[QUOTE=Fraqrat;181786] They used an OSV for filming some of the rescue scenes offshore and barge up at the main location for close up rescue shots. I know someone who if it doesn’t get cut may have a bit part in the movie.[/QUOTE]
Fraq - was it the guy on the bridge talking about cutting coffee and taking up yoga? That struck as a little too real for acting.
Nah not that guy, he was definitely some hipster from the PNW. I sailed with the real Alwin Landry on his first boat breaking out as master. An old 180’ gulf stack tub that had that pneumatic autocator alarms system. What a piece of shit that thing was. We were working for Shell out in Green Canyon running the Mexican Food buffet field. All the platforms were named, salsa, burrito, enchilada, etc.
Anyway the authenticity took a hit when there were no spit bottles on either bridge. There was also no sighting of the water bottle in the shirt pocket spittoon trick.
I watched a bootleg so I’ll have to wait and find a better stream to see how many people I recognize in the back ground of the rescue scenes.
[QUOTE=Kennebec Captain;191542]
Good movie, difficult to watch at times.[/QUOTE]
I agree. I enjoyed the movie and alot of it hit close to home. Of course I prioritize shipboard safety and recognize how important it is. That said, it’s easy to become complacent about how significant the risk and dangers us mariners are constantly exposed to. This movie helped remind me that the shit can hit the fan at anytime.
Was a screwed up crew change called Montezuma’s revenge?
‘Naw skip, none of your reliefs showed up at the heliport. Y’all were first flight. If you can get them to Morgan City, we got a crew boat comin out day after tomorrow.’
I remember that hitch we made crew change at Bollinger Quick repair. That was pre security guard days. You could still sneak in the yard for a bump and run crew change before the foreman in the golf cart chased you off.
We were out in the field with a full load (1100 bbls) of old school Baroid diesel mud. We shut down the mains while hanging off a standby buoy for a few days. The rig calls us in for the mud and I can’t get the stbd engine running. Later determined to be a bad fuel pump. This is pre DP days so Alwin agrees to tie up to the platform on one engine if he can use the buoy to back down on. We get in there and hook up the mud hose but the pump doesn’t have enough ass to get the mud off the boat. The main transfer pump was half the size of what we use for a circ pump nowadays. The old H&P rig was sitting on top of the platform. It was 150+ feet of hose straight up to their manifold. That little bitty pump wasn’t gonna cut it. We got off the buoy and let the old HOS Samson get on and then we hung off him stern to stern. We pumped off all the mud to them so they could use their big pump PTO’d off their bow thruster to complete the transfer. We limped back to CPort on one engine and made crewchange the next morning.
Side note:
The assistant I was their to sign off was a lazy idiot. I gave him a bad eval and a vote of no confidence on the chief spot. He later claimed discrimination on me and they moved him up to chief on another boat due to lack of better qualified people. Months later he proves us all right by failing a piss test after getting hooked on the crack rock. They send his relief down to Cameron to catch the crewboat out. They don’t have a driver so in their infinite wisdom the office is trusting a known drug addict to drive the carry all back to the office. Of course he disappears with the truck until they find him passed out in the back seat of it in a bayou truck stop casino parking lot.
Just saw it myself.
Intense? A wee bit of an understatement…
The tension really starts building in the drill shack after the questionable negative-pressure tests are interpreted with rose-colored glasses and just keeps on ratcheting steadily upwards as the whole sad story unwinds. And it was definitely hard to watch. At points I felt downright queasy.
I’ve fortunately never had the experience of being witness to or participant in a real blowout. But it brought up old memories of sitting in the slings, listening to very nervous rig personnel experiencing “well control issues,” calling for more mud over the company set as they flared off gas hard enough to lightly toast some of the paint on the boat. It sounded like a 747 continuously taking off right over our heads. We always wondered if the back-down buoy would really snatch us away from the platform fast enough if the shit hit the fan and we had to hit the emergency releases for the stern lines.
It made me fully grasp the fact that we were (and obviously still are) often operating much closer to the edge than we realized or were willing to admit.
The outcome of the Macondo well showed that BP clearly had learned nothing from all of their previous managerial mistakes.
Anyway, I recommend seeing it on the big screen if you really want the “Full Monty” effect. Watching it any other way would drastically reduce its impact. And it deserves to be seen: it’s really a riveting story about an avoidable tragedy involving our own kind, and I caught no detectable odor of partisan politics. To my sometimes cynical eye the director left the left/right political baggage ashore and threw a heater belt-high, right down the middle of the plate.
Well done.
[QUOTE=Fraqrat;191599]I remember that hitch we made crew change at Bollinger Quick repair. That was pre security guard days. You could still sneak in the yard for a bump and run crew change before the foreman in the golf cart chased you off.
We were out in the field with a full load (1100 bbls) of old school Baroid diesel mud. We shut down the mains while hanging off a standby buoy for a few days. The rig calls us in for the mud and I can’t get the stbd engine running. Later determined to be a bad fuel pump. This is pre DP days so Alwin agrees to tie up to the platform on one engine if he can use the buoy to back down on. We get in there and hook up the mud hose but the pump doesn’t have enough ass to get the mud off the boat. The main transfer pump was half the size of what we use for a circ pump nowadays. The old H&P rig was sitting on top of the platform. It was 150+ feet of hose straight up to their manifold. That little bitty pump wasn’t gonna cut it. We got off the buoy and let the old HOS Samson get on and then we hung off him stern to stern. We pumped off all the mud to them so they could use their big pump PTO’d off their bow thruster to complete the transfer. We limped back to CPort on one engine and made crewchange the next morning.
Side note:
The assistant I was their to sign off was a lazy idiot. I gave him a bad eval and a vote of no confidence on the chief spot. He later claimed discrimination on me and they moved him up to chief on another boat due to lack of better qualified people. Months later he proves us all right by failing a piss test after getting hooked on the crack rock. They send his relief down to Cameron to catch the crewboat out. They don’t have a driver so in their infinite wisdom the office is trusting a known drug addict to drive the carry all back to the office. Of course he disappears with the truck until they find him passed out in the back seat of it in a bayou truck stop casino parking lot.[/QUOTE]. Were you working for Trico?
Think one step below Trico…Turdwater
[QUOTE=Fraqrat;191675]Think one step below Trico…Turdwater[/QUOTE]
Turdwater!
When I saw the name, I googled Sweetwater City. I thought it might have grown into a micro metropolis of some minor repute by now but I came up blank.
Some time ago, I was trying to get out of long hitches and into rotations with more time at home in order to please you know who.
I wanted to keep sailing but didn’t know which way to turn.
I’d been warned by a friend to stay away from the Gulf but I’m an adventurous sort so naturally I shrugged off his advice.
I hired on as crew boat master for Turdwater and after what seemed like a week of indoc, was taken on an endless drive out to a little canal crowded with shoulder to shoulder crew boats. They called the place Sweetwater City.
I thought I’d landed on the set of a remake of Apocalypse Now. The beach was littered with palleted freight and a few white office type trailers sat in the background as if they ‘d been half hazardly dropped there by heavy lift helicopters on their way to somewhere more important . Sweetwater City my ass. The water was brown and there was no city. The raccoons patrolling the field of dumpsters were as big and mean as wild boars and the way they looked at you said "don’t you even fuckin’ think about getting any closer."
Somebody please tell me I didn’t dream this.
[QUOTE=Lee Shore;191678]
Somebody please tell me I didn’t dream this.[/QUOTE]
Perhaps you did. Did the name on your sea bag say “Kurtz”? Was Wagner’s “Flight of the Valkyries” playing over the yard’s PA speakers?
Charlie don’t surf.
Did it smell like victory?
[QUOTE=captjacksparrow;191684]Did it smell like victory?[/QUOTE]
It did until a coonass deckhand sneezed in my gumbo and we were dispatched to a rig before I could escape.
You talking about the Talens Fuel Dock in Freshwater City? It’s just south of the Doh Long bridge…
Was it just like Disney land
[QUOTE=Fraqrat;191688]You talking about the Talens Fuel Dock in Freshwater City? It’s just south of the Doh Long bridge[/QUOTE]
FRESHWATER City! that must be it! Thank you. I knew it wasn’t a dream.
[QUOTE=Fraqrat;191688]You talking about the Talens Fuel Dock in Freshwater City?[/QUOTE]
[U]FRESH[/U]WATER CITY! Bingo. I don’t remember a fuel dock but looking at Google maps, that has to be it. It was a short run to the Gulf. Shame on all you naysayers…
As soon as we got back there from the rig I got off that boat and never looked back.
[QUOTE=Lee Shore;191695][U]FRESH[/U]WATER CITY! Bingo. I don’t remember a fuel dock but looking at Google maps, that has to be it. It was a short run to the Gulf. Shame on all you naysayers…
As soon as we got back there from the rig I got off that boat and never looked back.[/QUOTE]
I figured that was what you meant instead of Sweetwater. . . good description. . . have been down there a few times. No good way to get there from Houston, or anywhere. . . . .and it seems that once you turn of the black top, you are only half way there. . .
[QUOTE=cmakin;191703]I figured that was what you meant instead of Sweetwater. . . good description. . . have been down there a few times. No good way to get there from Houston, or anywhere. . . . .and it seems that once you turn of the black top, you are only half way there. . .[/QUOTE]
I remember having to wait for the good part of a day after calling the office and requesting a ride out of there.
Were you working for TRICO?