Well I made it offshore okay, a bit of sea sickness on the boat out aside.\u00a0 For some reason to do with how they’ve parked the Astoria (the floating hotel) beside the platform, they aren’t helicoptering people in and out this summer, and instead we’ve got to take a 2-hour trip on a supply boat with a load of seats right in the front, beneath the deck, with no proper view outside.\u00a0 The sea wasn’t rough, but there was a bit of a swell and I think somebody designed our tub to go up and down Bayou Teche not cross the Sea of Okhotsk, because it was pitching far more than was good for my wellbeing.\u00a0 I am normally okay on boats, I’ve been on loads of ferries and dive boats, but this wasn’t like being on a boat: it was like being in a dark room which is being chucked about.\u00a0 Standing by the door looking at the horizon helped a bit, and the sea-sickness tablets even more so, purely because (and I believe this is how they are designed) they sent me straight to sleep and I awoke beneath the Lun-A being yelled at by some huge seafaring Russian to get into my survival suit.<\/p>\n
Access to the Astoria is via a personnel transfer\u00a0capsule called a Frog<\/a>, in which three people sit and get snatched off the deck of the boat by a crane, hoiked in the air, jiggled about a bit for everyone’s amusement, and plonked on the deck of the Astoria having hopefully managed to keep hold of their baggage which was sitting unsecured on the floor beside them perilously close to making\u00a0a large splash in the waters below.\u00a0 It’s not half as bad as it sounds, no worse than having to clamber into the rubber survival suit beforehand, and much better than trying to get the damn thing off afterwards.<\/p>\n The Astoria is a semi-submersible vessel, which I think means it is sinking but in a controlled manner, which is operated by a Norwegian outfit and therefore carries an air of being able to remain semi-sunk without danger of becoming completely so.\u00a0 There are a few salty old Scandanavian sea dogs running the tub, sporting bushy white beards and looking exactly as a ship’s officer should.\u00a0 I don’t know their names, but I’d bet at least one of them is called Olaf.\u00a0 It’s not the prettiest of vessels, as can be seen from the picture here<\/a>, but inside it is spotlessly clean and extremely functional.\u00a0 I am in a four-man room which comes with a small en-suite shower and toilet, and two sets of bunk beds which are, I was\u00a0pleased to discover, long enough to sleep people like me.\u00a0 Laundry is done on a daily basis, just like in a hotel, with ruthless efficiency.\u00a0 Were the Astoria to run aground, it would probably be the best run hotel in Russia.<\/p>\n The food is magnificent.\u00a0 We have two soups, a salad bar, a dessert bar, three different\u00a0kinds of potato, two different kinds of rice, a pasta\u00a0dish,\u00a0two different meats, fish, a fridge full of fruit juice, a freezer\u00a0full of ice cream, cold meats, cheeses,\u00a0bread, jam, peanut butter, and fresh fruit.\u00a0 And most of it\u00a0varies with each meal.\u00a0 I’ve not seen anything like it in years.\u00a0 Nor have the Russians.\u00a0 They are piling their plates as if the\u00a0siege of Leningrad restarts at midnight.\u00a0 Self-discipline is required if\u00a0you want to return to the mainland\u00a0the same size and shape as you went out.<\/p>\n Access to the Lun-A is via a large and sturdy gangway between it and the Astoria.\u00a0 I am working the night shift, which has the advantage of me being able to sleep in the room alone, my three roomates working the day shift.\u00a0 It has the disadvantage of me falling asleep halfway through your first shift.\u00a0 You also don’t tend to see any sun, so you have to come to terms with the fact that you will soon assume the complexion\u00a0of pimps and vampires, although there are not too many of either on the Lun-A platform.\u00a0 On my first day on the rig I was struck down with a terrible piercing headache, unlike one I’ve ever had before.\u00a0 It came on suddenly almost as soon as I’d crossed the gangway, and it got worse as I walked around.\u00a0 I wondered whether it was a side-effect of the sea sickness tablets, then wondered whether it was dehydration, then wondered if I should go and see the medic and get some paracetamol, then wondered if this was some weird affliction that offshore workers\u00a0get, culminating in the pressure in their\u00a0head becoming so great that their\u00a0brain explodes all over the galley one breakfast.\u00a0 Then I thought I’d try loosening my hard-hat, which I’d screwed so damned tight on my head thinking it would blow off on the wind to the Kamchatka Peninsular, and my headache vanished within a minute.<\/p>\n Life on this platform is simple, being reduced to three activities: working, sleeping, and eating.\u00a0 I have brought books which I haven’t read, there is a TV which I haven’t watched, and there is a helideck which – I don’t like to boast –\u00a0I have walked around twice.\u00a0 The view is quite nice, and although it doesn’t consist of much other than sea and the\u00a0distant coast of Sakhalin Island, the sunsets can be\u00a0spectacular and the breaking dawn worth stopping and looking at.\u00a0 The sea sloshing around the huge concrete legs sometimes takes on a lovely deep green colour normally reserved for brochures of the Seychelles, but at night it turns to an inky black moving threateningly a hundred feet below the deck.\u00a0 It is not a water into which you would want to fall.<\/p>\n So that’s pretty much it.\u00a0 Other than possibly changing to\u00a0the day shift at some point, this is how I will be living until 1st October when I will hopefully become a landlubber again.\u00a0 If anything exciting happens between now and then, such as the mysterious disappearance of one of the concrete legs, a kraken attack, or an impulsive decision to join a band of marauding pirates, I’ll let you know.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Well I made it offshore okay, a bit of sea sickness on the boat out aside.\u00a0 For some reason to do with how they’ve parked the Astoria (the floating hotel) beside the platform, they aren’t helicoptering people in and out … Continue reading