Gas turbines | Bas & Matthijs' Blog

Since last Friday, I have worked exactly 6 hours. And what I worked on, wasn’t even my real job. I have assisted the MTU engineer in borescoping the LM5000 they have here on the Britannia Platform. You go with a tiny camera inside the turbine to check on the blades, vanes and combustor. Some of the images we retrieved you can see down below.

It was freezing cold outside, wind 60 kts and waves of 20 meter it was a battle of the giants! But we managed.

The other 6 days of the week I have waited, waited, waited, waited and not to forget: Waited. That sounds like heaven, being paid for nothing. But it gets very annoying. On the positive side: I have time to write this blog, to watch 3 seasons of boardwalk empire, to watch the following movies: Run fatboy, Run (Simon Pegg), Paul (Simon Pegg), The Wolf of Wallstreet (Leonardo) and Zorro (blehh). Also first season of Spartacus is on again, and I have finished a book of Timothy Ferris (The 4 Hour Work Week).

For those who are interested here is my daily schedule:

6.15 AM: Wake up

6.30 AM: Shower

6.45 AM: Breakfast

07.00 AM: Team meeting

7.15 – 11.30 AM: Idle

11.30 AM: Lunch

11.45 AM – 13.30 PM: Rest (resting from resting haha)

13.30 – 17.30: Idle

17.30: Dinner

Till 6.15 the next day Idle again.

The planning now is to get the turbine running by tomorrow, and the helicopter back to the beach on Monday morning, let’s keep the fingers crossed!

Enjoy your valentine!

\MK Out

One month… or actually 27 days to be very precise. On January 1st, 2014, 7 hours earlier than expected we left for Mauritius again. Due to the cyclone approaching Mauritius our flight from Paris to Mauritius was rescheduled to depart 7 hours earlier. Sounds perfect hein? The moment we arrived on Charles de Gaulles airport we were notified that the original flight time was to be maintained. Bye bye 7 hours extra MRU, hello 7 hours of boredom in the CDG lounge..

Arriving at the new airport (wonderful new!) felt like coming home again. A quick drive to our brand new apartment in Blue Bay made us feel more at home! We were the first one be making use of the apartment, and we quickly renamed it ‘The BAT Cave” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caving.

The rest of the holidays are not describable, every word spent to it, is an insult to our feeling, hour happiness and to our friends. I’ll never ever be able to find sufficient words to describe it, so I won’t try it.

Arriving back, Bas went straight to work, which saved him from the post Mauritius depression (this disease is officially applied at the union of doctors). I however had a few more days off, and it ruined me. So much time on your hands makes you idle, and gives you time to miss. All I had was a phone call from my boss, telling me that the day I start again, I would be coordinating, and the next day I;d have to go offshore to the Britannia.

And that is where I am now, I am practicing my waiting.. First I waited an entire day for a cancelled flight, and now I am waiting to start work, although no one has an idea of what I have to do here. They found a leakage in the Gas system so they were inhibited to start the Turbine, this made them loose an entire week of production. Last night they found and fixed the leak, but they prefer to catch up with production first!

For the future I will try to post once every week, a small update of what I am doing and where I am. Funny situation, FUBAR situations and a small update of what kind of work I did.

Cheerio!