Boat Rideof my Life

Date: 14 April 2010

Current location: In the middle of the Brunei water on vessel Armada Salman…

Today crew boat departed a little later than yesterday, at 6.30am… went to Champion 7 platform, unfortunately the EOP there didn’t want to sign our hot work permit… that means we would not be able to work today… hahaha… too bad it didn’t materialize… there’s another EOP going to be at Magpie 1 platform at about 10am there to sign the permit… damnnnnnn… so we left for Magpie platform at about 8am…

The whole journey was rough… sea was rough today… when we approached Magpie platform, the swell was ‘unfriendly’… the boat Master decided that it’s unsafe to do boat to platform transfer… it’s basically not safe even for the boat to be anywhere near the platform… the current was just strong this morning… called the CSR / FOS in Armada Salman, and we called it a day…

The boat ride back to Armada Salman was even worse than coming to the platform as we were going against the tide… I was sitting on the boat rocking left and right, front and back… There was definitely one thing in my mind, that’s don’t throw up… Found a way to fight against sea sick, that’s to look up in the sky… when I only see sky, I feel like I was stagnant at one point… even though the body is still rocking, psychologically (I guess) I was more stable… yesterday when I look up the sky, I was saying to myself I couldn’t see any ‘shape’ of the clouds… today I saw bear, an old lady’s face, a young lady’s face, crocodile’s ‘mouth’, birds, a small duck that was trying to escape from a monster or some sort of big mouth creature… it’s been a while since I actually looked up at the sky… and it’s definitely a good feeling to be able to see all these again… haha…

Also there’s this bird that flew along our boat… it flew side by side with the boat, flew in front, on the surface of water, cross side to side in front of boat… it’s like it wanted a companion at the same time it was showing off its flying skill to us… it was like it’s telling us that it could fly much faster than we could travel with the boat… it has arrogant element in its style, yet we human just couldn’t stop admiring how elegant it looks when maneuvering itself in the air…

Boat ride duration: Journey: Armada Salman – Champion 7 – Magpie 2 – Champion 7 – Armada Salman
Total boat ride duration today: more than 5 hours…

While writing this piece I’m still on Armada Salman… that means duration on water for today – 24 hours… DAMN !!!