in this accident for sure, as this country is not that big after all. The offshore working environment is not that big either, so we will always know someone who knows someone. 

May they Rest In Peace, all the 13 souls who went down last Friday, on their way home from the North Sea. 

From the north western coastline of the small island called "Vigra" where I found this thing placed, pointing towards the big blue North Sea about a week ago. The weather was nice and we were having a nice walk on this beach of stones and sand. I brought a german rangefinder, or two. This is from the M3 one, with the Elmarit 21mm lens and orange filter attached. It's making the thing vignetting a lot, that filter as you see. 

We went for a walk

My daughter and I, a couple of weeks ago. Went for this walk as I had this film sitting inside that old Kodak Colorsnap 35 camera I got from Craig in Orkney about a year ago, or maybe even a bit longer. It seems to be in some kind of working condition, even though some of the snaps seem to have been exposed a bit oddly which was probably my own fault. The film was not exactly the best of things to put inside this camera either, as it was pretty low on ISO value. I think I might go for a 400 or something the next time I load the thing up. 

Here she is, out walking carrying the Diana F+ in her hands. 

From the entrance to "Aksla Stadion", an old arena on top of the Aksla mountain. This place has seen it's best days years ago, and is slowly falling apart and into a state beyond any chance of repair. It used to be a great place though, back in the days when I grew up. I went up there one afternoon lately, just to have a look at how things are these days. I brought my old Colorsnap thing from Kodak, and snapped a BWsnap of the place instead. 

And then we had snow, again, as you know if you follow this spot. Just for a few days, but still there's nothing much fun about it when all you want to have is spring and nice temperatures. Don't ask me what those two lines going through this frame is all about. I got no idea at all. The same thing seems to have fastened on three or four of the frames from this camera every now and then through the film. This one was taken at the doorstep at the cottage not too many days ago. It's nothing like this today, mind you, as the temperature is a lot higher this morning. 

The first day this spring with good temperatures (for this area, anyway) today. 14 deg. C right now, which is very good compared to 3-4 deg. the last weeks and months. 
I'm on my way out to make some good use of the nice weather. It's not sunny, but that's no problem as long as it's not raining and the temperature is good. 
Have a great day, all of you!