Crossing the pacific!!!

Ok so those of you who have been on here for a while know I work in the evil oil field. Well since November I have been working in a project off the coast of New Zealand on a brand new ultra deep water drill ship and our project here has come to an end. Tomorrow we will head out towards the Gulf of Mexico where our next project is. We will "steam" (more like electrify) across the South Pacific to Chile where we will navigate through the Magellan Straights coming out in the Atlantic Ocean. Once we make it to the Atlantic we sail north to Bahia Blanca, Argentina and this is where I will be getting off the ship and on a plane for home. The ship will refuel and then continue to the gulf where I will meet it. Should be a heck of a trip and I keep hearing awesome things about these Magellan Straights so hopefully I can snap some pictures.


Just a little info on the ship.
Noble Bob Douglas is a 6th Gen ultra deep water drill ship. Left the Hyundai ship yard in October of last year. We are around 739 ft long and 120 ft wide and draft 40 ft. We have 6 retractable azimuth thrusters that will power us to a blistering 11 knot too speed lol. Don't think we will be breaking any speed records! Should take us 25 days to get to Argentinahttp://img.tapatalk.com/d/14/03/21/2upype5y.jpghttp://img.tapatalk.com/d/14/03/21/6upu8u4a.jpg


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Sounds cool - what an adventure!

Make sure they are using our BOP's!!!!

Drill baby drill!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Stay safe.

6 retractable azimuth thrusters for 11 knots. That has to be a lot of weight you are moving. Have a safe trip.

That's a long move, must be a good contract.

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Originally Posted by jester

6 retractable azimuth thrusters for 11 knots. That has to be a lot of weight you are moving. Have a safe trip.

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Yeah, each thruster is 6,700 hp too but this hull is built with stability in mind first and speed second. I think our displacement is around 170,000 tons, nothing is light in the oil field.


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Can ya surf it?

I'll check out the wake for you tomorrow...


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Wow man you have a really interesting job I tell ya. What happens when you hit storms and rough seas while on that thing? And what in the world do you do on a ship for 25 days? I imagine you're working during the day to at least pass some time?

Very cool thanks for sharing. Makes my desk job seem so boring.

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Originally Posted by Cigars n scotch

Wow man you have a really interesting job I tell ya. What happens when you hit storms and rough seas while on that thing? And what in the world do you do on a ship for 25 days? I imagine you're working during the day to at least pass some time?

Very cool thanks for sharing. Makes my desk job seem so boring.

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Well in the case of a storm and rough seas we are equipped with some weather radar equipment so we can get a pretty good idea of the weather where we are headed. We can make slight course and speed variations to try and avoid major weather events but in the event of something we can't dodge then we just deal with it. Before we left our last location the crew was going around the whole ship tieing down anything that could move or fall over due to rough seas and all the drip pipe has been laid down out of the derrick to lower our center or gravity. It is a pretty big ship so we can take some rough weather, if the waves start washing over the main deck my personal strategy is just to stay inside lol.

As far as what I will do for 25 days, we have some maintenance on our equipment that needs to be done, I have made up a check list and myself and my helper are just working our way through it a little a day. I have 4 million dollar cement pump that needs to pur like a kitten by the time we get to our next location so today we will actually be tearing down and rebuilding an 18,000 psi high pressure pump.

David, that is damn cool!!! It's pretty awesome to see all the different things people do for a living.

Fun times. My sister started with Exxon and now works for Anadarko. She's the one that finds the oil so you guys can put your rigs on it. :-)

Also have another friend that puts up large rigs. He's in TX all the time (and AK and Mexico). Interesting stuff.

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Originally Posted by Cigars n scotch

Wow man you have a really interesting job I tell ya.

Very cool thanks for sharing. Makes my desk job seem so boring.

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^^ This. Definitely this.

So an update with the trip. We got into some rough seas last night, aprox 30 ft swells and upon hitting one the shackle on life boat two broke. So we have been shut down for about 10 hours while trying to figure out what to do with the life boat. The decision was just made to get back underway and hope the lifeboat holds on till we get somewhere that they can get it off safely. If it comes loose then we will be leaving a large souvenir in the South Pacific...


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Crazy! Stay safe and keep us updated.

can i be your helper?..im good with tools haha

hope y'all don't need the broke LIFE boat to save someone's life


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Originally Posted by jpetty3023

hope y'all don't need the broke LIFE boat to save someone's life


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We shouldn't. We have 6 life boats that hold up to 75 people each as well as 4 large life rafts with about the same capacity and a bunch or smaller life rafts around the ship. We have a max crew capacity of 210 and I think there is only about 150 on board right now


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Wife and I watched Captain Phillips last night, are your pirate cages locked? :) :) :). Good movie if you haven't seen it

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Originally Posted by Cigars n scotch

Wife and I watched Captain Phillips last night, are your pirate cages locked? :) :) :). Good movie if you haven't seen it

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Agreed, that was a great movie, but you may want to wait until you're safely back on dry land before you catch it David!!

Yeah I watched captain Philips, it was a good movie. I'm
not too worried about pirates down where we around. It's 1500 miles to closest land and I think that is antartica, not 100% sure but I don't think there are a lot of pirates around there! When the ship left the ship yard in Korea and sailed for NZ they did have security on board for the pirate risk


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Ok so those of you with Google earth might find this interesting. We started at 45 42' S 172 47' E and have sailed where we are now at 52 31.4' S 75 32.5' W just outside the straights of Megellan. We will stop here for about a day while we try to recover our life boat that is half hanging off the side and wait for the harbor pilot to show up tomorrow to guide us through the straights making the passage from Pacific ocean to Atlantic Ocean.

4,500 miles down, around another 1,500 to go

This morning we came outside to find all the brown mountains are not white. And then it started snowing on us. It is cold.

if you need security let me know. haha

Well we have crossed the straits and have made it to the Atlantic. Our current coordinates are 52 21.1' S 069 03.0' W for those of you with google earth. I took some pictures while in the Straits that I will post as soon as I can get them on PhotoBucket

So yesterday I got off the ship after a rough 8 hour boat ride! Here are some pictures on the striats of Magellan
http://i1130.photobucket.com/albums/...psouggiqef.jpg

http://i1130.photobucket.com/albums/...psokpgqtyp.jpg

http://i1130.photobucket.com/albums/...pswek5oy9o.jpg

http://i1130.photobucket.com/albums/...psutnxzukc.jpg

I am now at the airport headed home and as soon as I get home it's off to the river for some Moomba time!





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Cool. Thanks for sharing. Safe travel home.