Refueler
Well-known member
I was with S&A Geophysical, which became Horizon Exploration. The vessel was "Oil Hunter"; a converted stern trawler. I still have sharp memories of retrieving the cable while waves were washing up the stern shute! Trisponder systems were the gold standard for position fixing at the time; again, I used such a system in 1983 (Motorola, I think); the Transit system was used to fix two of the base stations.
That was the beauty of Syledis .... it was a self contained triangulation system. CGG was very closely connected to French Military and it was not unknown when shooting in North Sea - when back in hbr - to be asked to run short cable in a Fjord or coast to look for unusual returns. Later we found out - we were looking for submarines - usually a Soviet ...
We believe we detected one in Hardanger Fjord ...
Sicily - one of the boats was sent down there and the Chef de Mission and guys went ashore to place the Transponder on the Spot Height marks - all agreed with authorities.
BUT ..
First spot height marker had a house illegally built on it .. so we 'rented' the roof and offset the geostats by the house height !!
Second spot was up a hillside that was a 'Mafia' area ... so we had to BUY the cart and donkey to get the gear up there ... pay the local Don a silly fee .. then 'donate' the cart and donkey back to him ... we also had to pay for him to provide 'guards' for the first two ...
Third was placed without any hassle !
Libya ... shooting along the coast - Libya provided a guard boat that basically kept us out of mined areas. They wouldn't give us the area co-ords .. so we would be shooting and then get called ... don't go there etc.
One day the guard boat motors off without any word of goodbye or anything .. we carry on shooting - praying no mines .
Shortly after - a manky fishing boat appears and heads towards us. We get out the Flare gun as usual after making the usual VHF calls ... FB keeps coming - so the Chef de Mission wants to fire the gun instead of me ... (as 'drivers' we usually did all that .. ) .. so he goes out wheelhouse door ... cocks the pistol ... and fires - but as he fired - he dropped his hand ...
The flare instead of going up up and away ... arcs beautifully down onto the deck of the fishing boat ... causing everyone on board to scatter - while this flare bangs around the deck trying to find way off !
Finally the flare fizzles out and the 'crew' appear from their hiding places ... couple of them go to a manky old tarpaulin and drag it off ... a bloody 50 cal machine gun gets pointed at us and all the shouting arabic ...
We hastily called Libyan Control and managed to defuse the situation ...
Yep - it was our replacement guard boat !