Crew change
Crew change on the drill ship Danwood Ice. This is a Puma helicopter as contracted by Britow Helicopters. Previously Shell used their company owned Sikorsky which are much larger. A drill ship has its own propeller. Some modern drill ships can remain on location during drilling operations by using a computer controlled device which activates the powerful side thrusters. The Danwood Ice used anchors. The moon pool is located in the centre. This drill ship has a sauna with a small swimming pool on board! The accommodations were luxurious and the food was good. It has a free Coke dispenser and an ice-cream machine in the galley!
Crew change on the drill ship Danwood Ice. This is a Puma helicopter as contracted by Britow Helicopters. Previously Shell used their company owned Sikorsky which are much larger. A drill ship has its own propeller. Some modern drill ships can remain on location during drilling operations by using a computer controlled device which activates the powerful side thrusters. The Danwood Ice used anchors. The moon pool is located in the centre. This drill ship has a sauna with a small swimming pool on board! The accommodations were luxurious and the food was good. It has a free Coke dispenser and an ice-cream machine in the galley!
9 comments:
Hello,
My grandfather was working with sedco, miri around 1970. My father was about two years old when he went back to Germany. I would love to know if anyone knew him. My grandmother will not tell my father his name but she says it sounds like Mr. Cockenel or something like that. He is German. My grandmother also said he knew people whose names sounded like Bill Perskod and Peter Mau. It would be great if anyone has any information.
Regards,
Amelia ;)
Hi,
I have forwarded your letter to an Iban friend who used to work for Brunei Shell and Sarawak Shell. Hopefully he will respond to you.
Good luck!
David
I worked on this rig in 1976. It was not dynamically positioned at that time as you describe. Instead, it had eight 30K lb. anchors deployed from both ends of the ship. The ship's crew were all from Denmark and the drilling crew (including me) were all from the U.S. The Danish baker made us a three-tier birthday cake on July 4th commemorating America's bicentennial. Fresh, REAL, Danish pastry served every three hours and some of the best cooking I've ever had. Definitely the best rig I've ever worked on and would work on again in a heartbeat.
I worked on the this rig in 1980 off the coast of South Australia and later on the North West Shelf of western Australia.. Good Crew good rooms sauna theatre and I loved it. Good rig to work on. I would love a few good Photos of the old Girl..
I was on the Ice for one hitch about 76 in Ghana. I was in Singapore on the Chancellorsville and was sent to the Ice as there was a guy that was in an accident and couldn't make his hitch. I think Rich Wilson was the Superintendent in town.
Great Rig, the best catering I'd ever seen.
Junior Dean and Frank Tomkinson (sp?) were on the rig.
Frank was the toolpusher when I was roughnecking on the Ice in the Gulf of Mexico and was on the Chancellorsville the following summer. We must have crossed paths somewhere in all that. On the Ice, Willard Nermberg was one of my drillers. I think my driller on the Chance was Red somebody.
After my one hitch on the ICE (the injured guy returned) I went back to Singapore on the Chance (we were in the building stage in the shipyard). We took it to Qatar then Dubai and I left it there to work for Eastman Whipstock.
I had run into Frank through the years and the last time was when I was living and working in Jakarta in the 90's. Frank was day-rating for a couple hitches and we ran into each other when he was passing through town. Frank passed away a couple years later when he was on the Doo Sung Semi (owned by the Koreans) drilling off S Korea. The story was a heart attack.
You mentioned Willard Nermberg. When I was on the way to the Ice I had to stop in London for a visa and Willard showed up at the hotel. He was on his way to the Ice also. I had know Willard on the Bull Run in Dubai previously. Last I heard was he is retired in Canada and doing well.
I mentioned Junior Dean. The last I heard he is retired in Perth. He left Atwood and worked around Singapore for a while then started his own company in Oz.
I don't think we crossed paths unless you spent time in SEA or the ME.
Atwood was one of the best contractors I had worked for. When John left I heard it went downhill. I last ran into John when I was consulting for Petronas (Malaysia) in the early 80's and I was in Houston looking at a couple rigs. He was building the Eniwetok in Singapore.
Bobby Tombs was the other TP on the Ice when I worked it. He'd just lost his index finger and was getting used to pointing with the middle one. I worked the rigs during the summers roughnecking and derricks for college money. Stayed in the GOM except for one hitch off Belize on the Westdril IV. When I worked the Chance, we were in very shallow water and were trying a new technique with this huge caisson we had to jet into the sea floor under the rig to make room for the BOP stack. Mark Straus, who was our AD on the Ice, was ramrodding the caisson project. I did two summers working for Atwood Oceanics (Ice and Chance), worked Reading and Bates on a platform, Scan drilling on the Norkong for her maiden hole, then the Westdril IV for Atwood Group. Westdril was a hunk of junk that we nearly rattled to pieces jarring when we lost circulation and got the string stuck. Atwood Oceanics was by far the best of the groups I worked for.
I knew Bobby Tombs in Singapore. Re his finger, he sued the oil company that the rig he was on was working for and got a small sum. I didn’t know Bobby was on the Chance in the GOM but he was in Singapore in the late 70’s. He turned (well, was always) into a full alcoholic and got run off several jobs. The last time I saw Bobby was in the Jockey pub in Singapore in the early 80’s. He was drunk and picked a fight with the wrong guy (anyone would have been the wrong guy for Bobby to fight) and he was bloodied up and unconscious in the corner. The story is (confirmed by several) Bobby finally gave up and went up to Bangkok and opened up a bar and married a Thai bar girl. He didn’t know he had a Thai husband-in-law and soon after he lost the bar and most of what he ever had to them. He stayed drunk most of the time and died not long after……. Not a nice story but not all that unusual in this part of the world. I’ve seen similar many times through the years around here.
I was on the Chance in Dubai on It’s last hole before it went to the US for the caisson job. We were shown provisional plans for the caisson. Interesting.
Was Sam Scavone the town supt on the Chance when it was in the GOM ? Sam was back in Singapore and the area for years and was sent to West Africa in the 90’s and was murdered in a robbery. I believe it was in Gabon.
Did you ever know John Atwood’s son John, or Robert (Bob) Ferber (sp?)? I think Ferber went to the GOM on the Chance. He was in the storeroom.
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