Extract core from part of furling line so that it lies better on drum?

[srm]

mmmmm

Seismic work :

I sailed with CGG (Steam guns) and Western Geophysical (Air guns( ....

Even did Sub hunting in Fjords with short cable with CGG for Nato. But normal was the 3km cable ..... California Coast, Gulf of Mexico, Mediterranean, North Sea, East and West Africa.

Me too, also! North Sea and a land crew in Dorset. Horizon Exploration was the outfit I was with, back in about 1974-1976. But I was on the interpretation side; fieldwork was for experience and to fill gaps, not my career.

I was with SSL in the North Sea, using gas guns and around one mile of cable. Two summers while studying for a degree. Company personnel officer told me I would be the lowest form of life on the ship, but being a temp summer job I finished up working around all the departments. Even played with what was probably one of the first sat navs in the North Sea, The old US Navy system getting a running fix every hour or so (if we were lucky)from a single sat in polar orbit. A four man cabin had to be stripped out and fitted with air conditioning to take the racks of electronics. We talked to it using a massive teletype machine.
Once graduated I got a job as a trainee hydrographic surveyor within a unit of the Institute of Oceanographic Sciences, having discovered that the surveyors spent most of their time at sea in the warm and dry.

 

[Refueler]

I was with SSL in the North Sea, using gas guns and around one mile of cable. Two summers while studying for a degree. Company personnel officer told me I would be the lowest form of life on the ship, but being a temp summer job I finished up working around all the departments. Even played with what was probably one of the first sat navs in the North Sea, The old US Navy system getting a running fix every hour or so (if we were lucky)from a single sat in polar orbit. A four man cabin had to be stripped out and fitted with air conditioning to take the racks of electronics. We talked to it using a massive teletype machine.
Once graduated I got a job as a trainee hydrographic surveyor within a unit of the Institute of Oceanographic Sciences, having discovered that the surveyors spent most of their time at sea in the warm and dry.

Transit ..... which then progressed to the TV screen Magnavox ... we tested prototypes on the Shell LNG ships running Brunei to Japan.

CGG (allied to French Military) had Syledis Nav stations. We could tell when Rigs skidded the drill towers - it was so precise. CGG was sold of later and amalgamated with another lot.

The Steam Guns we had (Starjet) produced clean shots in the water, highest power of any and no need to program out the noise as with Air Guns ... being steam based - it was water in water ....

 

[AntarcticPilot]

Transit ..... which then progressed to the TV screen Magnavox ... we tested prototypes on the Shell LNG ships running Brunei to Japan.

CGG (allied to French Military) had Syledis Nav stations. We could tell when Rigs skidded the drill towers - it was so precise. CGG was sold of later and amalgamated with another lot.

The Steam Guns we had (Starjet) produced clean shots in the water, highest power of any and no need to program out the noise as with Air Guns ... being steam based - it was water in water ....

I was with SSL in the North Sea, using gas guns and around one mile of cable. Two summers while studying for a degree. Company personnel officer told me I would be the lowest form of life on the ship, but being a temp summer job I finished up working around all the departments. Even played with what was probably one of the first sat navs in the North Sea, The old US Navy system getting a running fix every hour or so (if we were lucky)from a single sat in polar orbit. A four man cabin had to be stripped out and fitted with air conditioning to take the racks of electronics. We talked to it using a massive teletype machine.
Once graduated I got a job as a trainee hydrographic surveyor within a unit of the Institute of Oceanographic Sciences, having discovered that the surveyors spent most of their time at sea in the warm and dry.

I was on "Oil Hunter" in 1975 in the North Sea - and I remember the Magnavox system! But the best bit was a display that kept a running position - and watching it jump by 50-100 metres whenever a fix came in was magic. In those days, a fix that was good to better than 50m was amazing. The only thing that was better in those days was a trisponder system and that required 3 surveyed in transmitters on shore. Crashed at least once a watch and the senior observer had to enter a long string of hex digits to reboot it. My lowly job was changing tapes on the DFS4, and cable wrangling as required. I boarded ship full of bravado that I was immune to seasickness (after all, I was an experienced yottie even then!). An enclosed instrument room just about on the centre of every possible motion soon removed the bravado - as well as the contents of my stomach. For my first watch, the routine was change tape - dash to heads - back to change next tape. After that, I meekly asked the ship's doctor for whatever he had. We used air-guns - but they ran 24/7 while shooting, and the whole boat (a converted stern trawler) seemed to jump every time they fired! We ran 6 hours on, 6 off, so you pretty quickly got to a state where you could sleep through anything. It also worked out that one watch (mine!) rarely saw daylight, because there were no dog watches to shift the watches through the day.

 

[Refueler]

CGG ship "Orion Arctic" ..... we had completed the 'shoot' of California coast ... based out of Ureka when in north part ... San Francisco when in southern part. Interesting that the dock we used in San Fran was an ex military dock and was used later by Mythbusters for their large area events ...
Anyway ... we rec'd orders to proceed south for Panama to transit through to Gulf of Mexico. Ships fueled up in San Fran ... and of we went ...
Master : Spanish (grandson of a deposed Spanish Count)
Myself and other 'Mate" Brits
Engr's Spanish
Crew a mix of Spanish and Cape Verdes

The Seismic Crew reduced to just a couple of French guys to maintain the HP mainframes and gear on board.

We were about 1 day out and Master and I were chatting ... quietly steaming along ... beautiful weather ... and we had an idea ... the Ch Engr was quite a 'lively' character ... prone to flinging arms around and getting all flustered ... The idea was to convince him of impossible ships orders .....
On board - our official communications system was teletype ..... which was linked to our RF gear. We used to receive a short link message every 6 hours which confirmed system OK. We could send back message as well via the typewriter board. Everything would paper print.
Imagine ... 900ton converted stern trawler ... fueled up for San Fran to Panama .... in fact we were full tanks due to full speed orders.
I sat down with the typewriter and created on the machine a full set of orders to change destination to Hawaii ...... also requesting ETA etc etc.

Myself and Master then later at dinner in the messhall were laughing and talking about the new orders in front of Ch Engr - who we then gave a copy of the 'orders' .... which we had also added the steaming time and distance to ...

He went BALLISTIC !! He must have used every language he knew exclaiming we did not have enough fuel .... no way could we get there ....
We could not sit him down or calm him ... he was going nuts !!

We decided that it was best to leave and approach him later .....

Few hours later he had calmed down and we told him it was all a joke ... but he held up the printed 'orders' saying not possible - he had proof in his hands ....

That evening on the bridge - I had to create a new set of orders cancelling our Hawaii orders and reverting to Panama ....

We gave to Ch Engr who then sank into chair breathing a sigh of relief.

He never believed we had created those messages ... to the day that ship was sold off - he insisted they were real.

Regarding sale of the ship. After we completed a short shoot based out of Galveston ... the ship was sold to a UK outfit. They needed crew to sail her back to UK. Myself and one Engr stayed with the skeleton crew they sent out ... as we knew the ship.
I drew up the best route to cross Atlantic given the time of year ... but UK owners insisted we take the northern route after Florida straits ... I tried to get them to change but the new Master - ex Cargo Ship and first time Command just agreed and so srated a most uncomfortable trip.
We had water slopping about the cabins from the constant battering in the heavy weather ... every day Owners on radio saying they had info weather would improve ... after listening to this cr*p for a few days ... I asked for the source of their info ..... no kidding - guy answered - Newspaper stop press column ... the little box picture they used to have.
We finally made it to Falmouth where we were put into Dry Dock.
New owners came on and finally believed us about all the water and conditions we suffered on that crossing. I was asked if I would stay and join their company .... I think you can imagine my reply.

My next vessel was a converted Minesweeper - Lucien Beaufort ... for CGG ..... joined in Abidjan Dry Dock ... shot small job of there ... then up into North Sea based out of Aberdeen and Haugesund. One memorable part was we moved up to Lerwick for a few days - which had Midsummer Festival smack in the middle ... what a party ...

Apologies for thread drift ...... Memories !!

 

[Refueler]

The job in North Sea I did not like :

Drill rigs would have us with short cable at a set distance of steam past as they dropped charges down the 'hole'. They would then detonate the charge and our cable would pick up the blast info. This could go on for hours ....

 

[srm]

An enclosed instrument room just about on the centre of every possible motion soon removed the bravado - as well as the contents of my stomach.

I think the seismic ships cured me of sea sickness. My first weeks were bad, but the attitude was "you are here to work, get up". After ten days or so we were back in Aberdeen for stores and sending records for analysis, and I headed for the nearest chemist for suitable tablets. The ship's smell below, a combination of galley, engine room, and flushing deck (kerosene from working on the cables) took a lot of getting used to and would instantly kill a good appetite after comming off a shift on deck. I finally realised that I was over it when working in the plotting cabin, behind the bridge on the ex-stern trawler. There was a long athwartship table with seismic print outs etc. One shift I was surprised when they all flew at me onto the deck. Annoyed, I just put them all back and continued working only to have a repeat a few minutes later. Looking out of the window at the horizon I understood why everything kept flying around.

However, when joining Hunting Surveys some years later I had to fill in a form. The one question I remember was "Are you immune to sea sickness", my reply "is anyone?"

 

[Refueler]

Of course what did not help ..... if you could set the shoot lines along the swell - you could continue shoot longer than if you were at 90 to the swell. That was one aspect that few could 'stomach' ... being up on the bridge as 'driver' had advantage of seeing horizon (well some of the time) but disadvantaged as higher up in the pendulum stakes ...
Mission guys were down in the converted holds ......

The converted stern trawler was best - but that converted Minesweeper was narrow and a real pig ...

She had one other 'quirk' as well .... engine speed was VOLTAGE control not AMPAGE .... yes she was Diesel-Electric - she had same as fitted to some French Railways engines ...
That Volt system used to BANG / CRACK ... make loud noises as it was used ...... engineers hated it .... not only the safetry aspect of it !! but it was a devil to set the ship speed for the shoot .....

This may interest some Yottie Navigators ........ >>

It was necessary to calibrate the cable sensors for direction at various times and this was done basically comparing data back to 'room' + hopefully radar spot from the reflector on the tail buoy and someone like me hanging on for dear life on the aft boat deck. Standing on centre line - so I am in line with cable going off stern. I then have to use a sextant to measure horizontal angle between a marked post at extreme stern 1/4 - back to that tail end buoy 2kms astern ..... NOT an easy task.