December 5, 2013: Blowin' In The Wind

365 Project, Day 131

Here is my day 131 submission to my 365Project:

The ship was conducting helicopter operations today so the heli-deck had to be cleared (meaning we were banished to the bridge and couldn't work up there until these operations were over!) and all the safety equipment prepared for a safe landing. one important piece of this safety equipment is the windsock, which the deck crew put up and take down before and after helo operations. 

After the helo operations were over and I was back conduct ing my observations, and the guys were busy putting the helo equipment away, the bosun came running over to me on the heli-deck asking me to take photos of him posing with the wind sock (I told you he likes to have his photo taken...see my post with another photo of him from November 30th) and I thought these photos were pretty great, I especially love his expression in this photo (can you say swimsuit model?!):

Wind sock model...Jose :)

Fun fact of the day:
According to the FAA (Federal Aviation Association) a wind sock should be fully extended  at 15 knots (28 km/h, 17 mph) and a 3 knot (5.6 km/h, 3.5 mph) breeze will cause the windsock to orient itself to the wind.

Here are some more great shots from the windsock photo-shoot, our other smiley bosun and some determined artesanal fishermen fishing will offshore.

Posing with the wind sock and Kuito FPSO in the background

Another fun photo with the wind sock :)

Our other bosun...always smiling while he works :)

Yet again...some artesanal fishermen doing there thing about 35 miles offshore!

The artesanal fishermen taking advantage of Kuito Calm Bouy as an anchorage...and looking rather small!

November 27, 2013: Samco Amazon and BBLT

365 Project, Day 124

Here is my day 124 submission to my 365Project:

There was a tanker working in the area today; the Samco Amazon was filling up off the Kuito Calm Bouy and Kuito FPSO. You can see it's stern here with BBLT in the background. We've had to move our operations while the tanker was filling for 36 hours. 

If you look closely you can see a small brown object in the water under BBLT (the rig)...this is actually a small, wooden motor vessel full of local fishermen. We've seen a few of these boats around recently...it's quite the contrast seeing these small scale, artesanal fishermen 40 miles offshore doing their hand line fishing around these massive offshore structures!

Fact of the day:
The Benguela, Belize, Lobito and Tomboco oil fields form the BBLT development which lies offshore Angola in an area called the Congo Basin. 

Read more about BBLT at this Offshore Technology webpage.