[IMG_6738] I attended the sea trials of the Smit-Lloyd 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 and 14. In good seaman’s tradition number 13, which could bring disaster to the ship, was skipped. Those sea trials on a rough North Sea were often not exactly for the faint hearted. Scores of landlubbers from the yard and othe…

We had guys who pretended to be helpful and asked such victims: Do you know what really helps against sea sickness? Yes, they were very eager to know. You must tie a raw herring on a string, lower it down your throat and move it slowly up and down. And then the same moment they were gone…

[image] BMCSRetired: Companies all over the world Your “all over the world” may be a bit limited??

The North Sea offshore oil and gas boom started in the sixties. As at the start there was little knowledge in Europe about this new kind of business Americans, who had ample experience from drillings in the GOM, were called in to help out. It was a colorful lot with Texas drawls, enormous boots, hat…

The old timers in the GOM (there are a few still around). When I returned to the oilfield in 2007 from the USCG, I ran into a few. Most had retired or moved to the office. I sailed with a couple while studying for my Master’s license. They are shells of their former selves from my memories of th…

In the early 1970s Brown & Root took one of their lay barges (B 352 I believe) and a burying barge from GoM over to the North Sea to work on the Forties pipeline. They also brought a couple of West India Line boats as pipe carriers: [1480767] I met one of the Captains that had been on the WIL bo…

These are the stories I like to hear.

[image] ombugge: When the first autumn storm rolled in off the Atlantic the B 352 was caught flat footed. What you describe is fully recognizable. We knew the local circumstances but they just wouldn’t listen to us. They always knew better, we were insignificant nitwits, what an arrogance. Th…

Then there was the guys from the GOM who had seen the film “South Pacific “ and were all prepared to work in the Great Southern Basin south of New Zealand. The inhabitants of the port of Bluff had never seen such colourful shirts and after a very brief period would never see again.

[IMG_6749] One of the most notorious regions for rogue or freak waves is the southern coast of South Africa where the five-knot west-going Agulhas Current meets strong westerlies from the Southern Ocean. On 31 December 1970 the Smit-Lloyd 102 was on its way to Port Elisabeth with a load of casing …

[image] Dutchie: This safety record is remarkable if compared with the situation in the GOM where eight offshore supply vessels capsized and sank between 1956 and 1963. Interesting in this respect is this gCaptain thread. One of the causes of the losses was that the mud tank was mounted on the …

Smit-Lloyd supply vessels

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Smit-Lloyd supply vessels

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