Work

The Western Horizon weighs about 1500 tons, has two 1000 hp V16 caterpillar engines to drive it, and floats around the world looking for signs of oil in the ocean bed. To do that it drags around two long thin tubes, full of microphones. These are called 'Cables', and these pick up the echos from the loud bangs we make using the 'Airguns". I operate the two huge air compressors on board. Each produces around 1500cfm, at a pressure of around 2000 psi.

The Horizon is the ship I have worked on for most of the last seven years. I've been away a few times, to work different operations in Brunei, the USA, India etc, but always seemed to come back to this old tub.

This is the Western Horizon in drydock in Singapore, in the summer of 1999. We spent two weeks there before setting off to Saudi Arabia.
Now that's a oddball place if ever there was one!.

In the photo the ship has just had a new coat of antifoul, which is the red paint on the bottom, new propeller shaft seals and a few zinc anodes attached, so it don't all rust away overnight.

The TV room.
This is where the most important activity goes on: Kicking back and whileing away the long offshift hours. We usually work 12 hours on, then 12 off. Seven days a week, for six weeks. Shifts change are done at midnight.
Boredom is not a big issue, as we have exercise machines, a helicopter deck to walk around, personal web sites to build, and over a 1000 videos and VCD's.
The ship has e mail and internet facility, so communications with friends and family is no problem. Not so in the old days of snail mail, where letters could take six weeks to get to the vessel.

Last year we went to Algeria to work, and passed through Malta for crew change. Parts of the island are like a tourist trap beach resort, but it does have some pleasant areas To the right is the entrance to the docks, and below is Valetta town. Some of these buildings are hundreds of years old.

This is about one half of one of the giant air compressors that I run and maintain on the Western Horizon. They have a 1000 hp Caterpillar engine, and a 3 stage LMF compressor unit. First stage is by Kaiser screw, the second two stages are by LMF V4 piston compressor.
It produces around 1500 cubic feet per minute at 2000 psi.

Some of the boys out in the Zodiac, for a joy ride. This thing has a gutless 36 horse power diesel outboard, made by Yanmar, that barely propels it through the water at a walking pace. But it's safe, as it doesn't use petrol. Oh yeah, really? It weighs three times as much as a real gas engined outboard would.

Strange things sometimes get caught on our equpment when we go to weird countries.
Imagine having this beast caught on your equipment!!

The Horizon "Gun Deck" where the compressed air is used to make the loud bang that the cables detect and record. The bang echoes back from the depth of the ocean bed and will eventually tell us what lies down there. The "Guns" are the shiny items hanging from the chains, and they usually float around behind the vessel.

This is the Recording Room, where all the electronic data from the cables and all the navigation input is recorded and organised. There are about 30 computers here, and "enough monitors to choke a bloody goat" as somebody once observed.