Christmas in Angola (Offshore)

I never thought he would do it. But he did. Greg partially shaved his head to emulate the largely receded hairline of our party chief. All for a Christmas play.

Yesterday marked the 3^rd of the past 4 Christmases that I have spent far from home- in Saigon with another American family, in the Indian Ocean on my very first seismic vessel, now off the shores of Angola.

My first seismic Christmas, 2 years ago, I came on board and found that no one had stepped up to organize a Christmas celebration. So hastily, as a trainee, I tried to pull things together – a fun picture / global celebrity quiz, a rewriting of Twas the Night Before Christmas (see blog post 2 years ago). I did what I could with one week remaining before Christmas day.

This year I prepared. Out ship, in the middle of Angola, became the confluence of many ways to celebrate Christmas. For some it's a family event with gifts, for others it's a very religious holiday, and many on board had never celebrated Christmas I wanted to make it a Christmas to remember.

I started the Christmas Celebrations with a Playmobile advent calendar from my mom (which I hauled from the US to Norway, then to Angola). Much to my surprise, the crew loved it. Angola is one hour ahead of Greenwich Mean Time, so we made the decision to follow GMT, thus the night shift had to wait until 1am to open the next day's addition. I will note though, that this year's Playmobile scene was less Christmas based and more pirate based, but it was perfect for a seismic vessel such as ours.

On Christmas eve I played Santa, delivering a card to each crew's cabin.

2008, however, will mark Western Pride's very first Christmas play. I rewrote (again) Twas the Night before Christmas. Instead of the father "springing from his bed to see what was the matter", it was our party chief. And thus to better "become the part", I convinced Greg, a crew member, to shave his head. As he "sprang from his bed to see what was the matter" he threw off his hat to the hysterical laughter of the crew. We also had 6 "live" reindeer, 1 donkey, and 1 "remote" reindeer from Norway. Santa was from Nigeria. And workboots were hung instead of stockings. And when Santa sprang to his sleigh to drive out of sight, he radioed in "Western Pride, Western Pride, this is sleigh…Merry Christmas to Pride and to Pride a Good Night". It was a success – the prancing reindeers stole the show, as did the freshly bald party chief.

I organized Christmas Carol singing, complete with Santa playing the keyboard. The karaoke skills of the Filipinos came in very handy to fill the room with song. And I must admit, we sounded quite good.

Each crew member also got a gift from Santa, as well as the requisite photo on Santa's lap. (my gift was a singing Elvis mug)

And the final touch was a viewing of Elf yourself with all our chiefs (see it here).

The galley crew produced quite a spread with lobster, 2 whole pigs, gingerbread cookies, and a decorated galley.

Now the crew is asking - "Laura what are you planning for New Years?" I think Christmas was a success.

In action - around kilometer 37 or so. I was easy to pick out with my pink - flowered children's bike helmet. Or perhaps it was the bright yellow-orange shorts that made it easy to pick me out?

Why Not?

It all started when a guy from Tasmania decided to run a marathon in Berlin. The medic on Emerald, who is Australian and friends with this guy, thought “hey we crew change through Brussels, Brussels is just a skip away from Berlin (especially compared to Australia), and the marathon is the weekend after crew change, ‘so Hey I should go run the marathon after crew change in September.” This was June. So Stru, the medic, went to sign up for the marathon, however all 40,000 spaces were full. Sadden, he told his friends of the misfortune, who lamented, but responded joking and laughing “ha there are still spaces in the rollerblade marathon”. Stru thought “hey why not”, then turned to me and said “Laura, you should totally do it too” and I thought “why not” and so we both signed up. Thus started the rollerblade escapade.

Minor details included:
- Neither of us had actually rollerbladed in the past 10 years
- I did not own rollerblades
- Stru had rollerblades buried in a closet in Cairns
- 42.2km is a long way whether by foot or by rollerblade

The next break, back in Oslo I went and bought a pair of rollerblades, telling the sales guy “I need a fast pair, you see I ‘m going to be in a marathon”. He just turned and raised one eyebrow. I practiced around Oslo a bit. My fear before buying the skates was whether or not I could go fast enough for the marathon. I figured that I could ice skate decently. However I soon learned and realized that ice skating is always done on a perfectly flat surface. Rollerblading, meanwhile has hills involved, however small. And stopping is a whole other ball game. This is unfortunate because Oslo is known for its hills. This is fortunate because Berlin is known for being flat.

Training (however limited it was) came to an abrupt stop when I returned to the vessel. I had thought through many possibilities, including tying myself to something and skating around the helideck, but I ultimately decided there was no way to actually train on the boat. Although I did manage to find some amusing looking exercises on the internet, which I did try to do on the helideck (much to the embarrassment of Stru).

I got off the vessel one week before heading to Berlin. However, between rain and traveling I was not able to get back on my skates before heading off. I met up with Stru in Berlin (who by the way purchased his skates in Berlin). We decided to take a train over to Poland in search of better training ground (ie no cars to hit) and to get in touch with my Polish roots. We went up to the Northwest corner, which is a nice beach area, as well a ferry point for going to Copenhagen and Sweden. Our new fear was getting picked up by the slow bus during the race. In fact we had no idea how fast we could actually go – could we do 2 min kilometers or 5 min kilometers? All we knew was that the bus picked you up at a few points if your time was clocking in slower than 2 hours 30 min and that the last person over the line last year timed in at 3 hours 9 minutes.

While exploring the area we found the perfect training grounds – the road from the ferry. Perfect – flat, straight and very little traffic (only when cars got off the ferry, so only once every 10 minutes). Now we could time ourselves. When going with the wind we clocked in at 2 min 20-30sec kms, while against the wind we were getting times of 3 min- 3 min 30 seconds. Finally we had a sense of our time. We just might be able to pull this stunt off with officially 2 days of training under our belts.

So back to Berlin we went, meeting up with the whole crew of Stru’s mates from Australia and then racing the next day. We both managed to finish- Stru with a time of 1 hour 54 minutes, I with a time of 2 hours 2 min 24 seconds (ah I think I could have made it under 2 hours, but oh well, at least I left the pickup bus in the dust). And we both had a fantastic time. We had hoped to “see Berlin” by skates, but instead we got the grand tour of Berlin pavement, so I can tell you much more about the sewer covers, and trams tracks rather than the sites, but so it goes. The Berlin inline marathon is the largest in the world, so there were heaps of spectators, bands on the streets and the final stretch took us right under the Brandenburg Gate. So overall a great time. I would definitely do another one in the future.

And to cap off the weekend, the next day, the running world record was broken – 2 hours 3 minutes and 59 seconds (yeap that’s right I skated it faster – my current claim to fame)

My middle name is Orzechowski and in Polish this means hazelnut. I went looking to buy a few candy bars with my name on them and this is the one that I found!

Stru's and my skills did not really hold up when we started falling while trying to take a picture of ourselves pre-race.

On the west coast of Norway during a workboat course. We were practicing sharp fast turns on the jet boat.
The other observers on my shift on my new vessel.
This is the FPSO at night during a close pass.

Its good for me

The evenings are hauntingly beautiful from the helideck. Its still winter here, so there is a humid chill in the air as I take my midnight strolls. Our current prospect is a 4-D job, which means we are shooting seismic not to find oil, but to monitor wells that are already in production. 2 large FPSO’s (Floating Production storage and offloading vessels) hover in the center of our prospect – at night you could mistake them for cruise ships in full gaiety – lights coming out of every port hole, reflecting across the blackened ocean, multi-decks suggesting varying suites on each level, and oh - the large flame spouting out from one end of the vessel burning off H2S, which forces reality upon the situation. These 2 vessels pump out a quarter million barrels of oil a day each.

I’ve now moved to a different vessel. I spent the previous one and a half years on Geco Emerald as she searched for oil in India, Norway, and Angola. I didn’t want to open the email subject line: “Vessel Change”, I was so happy with my crew on Emerald – they were like family. I called a few of the crew “Cousin” or “Cus” (one of them actually shares the same middle name as me – Orzechowski – what are the odds?). I consoled myself with the knowledge that it was a temporary change and that it would be a good opportunity to meet more people, learn about a different boat, and then go back “home” to Emerald. Yesterday, I learned I would stay on Western Pride, my new vessel. It was one of those things in my gut I knew would happen. And, as much as I wanted to fight it and get back on Emerald, I know that logically this move makes sense. This boat uses a newer technology – one that all the future vessels of our company will have, and in 2 years time only a handful will have the old technology. And in the office I’m doing testing that is directly associated with the new technology – so the logic – yes keep Laura on Pride. Yesterday it was hard to face up to this fact. The new crew are very nice, although a bit on the mellow side. On Emerald I was used to basketball games, foosball tournaments, afternoon cricket and a pull up competition thrown in. Here – they watch movies and sometimes play the Wii. It will just take time – I have to remember I was on Emerald for a year and I developed relationships that one year ago I never thought possible. But now, here I am on Pride.

Our current job here in Angola is interesting because we literally must dodge the floating vessel / platforms. The trouble is that the most important part of what we want to visualize or “map” for the oil company is directly under the FPSO’s however for obvious reasons our, our vessel can not go directly over where the FPSO is. So we have to do 2 things – 1. Go as close as we possibly can. 2. Use a gun boat. This entails having one boat that has guns on one side of the platform and our recording vessel on the other. The midpoint between the 2 is directly under the FPSO – the target that the client wants. On these “close passes” sometimes I can feel the heat from the flame and see the people on the FPSO, watching us on the seismic vessel. The light from the H2S creates my shadow on the helideck at midnight.

Emerald in full glory. Immediately behind the vessel you can see the guns, spread out to the side are the cables. If you look closely you can see them trailing all the way back and out of the photo.


A close up of Emerald


An Oil Spill drill (the drill was pretending hydraulic oil was leaking from the crane). Can you find me?


Our end of trip helideck BBQ (again can you find me?). We had it in the evening and as soon as the sunset we were all huddled around the grill - in ANGOLA, only a few degrees south of the Equator!

A Simple Scan

Growing up, vacation planning started about 1 and a half years in advance and was tracked carefully on an excel spread sheet. About a year in advance, dad would make the key bookings and enter them onto the sheet and fill each column – location, contact details, price, website – as more information was known. As the months crept closer, dad filled in the details of each day – recommended restaurants, the activity of the day. And after each addition he would print out a new sheet and show it to Tesia and I. We would look at it, nod our heads in approval and wonder what exactly had changed (often it was the addition of a phone number or a price change).
Planning was of the essence (Dad we love you for all that planning).
Vietnam educated me in a more laidback approach to travel and seismic has taught me minute by minute flexibility is essential.

I thought this past crew change would be pretty normal – it would be my third time going to Angola, so I knew how it worked. A week before crew change I would get my flight details, 3 days before traveling I would get my visa. Once in Angola, I knew in immigration – go find the man in the white coat to show my yellow fever card, once through, I knew I would be herded into a waiting area while they processed by temporary 15 day visa, then transfer to the domestic airport for the helicopter. I was an old hand at entering Angola. As usual, I was supposed to travel on Saturday to Lisbon and then onto Luanda. On Thursday – I still had no visa. Friday morning at work – still no visa, so I started making phone calls. First, to our office in Gatwick, then to our shore representative in Angola. After a while I discovered that the Angola immigration officials had rejected my visa application because the scan / copy of my university diploma was bad. I found it interesting that the three times before when they issued me a visa this had not been an issue, but now it was. By this point it was about midday and the Angolan offices close at noon and then it was the weekend, so no there would be no action until at least Monday – I would not be crew changing on Saturday.

So the Angola officials wanted a good copy – I would give them everything I possibly could. First I sent them a copy of my transcript, then I faced the larger dilemma – I was in Oslo and my diploma was in Maryland. Luckily, my dad was able to take a picture of it, so that I had a color copy (the Princeton diploma is too large to put on a regular scanner). By mid afternoon on Friday I had all the necessary documents and emailed them off to Angola. Now I just had to wait. I couldn’t complain – the weekend in Oslo was fantastic – warm sun, a citywide music concert (versus being on the boat!). And the next week I just waited. Waited for news of a visa and finally it came on Thursday – I was given a visa and I would travel on Saturday (in Angola that you can’t enter the country until 3 days after the visa is issued). And so a week later I joined the vessel. Luckily it was raining that Saturday in Oslo, so warm and sunny Angola – here I come.

As for why it happened, many may chant “TIA” – This Is Africa as an excuse, others may point to the last minute nature of seismic. Me – while a Princeton diploma usually helps a situation, I don’t think Princeton’s decision to write their diploma in Latin helped.

The Houseboat / sauna that Rasmus' whole family went to over Easter. It was snowing and I think we all jumped into the lake around 6 times.


My mom said that fron the last post she did not get a good idea of what the barnacles here in Angola look like. This one is about 3-4 inches long, no hard shell, just one long slimy barnacle.


Working on the back deck deploying the cable at 23:00.

A Woman's Touch

Easter in Norway is sacred. Sacred, not because Christ was nailed on a cross and atoned for the sins of man-kind, but because it’s the last hurrah of winter before spring comes. Schools are closed for the week and the country shuts down – stores close, hotels close and all of Norway heads off to their family’s hytte (pronounced hut-a) in the mountains to ski.

For the sacred week I went to Sweden. In Sweden, Rasmus’ brother asked me to give a talk at the local Youth House, where they were having a theme night on Discrimination and Prejudice. Nikodemus invited me to talk, hoping I might talk about being an American in the many places that I have been. I agreed to talk, but then when I started to think, I felt I could give a better talk about being a female in a very male dominated job.

I titled the talk, “A Woman’s Touch” and introduced myself to the Swedish youth, telling them my name and where I was from. I then asked them to brainstorm what they thought my job was from that limited information and from what they saw of me standing there. I got many responses – a social worker, a teacher, a journalist, and even a comedian. I told them I worked off shore and all, were indeed shocked. I then showed them a loud music, fast paced 3 minute video about seismic. After introducing them to the offshore world I just wanted to share a few experiences. On the whole, I’ve been very pleasantly surprised at how I’ve been treated off shore. Its much a more a family – with the guys acting as brothers, uncles or fatherly figures. However, I had one incident last fall that I shared with the crowd. Instead of recapping it, I’ll copy here what I wrote in my journal last October..

Today I had a pretty amazing conversation (this is amazing as in whoa - shocked, not whoa great). A trainee (mid-career hire, he is 35) George, from Romania. He is pretty quiet. The first part of the trip we talked some on the back deck, cracked some jokes. Everyone else was saying he was quiet, and I was sticking up for him. Over the last few days though he just wasn't talking to me and basically flat out ignoring me. Today we sort of confronted each other. and he basically flat out told me men are better than women and that no matter how hard a woman tries, as soon as she makes one mistake, that's it, she is not longer viewed as equal or able in a "man's" world. He also noted that smart women are the exception not the rule. He also noted that there may be a few high up women, but that people don't really respect them or view them as equal.

WHOA - I've never met anyone who actually thought this way. This whole conversation started when I said "thank you" to George for emptying a bucket of kerosene for me. He told me "you don't have to say thank you" I said “Oh why not" He said "because its not like this is a personal favor or anything".

whoa again. we also talked about how the trip was going. He doesn't think he will pass his appraisal. He rarely smiles, and doesn't really engage with people. This is a problem when the environment on the ship is really team oriented. He also says he has another job offer back in Romania. so he may not be back

An eye opener for sure. Thank goodness for Allan - I was able to talk to him about it. George is pretty cold to him as well.

The question to leave with is have you been discriminated against? In what way? How did you react. For me, my goal was to hear out George, I wanted to know why he thought this way. Me, arguing was only going to cement his beliefs even more.

Halfway between the coast and getting to Luanda via helicopter.



Helicopter view of Luanda on my way from the boat to the airport.


Me and the barnacles on the work boat. This was a brief break from hand ripping them off the tail end of our 8km cables. (for most of it we don't hand rip them off, we use tools we made, called the jaws of death)


Barnacles on the cable.

The Sea Life in Angola

Even with two Angolan stamps, one full page 15 day transit visa with a photo and a work visa is on the way, I have yet to step a foot further than the hot crumbling Lunada Airport. They started building a new airport with all the oil money, but they found diamonds as they were excavating, so that was halted. So it’s the old one. I’ve now been in and out of Angola twice, but only in her waters – south of Luanda. Visas have been an issue, so on the transit visa I wasn’t able to stay or go anywhere. Hopefully with the work visa (if it actually happens) I can see a bit more of Angola.

Here is what I can say about Angola:
There are lots of sharks, turtles, and barnacles and all three affect my everyday life here on board.
Sharks. They like to bite the cables (no kidding). And when they bite the cables, then sea water intrudes the cables and there are electrical faults. This unfortunately means that we have to stop production and either retrieve the cable(s) or go out in the work boat and change a cable section. If it’s in an easily accessible location and day light, this may only take an hour to rectify (although we have to stop production) however if its night or in a less accessible location, it could take a day or 2 (which equates to a lot of money lost).

Barnacles. Angola is barnacle heaven, or else the world’ breeding ground from barnacles. Fortunately for the barnacles we are going slow enough (less than 4.5 knots), that they can attach themselves to our streamers. Unfortunately for us, this causes us lots of problems. These problems include large amounts of drag, which creates large amounts of tension on the cables, and lots of noise on the hydrophones, which means lower data quality. Imagine 4 inch barnacle flowers flapping around on top of a microphone – its adds a lot of noise to the data. The tension is actually so great that we have to slow our speed down to 3.5 knots, which results in a loss of control of our cables and a tendency for them to cross each other, which as one might guess is not a good thing – 8 km spaghetti is never good.

Turtles. Turtles eat barnacles. So the turtles hang out around the cables and feast. Unfortunately they hit the cable when they eat the barnacles. It hits the cable and then the whole cable shakes and creates a lot of noise on the hydrophones. Its like a huge bang against a microphone. We can actually watch the turtles work their way down the streamer from our computer screens in the instrument room.

Of the three – sharks, barnacles, and turtles, barnacles are the most constant nuisance and they require us to go out and clean the streamers about 3-4 times a week. I love it, as I get to be out on the work boat, drive it sometimes and just spend the whole day outside. The smell though can get pretty bad – imagine lots of barnacles or any sea food sitting outside in the baking sun. Plus it’s a pretty messy job. We go along the cable at about 7 knots and the barnacles come flying off with our jaws of death tool. I think the pictures show just how many barnacles there are!