Quote:
Originally Posted by MisterCamaro69
Looks like a dangerous place to work...Do ya'll watch "Deadliest Catch" video's and call em' pansies? 
.... So... Robert.... What's your nickname?  |
It's only dangerous if you let it be... We pay attention all the time to our surroundings... We have to... Military pilots call it situational awareness, and if you don't have it when you first come out here, you soon develope it, for yourself and others as well...
we constantly look out for others to make sure their focus on a task doesn't cause them tunnel vision and get them in trouble...
Happy Feet... :(
I have a healthy dose of self imposed chicken factor...
When I was working in Mexico, we were suffering a really bad storm and it was decided that we were going to disconnect the completion conduit and testing hoses running down into the hole... There were some chicksan lines that had to be disconnected... This is hard to explain and probably harder to follow if you don't know the equipment and lingo, but I'll try...
A chicksan is a high pressure pipe with a hammer union swivel on each end... we use them to run from say the Choke/Kill manifold to a cement head on the drill string... the pipe going down into the hole...
The pipe going into the hole is held by the elevators, which are held by lifting bails... Think of a dog bone 15-20 feet long, solid steel with a hole at each end... they weigh several thousand lbs each...
so, the roughnecks were hiding behind the draw works since the chicksans were clattering from flat on the deck to fully extended as the rig was heaving up and down...
The driller and asst driller were trying to hammer the union loose, with a 16 lb sledge hammer, and since they were at risk of getting hit by the chicksans, I got a rope and lassoed the chicksans and was holding them back from the Driller and AD, and warning them when the pipes were coming back down so they could move...
Well, about this time the olmstead valve on the drill string compensator locked and so the top drive and stuff were no longer heaving with the rig... The elevators hit the drill floor, the bails started leaning out to the side,, the chains on the link tilt broke, and by the time the rig heaved the other way, the bails were close enough to me I could have tiptoed and kissed them... Yup, my feet were going 90 to nothing, but I wasn't going anywhere... I wanted to, but I was still trying to keep the chicksans off the driller and AD... hence...
Happy Feet...Most of the guiys on this rig dont know that though... the AD does, he was over on the other rig when this happened... he was off tour but on the rig...