Picture of the Day
Here is the incredible Seven Vega, the most recent addition to the Subsea 7 fleet, which is to enter service in a week or two. It is capable of deploying rigid pipe, off the reel just aft of the bridge in water depths of up to 3000 metres. via the tower on the stern. In my search for a few details abut it I came upon an "article" in an on line marine magazine. It was one of those collections of phrases which are really a list of the ship's specifications, but joined together with words, written by someone who probably has a very limited understanding of the environment in which the ship is to work. Nowhere in the article were the words, "incredible", "amazing" or "extraordinary", any of which would have been appropriate.
The Seacosco Yangtze seen recently in Ijmuiden is a UT 771, one a number of newbuildings purchased by the Seacor.Cosco joint venture now about eighteen months ago. I typed the name into Google and as usual a couple of pages of sites came up all featuring this vessel, but down at the bottom of the list was an article about how the ship was manned by Filipino sailors at salaries of about half the UK minimum wage, when the ship was working out of Aberdeen, seemingly in contradiction of the UK Government policy that all seafarers working on ships in Uk should be paid the minimum wage - at least. So a policy with no teeth then!
Here is the Fugro Synergy, a well intervention vessel built in Norway in 2009. As you might have guessed it is one of the large Fugro fleet. It is a DPII ship. Well intervention ships are at present proving to be popular since they are able to carry out minor well related tasks without the need for a MODU, which would be much more expensive. They do have limitations, the derrick on this one has a maximum load of 150 tonnes. This is less than the weight of the BOP alone of a semi-submersible drilling system.