Lost At Sea - Rory Gallagher (Part I)

A second night of a +12°C temperature and once again disappointment at the Moth traps, but nil desperandum they will come when they are ready! It was ditto across the Recording Area as well, with the Heath temporarily inaccessible due to surface rain water, so looks every bit as though we will have to delve into the archive once again.

Lost at Sea (link) a 4 Part (interupted) Series

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bk8otSUBT0w

As far as Off-shore Oil Installations are concerned there are but 3 flavours

PLATFORMS

(such as the Tiffany shown here)

 which are built into the seabed, 

 JACK-UPS

which are confined to more shallow waters and are supported by those retractable pylon like legs,

which can be wound up and down as required, and 

 SEMI-SUBMERSIBLES

such as the 

Stena Hunter

 where a very starnge quirk of fate first sent me into the

North Sea Oil Industry

and where a fabulous work ethic was found for the following 19 months.

Next came the

 SEMI-SUBMERSIBLE

(floaters)

such as the Borgland Dolphin seen here. 

My service in her was just a short 6 months when as an accommodation barge 

she was employed as the living quarters for the workforce constructing the Tiffany platform shown above.

Our task on Borgland was to take the barge, under tow, from Dusavik in Norway to a possition 180 miles north west of there and possition her alongside the platform. Sounds fairly simple when you say it quickly but here is some of the equipment we had to cope with and lay in a perfect pattern to secure ourselves alongside.

 Harbour Tug towing us off the jetty where the far more powerful

Anchor Handler Tugs would connect their tows to take us to the location

 Views of the

 Rig Columns

 Helicopter Deck and Dusavik Dockyard

 22 ton Dolphin Flipper Anchors

8 in number secured to 1 mile of heavy link cable

Of the Semi’s and regardless of whether they have their own propulsion or not,

they are all considered to be ‘sea-going vessels’ and as such must, as part of their compliment,

have a fully qualified crew to fulfil all maritime functions with it being unusual, but not unknown, for a captain to be in charge of such a vessel.   

 It was surely a case of leaving the Best until Last as my final 18 years in the 

industry were served onboard the then British Petrolium (BP) owned

Oil Production Platform

BUCHAN ALPHA

(although she did no drilling the main drilling derrick, centre, remained in place

while the red and white structures are the 2 crane jibs and the extreme port and starboard arms the flare booms burning off excess gases. The flame can just be seen on the stbd one)

which was an exception to all the rules.

Although a semi-sub she was refered to as, in those days, a Drilling Platform in as much as she was the very first rig ever to be deployed in the North Sea. As such she also took on the roll as a 

Weather Gathering Station

 sending daily reports to the Meteorological Office, of conditions at the time, to form part of accurate weather forecasts.

This was a huge bonus in itself as these duties fell as part of my task in the

Marine Department

 Think we had better slip in a 

Bird Story

before you all start getting bored and start falling asleep.

It had often been wondererd, across the Raptors, just how big a prey species each might take?

Having read somewhere that Perergrine Falcon may on occassion take Grey Heron

this was a wonder of the Avian World worth witnessing.

Maybe we should point out here that in a very short period of time my absolute passion for the subject had spread across the whole of the crew and even in those first few days telephone calls etc were already being made to alert me to the presence of an unidentified bird with this little ditty starting in just that way.

 Arriving at the Moon Pool, the void at the centre of the rig open to the sea through which equipment may be deployed to the seabed, there was a Peregrine in full tussle with an adult Great Black-backed Gull, which on this occassion escaped and flew off - pheeewwwwww!

Undeterred, the falcon then took to the wing and within minutes had another in its tallons

 which it forced down onto the

 helicoptor safety netting

 before taking up perch on the hapless Gull and eating its fill.

 Satiated, it was easily caught by our deck foreman

Ricky (The Hammer) Grant

 and won itself a free helicopter ride back to Aberdeen in a cafully constructed Hammer-like cage!

Being just a garden pea shorter than a 6 footer, it can be seen from this juvenile bird just exactly how big the

Great Black-backed Gull

is, wing-tip to wing-tip surely over 6 feet!

whereas the Peregrine is on between 13 to 23 inches in length at best.

Before we close on another Post we will add a few more images of some of the

frequent arrivals on the Buchan but remembering ALL units in the North Sea must get 

similar numbers and species.

 BRAMBLING

partial albino

BRAMBLING

 WIGEON

 SHORT-EARED OWL

juvenile

GLAUCOUS GULL

more to come we hope!

Rock 'n' Roll Trivia:- Taste was what I like to refer to as a White Blues Band formed by Rory Gallagher in his home town of Cork during 1966. They went on to find world-wide success but not without multi-personnel changes. For my money the most seminal of these were Gallagher (lead guitar), Richard McCracken (Bass) and Wilgar Campbell (drums). My first live experience of the man was (if my memory serves me - they do say if you remember it you were not there!) the first ever (1969) Isle of Wight Festival, but many times since. He is certainly in my Top 10 'Best Guitarists in the World' but would refer to Jimi Hendrix when asked by the interviewer "how does it feel to be the greatesr guitarist that ever lived"? To which he is reputed to have replied, "I wouldn't know but best go ask Rory Gallagher"!

 My own personnal tribute

 to the man

 with that particular trip to Cork (2012) being one of the

MEGA'S

which, who knows, might just be published through these pages one day?