Good luck :)

Thanks everyone for the good wishes! You’re the best.

aeh wrote: ↑

5 years ago

Good luck, so you are a spare time developer? :o

Yeah I did a lot of the development on barrens chat whilst I was at sea believe it or not. I deployed three patches over the ship’s satellite internet

Pippina wrote: ↑

5 years ago

what kind of boat is that?

It’s a saturation diving support vessel. 120m length (thats about 350ft for you muricans) - we do subsea construction (pipelines, manifolds, generators) from seabed to surface.

My job is to navigate her across the ocean when we’re transiting to a new job, and when we’re diving I hold the boat in position above the worksite. I do a month on and then have a month off.

The divers are the real superstars - they work at mad depths (up to about 200m - 600ft) doing very intense work on expensive assets. They’re like freaking astronauts - they stay pressurised to the depth they are working at for the whole month. So they live in saturation chambers onboard the ship and are fed through an airlock and go to their shift by way of a diving bell - all kept at the correct pressure.

Here’s a pic of a deep sea diver off wikipedia:



I just drink tea and look out of the window lol

teebling wrote: ↑

5 years ago

I just drink tea and look out of the window lol

Dream job.

Good luck man, sure you'll ace it!

Don't you sail a boat Teeb, not a good start for you to get that wrong kek :D. Good luck dude!

Captain Teebs is an amazing pirate name.

Good luck teebs! Good timing to finish up just before Classic's release.

Excited to see these changes too once you're back!

Good luck Captain Teebling!

two weeks huh, justttt enough time to get back right before classic hits off, good luck mane

gg ez

teebling wrote: ↑

5 years ago

The divers are the real superstars - they work at mad depths (up to about 200m - 600ft) doing very intense work on expensive assets. They’re like freaking astronauts - they stay pressurised to the depth they are working at for the whole month. So they live in saturation chambers onboard the ship and are fed through an airlock and go to their shift by way of a diving bell - all kept at the correct pressure.

Here’s a pic of a deep sea diver off wikipedia:

Sounds pretty intense. They must get paid big money for that kind of work.

Do they at least get to play WoW in their saturation chambers?

Good luck! I hope you will get your stripes!

DoomC wrote: ↑

5 years ago

Sounds pretty intense. They must get paid big money for that kind of work.

£1000 a day if they're in saturation, so in a 30 day trip they can make up to £30k.

Best of lucks Teebs, I'm sure you will do fine :)

I clearly picked the wrong proffession :p

teebling wrote: ↑

5 years ago

DoomC wrote: ↑

5 years ago

Sounds pretty intense. They must get paid big money for that kind of work.

£1000 a day if they're in saturation, so in a 30 day trip they can make up to £30k.

Now that's some fuckin hazard pay right there. I can't imagine what living at pressure for a month does to the body long term. I understand the need for it, the body doesn't like pressure fluctuations so if you're working at depth then you want to stay at depth pressure. But still I wonder what that does to the body.

How did you end up in the position to be driving a boat like that? You're probably the first saturation diving support vessel captain any of us have ever talked to

Pippina wrote: ↑

5 years ago

But still I wonder what that does to the body.

No one knows really - there haven’t been any long term studies made. I asked this question too.

I’m not going for a Captain’s ticket just yet! I’m being examined for competency at the Officer of the Watch (OOW) level - so I’m one of the navigators on the bridge team under the Master. To be the Master of a ship takes decades of experience though I certainly want to be there one day

To be honest mate I haven’t got a fucking clue how I ended up where I did haha. I went from web developer, to spanish degree graduate, to english teacher and then to a deck cadet in the merchant marine.

@Jon Bloodspray is an ex-sailor too though he worked the cruise ships.

teebling wrote: ↑

5 years ago

Yeah I did a lot of the development on barrens chat whilst I was at sea believe it or not. I deployed three patches over the ship’s satellite internet

I have no reason not to believe you - Haha good work! :)

teebling wrote: ↑

5 years ago

@Jon Bloodspray is an ex-sailor too though he worked the cruise ships.

And I would never do it (cruise ship) again. If I wanted to be back at sea I would definitely go full Merchant Marine.

Regarding the mental strain on those divers and other sailors, I'll just say there's a reason you are off for weeks at a time between deployments.

DoomC wrote: ↑

5 years ago

teebling wrote: ↑

5 years ago

The divers are the real superstars - they work at mad depths (up to about 200m - 600ft) doing very intense work on expensive assets. They’re like freaking astronauts - they stay pressurised to the depth they are working at for the whole month. So they live in saturation chambers onboard the ship and are fed through an airlock and go to their shift by way of a diving bell - all kept at the correct pressure.

Here’s a pic of a deep sea diver off wikipedia:

Sounds pretty intense. They must get paid big money for that kind of work.

Do they at least get to play WoW in their saturation chambers?

I got claustrophobic just by imagining living under the sea in a small chamber for 10 minutes, let alone one month!

Success!
Seems very scary to drive that lol

teebling wrote: ↑

5 years ago

Hey guys,

Just wanted to say (a kind of disclaimer I guess?) that I'm going to be quite busy over the next two weeks in real life. For those of you who don't know I'm at the end of a three year training program in which I have learned how to drive one of these:

Uncle Ganus McAnus wrote: ↑

5 years ago

Shove off, old dwarf. He will do fine!

Kurzogg wrote: ↑

5 years ago

SpoilerShow

Uncle Ganus McAnus wrote: ↑

5 years ago

Shove off, old dwarf. He will do fine!

Wait, so if they stay down there for the entire month... Do they just float around the ocean floor or do they have some mini house? Where does da poop go?

But really, that sounds insanely depressing. I don't think I would last more than 1-2 days maximum and be scared for life or something. Especially the lack of noise and light.

Henhouse wrote: ↑

5 years ago

Wait, so if they stay down there for the entire month... Do they just float around the ocean floor or do they have some mini house? Where does da poop go?

Okay will try to explain this as best I can.

As we all know, if you go diving and resurface too quickly you get the ‘bends’ - where the nitrogen gas in your blood starts to form bubbles. It is agonising and it will most certainly kill you. That’s only at relatively shallow depths too.

Every metre of seawater depth the pressure increases rapidly. A typical water depth at which the guys are working on the seabed at is much deeper than scuba, typically around 150m, a depth at which is the pressure is equivalent to 16 bar (surface atmospheric pressure is 1 bar), or for americans thats about 230 PSI. That’s a lot of pressure squeeze!

It takes a day or two to ‘blow down’ (slowly pressurise) the divers to this pressure, and even longer to slowly and safely depressurise them (a week). So in order to complete these construction jobs, which take a while, there has to be a solution to these very inhospitable conditions vs human bodies which is simple: they just keep them at that pressure for the duration of their trip.

The divers go into a ‘saturation chamber’ on the ship itself - basically a series of tubes connected together with beds, toilet, showers etc. everything they need to live as comfortably as possible for their month of work. They enter, are blown down to 16 atmospheres, and the chamber stays at 16 atmospheres the whole month.

To go to work they go through another tube into a ‘diving bell’ also at 16 bar, which is then sealed off from the sat chamber and lowered to the seabed. They swim out of the bottom of the bell at the seabed, where the pressure is also 16 bar. They do 6 hours of work in teams of 3 and then go back into the bell, back up to the ship, and back into the sat chambers to rest, again at 16 bar. Then the other team go down in the second bell etc.

So around the clock we have divers working and can operate both bells simultaneously. They are kept at the same pressure the whole time, until they are decompressed towards the end of their trip.

They have a whole team of guys called life support who monitor and regulate their atmosphere and pressure, the gases they breathe, feed them (through an airlock), wash their clothes, control their hot water flow when working, and deal with any emergency. We have special pressurised lifeboats for them if we have to abandon ship,

Another team called dive control lower the bells, communicate with them about what to do on the seabed/construction progress, and are responsible for keeping them safe on the job. Dive control talk to me and ask me to move the vessel around on the surface so that we stay on top of the divers or wherever the workplace is.

Their poo goes into a sewage holding tank, then into a comminuting and disinfecting machine, then a sewage treatment plant, and out the other end as fresh water which goes into our fresh water tanks and is totally safe to drink. We also make fresh water out of seawater with a reverse osmosis plant.

:)

Godspeed, Captain Teebling.

Saturation diving (or any decompression diving) is fucking hardcore. I'm a recreational diver myself and I got the bends while diving in 2017
- had to spend a few hours in a deco chamber. Definitely a scary experience but I sure as hell ain't giving up diving, it's one of the greatest activities I've ever had the pleasure of experiencing in life.

Keep 'em safe out there Teebs. ;-)