( First written April 5th 2005)

Greetings Peeps, 

I’m back on dry land in sunny Sfax. I arrived back on the beach last Tuesday as the Floatel was completing anchor handling and preparing to leave for Gibralter. Her first leg on the trip back to the North Sea.

The captain and chief officer conducted a stowaway check before leaving. I offered to accompany them. Unfortuantely they saw through my plan and made me leave anyway, but it was worth a go.

The Last Night

The last night on the barge was surreal. We never had more than 280 people on board, including the barge crew, on a vessel designed to sleep upto 530. By the last night, we were down to a total compliment of around 50. We really were a bit thin on the ground. If you planned it correctly, it was possible to walk all around the vessel and never see another soul.

I had split my time between being on deck and on the bridge watching the anchor handling operations. It was quite interesting for about 20 minutes, but its not really a spectator sport. It also went on for about 3 days and so soon became a bit samey. Instead, I decided to have a final session in the gym around 21.00hrs.

Cabaret

I was happily working away on my lonesome until nearly 21.30 when a group of Half a dozen Tunisians came in. These were the last Tunisians on the barge and were part of the catering team. As there was no night shift, they decided to have a farewell party and much to my surprise put on a cassete tape of incredibly loud Tunisian Diddly diddly music. They then began dancing with each other. These were 6 grown men, quite happily dancing away in a  very Arabic stylee and having a rare old time.

I did find it a tad distracting. There I was, fighting the rowing machine, whilst a fat bloke with a bushy moustache shimmied past me. He was happily waiving his T shirt about, exposing a rather ample belly whilst smiling and, most alarmingly of all, winking at me. At this point I decided that I really am quite fit enough and decided to have an early night away from Gyrating Tunisians. They really are an odd bunch.

Anchor Handling

My cabin was on the seaward side of the barge at the rear, not far from the anchor winches. So not a lot of sleep was had. As I tried to sleep, tonnes and tonnes of anchor chain were being brought in. In fact at one point, I was nearly bounced out of my bunk. The whole of the accomodation was jumping around as the winches laboured to heave the chains on board. Fortunately it all went quiet at around 04.00hrs in the morning. With the lull, I managed to grab a few hours before getting up and reluctantly completing my packing. 

The Last Supper

It was noticable that the quality of the food improved dramatically once the majority of the guys had been demobbed. On that last day, for lunch we had a choice of fillet steak, lamb cutlets, steak pie or lasagne. There was fresh fruit juice, fesh melon, strawberries, apples, oranges, bananas, crumble and custard or Jelly and ice cream. We hadn’t seen fresh juice for months, the ice cream had dried up a week or so earlier and fillet steak? A proper treat.

What was really telling was the elevenses. Cream dounuts. Fresh, cream doughnuts. And toast. I hadn’t seen a slice of toast since I was last home. I had had to fly an emergency food chopper out only a few days before because we had run out of milk, eggs and yogurts and the locals were threatening to riot, yet here we were eating cream doughnuts. Hmmm. Saving the best for themselves. Cheek. I have been paying £23.50 per man per day for food and they kept running out of milk – a fact made worse as it was all UHT milk so its not as if it was going to go off. I feel a snotogram to Prosafe coming on.

All Good Things

And so, At 17.00 hrs on Tuesday, I boarded the chopper and flew back to Sfax. A short drive later and I was back in BG Guebiba village. Sitting in the bedroom of my little bungalow, the three weeks I had to go before flying home seemed like a life sentence. In fact, next day in the office there were a lot of glum faces, all talking about the good old days from last week on the Safe Scandinavia. Sigh.

Completion

On the bright side, the actual work itself is going very well. It seems we will achieve comissioning this weekend and are planning to hand the new module over to the operations group tomorrow. This is a whole day ahead of the scheduled date. This may not sound like a big deal, but on this project, hitting dates has been a rarity. In fact getting them to be within the same month is quite unusual. So being ahead, if only by a day is a real achievement and I am very pleased with the efforts of the guys.

Most of my team will be leaving over the next 10 days. I am keeping a squad to support the start up activities and to complete the documentation handover. Essentially however, by Monday, its no longer really my problem and I can begin to relax a bit. Of course on the down side, that means the days are really going to start and drag. Then again, I have lots of exciting issues to deal with.

Closing out contracts from vendors and support groups. Reconciling materials against remaining close out work packs. Completing handover dossiers, Writing a wrap up report and kicking off the lessons learned. I expect that particualr gem to run to several volumes. On the upside, I am trying to orgnanise a weekend away for the Project team who will be remaining to close the project out. With luck, next weekend, its Djerba here we come. Sadly, I’ve already been told that its doubtful I will be allowed to go. Apparantly, I’m too important to be allowed time off away from site at this critical time. ie, if it goes wrong its my fault so fix it. Djerba is an island about 100 kms south of Sfax and is supposed to be the the most beautiful place in Tunisia. We aren’t expecting much and its doubtful anyone will be looking beyond the hotel bar, but at least it’s a nice venue.

Back in the Routine

Meanwhile back in Sfax, I’m getting back into the routine of living on the beach. Trying to break the new revised sandwich code in a vain attempt to get the filling of my choice. Since I was last here, they have added an extra filling. Its described as Salami. Its a bright pink, almost fluorescent colour, has the texture of soft plastic and has had all traces of taste chemically removed. I dread to think what its actually made from and question if it has any actual calorific or nutritional value. In fairness, I didn’t actually order the salami, I was after the chicken, but this pink stuff arrived. By a process of elimination, reviewing the menu, I concluded it must be the salami. Its probably supplied by Air France as its about down to their standards.

Dodgy Weather

So what else has been happening. We had some dreadful weather over the last couple of weeks. A few Mondays ago, I awoke on the barge, looked out of the window and had a strange déjà vu feeling. I was convinced I was back in the North Sea in November. I mean this couldn’t have been the meditierranean. The previous day had been warm and very sunny. This day was a dull grey, blowing a hooley and with 3m seas.  It was truly horrid and lasted for nearly 4 days. Our poor standby vessel simply couldn’t hack those conditions and had to run for cover. We heard later that one of the crew was thrown into a metal bollard on the ship by a particualrly vicious swell and has broken his back. Just shows that working these boats really is dangerous. Even here. I certainly wouldn’t recommend a cruise around the Med at this time of the year.

Old Friend

On the upside, I got my Audi A4 back after it had been taken off me. I was very pleased until I relaised I had only got it because its been pranged. We have a series of covered car shelters here and the rules are you have to reverse park. Jim, the gent who had been driving my car had managed to reverse into one of the metal uprights supporting the roof. So I now have a huge dent in the nearside rear quarter. He got a brand new A4 to replace my dented one the day I came back to the beach. So, it was with a certain satisfaction I saw he had done something similar with his new car. It now has a nasty graze along the length of the drivers side door and front quarter. Obviously that nasty post jumped out at him again. Ha. Serves him right.

And that’s about it at the moment. I’m contemplating a shopping expedition this afternoon to buy some fresh fruit. I may go to the gym. I have a DVD to watch, so there’s still lots of excitement left. I have also started scratching the days off on my cell, sorry bedroom wall. Only 2 weeks, 2 days, 9 hrs and 6 minutes to go before I’m back home.

So, until next week, please send the red cross parcels and if you can get a file in a cake please do.

Cheers, 

Graham