Flat Stanley goes SubSea...

If you look closely at the upright bar on th sub you will see "Flat Stanley" tie-wrapped to the vehicle. One of the supervisors on board has a young kid and apprently this is the new craze for kids. I had never heard about it, but apparently this character travels all over the world with parents and gets his picture taken at different locations.

I am willing to bet this is the first time he has been to the bottom of the Indian Ocean! hahaha!

On Deck...

A recent shot of me operating the winch to bring the sub back up on deck. In the backround in the AllSeas Lorelay in full pipelay mode. It's a really impressive vessel, as are most of the vessels working in this field!

Laying Concrete Mattresses...

The majority of the work we are doing these days are Concrete Mattress Lays for pipe crossings. These matts range from 11 - 17 Tons and are used to protect existing pipes from chaffing from new pipes being laid over top. These particular matts are the biggest I have ever seen, 17 Tons, 20 feet long x 10 feet wide and about 1 foot thick. They are held together by heavy poly-rope.

We use the cable loop seen here and the manipulator (robotic "arm") to guild them into place while they swing on the end of the crane wire from approximately 600 meters up on the surface. It's quite tricky, all things considered, especially when one false moove can stir up the silty bottom and hamper visibility for up to a half hour at a time.

This is what a good matt placement looks like, almost seamless, it appears perfectly lined up, without a space between the two. The project tolerance on this particular job is 11 inches, however within the ROV group we rarely stand for mor than 6 inches off...mostly out of pride...hahaha!