I'd love to be able to write a white knuckle account of how we just managed to dodge lazer sharks and outsmart armed guards to bag this peach but in reality, it was absolute textbook ubend. Quick reccie, under a fence out of sight of the CCTV and a quick jog across one of the quiet bits of the ship yards and round a typically underspeced anti climb cage. Not that should detract from the main prize, I'd never been on an oil rig before, and I was pretty stoked to have blitzed through the busiest ship yard in Ireland without seeing so much as a single docker or security guard other than the bloke watching telly in his shed at the far end of our section of the yard.
The Borgny Dolphin is a semi-submersible drilling platform, owned by Dolphin Drilling, and has been cold stacked at Harland and Wolff Heavy Industries in Belfast, presumably until the oil prices pick up.
It's a pretty epic machine. It can drill down to about 25,000 foot depth, and sort of sits on the water, using a set of propellors to keep it in place against the tides and winds while it drills. It has presumably done recent a tour of duty in Brazil, as all the signs on the thing were in Portuguese.
The first item on our itinerary, was to get the top of the thing.
It's higher than it looks, and it was bloody freezing - especially since we had to spend 15 solid minutes sat down waiting for the port police to fuck off who were hanging about in a boat on the Lagan waiting to guide a massive ferry out.
The main bit under the derrick is the drilling winch room where the drill is controlled from. BIG MACHINERY.
The winch:
and control room..
If you go a bit further down below top-deck, you get to the processing section which is basically loads of pipes and a few taps to take samples of the sludge they're pumping up.
The living quarters are as you'd expect. Don't envy anyone having to live in these for months at a time.
Hospital.
The big helideck:
We'd had a good poke about, and after a good couple of hours, it was time for bed.
Cheers to Stellaluna for shouting this one up!
It's a pretty epic machine. It can drill down to about 25,000 foot depth, and sort of sits on the water, using a set of propellors to keep it in place against the tides and winds while it drills. It has presumably done recent a tour of duty in Brazil, as all the signs on the thing were in Portuguese.
The first item on our itinerary, was to get the top of the thing.
It's higher than it looks, and it was bloody freezing - especially since we had to spend 15 solid minutes sat down waiting for the port police to fuck off who were hanging about in a boat on the Lagan waiting to guide a massive ferry out.
The main bit under the derrick is the drilling winch room where the drill is controlled from. BIG MACHINERY.
The winch:
and control room..
If you go a bit further down below top-deck, you get to the processing section which is basically loads of pipes and a few taps to take samples of the sludge they're pumping up.
The living quarters are as you'd expect. Don't envy anyone having to live in these for months at a time.
Hospital.
The big helideck:
We'd had a good poke about, and after a good couple of hours, it was time for bed.
Cheers to Stellaluna for shouting this one up!
