North Sea Interlude

The bright red intra-city train slowed gently to a stop at Skoppum Station.  With a sigh the doors effortlessly slid apart, and a handful of Monday lunchtime travellers began to disembark.

In stark contrast to the haste earlier that morning of hurrying to catch the first flight from London Heathrow, the smooth journey from Oslo Central had been a pleasant and relaxing interlude. As the train meandered south, we watched impeccable red and orange and yellow two storey homes with inviting balconies and steeply slanted roofs slide past our window while Oslofjord lay tranquil to the east and the craggy snow-tipped peaks of Vestfold looked down at us from the west.

We recovered our bags, made our way on to the platform and out into the street and were very soon in a taxi headed for our ship waiting for us at Horten Harbour.

Half an hour later, we stood on the quay staring at what would be our home for the next few months not knowing whether to laugh or cry. Unlike the alphabet of Lindinger cargo vessels I’d served on over the previous two years, there wasn’t a lot of ship to look at.

At just 50 metres long and 300 tonnes dead weight, with a ungainly radio tower reaching as high into the sky as her length, Lindinger Surveyor looked like she might have trouble staying upright in a mild breeze, let alone the charms that the North Sea was sure to offer in coming weeks. Sharply decked out in the now familiar navy blue and black Lindinger colours, she bobbed up and down in the water when anything larger than a small motor launch came within a few metres.

But, for all that, there was something workmanlike about her appearance. A pair of squat oval smokestacks took up much of the space on her after deck and just below on the poop deck was a long red horizontal cylinder which I would soon learn was a hyperbaric chamber, used by the on-board divers.

Acquired in the 1970s from shipping company DFDS, Lindinger Surveyor was on charter to BP with the task of surveying the route for a 36-inch diameter pipeline being constructed to deliver crude oil from the Ninian Platform in the North Sea, 175 kilometres to Sullom Voe Terminal on Shetland Island. The job was to be carried out by the laybarge, Viking Piper and we would be meeting up with her at Lerwick later that month.

Apart from the excitement or apprehension (depending upon your perspective) of pottering around in the North Sea for a few months, it was a step up for me. Lindinger Surveyor carried only two engineers, and my role as “Maskinchef” (Chief Engineer) included the responsibility of looking after the 800 HP German-built MaK and rest of the auxiliary equipment. Anyone who has been paying attention to my maritime experiences up to this point may have noticed my fondness for a dependable supply of spare parts. The only place I could imagine being worse than the North Atlantic for a steering gear failure was likely to be the North Sea. It was pleasing therefore to note that Surveyor appeared to be well-endowed in this area.

Innovative navigation technology was a prerequisite for the critical tasks which faced the industry in the hostile environment of the North Sea. Navigation by sextant and dead reckoning wasn’t going to cut it here. A state of the art computerised Decca Navigation System was in the process of being installed on Lindinger Surveyor. A similar system was also installed on Viking Piper. This answered my question as to the rationale behind the huge radio mast.

Although clearly not my field of expertise, I was informed that the system being installed was among the world’s finest in high end navigation technology allowing the position of the pipeline to be determined within a few metres as it was being laid on the ocean floor. During the first few days as the tests were being carried out in Horten Harbour, all I could see on entering the wheelhouse were yards of perforated paper tape strewn over the bridge deck. I’m told that our early location tests had Surveyor positioned everywhere from the middle of the fjord to downtown Oslo.

It was a thorough process which included test runs offshore where the system was fine-tuned to the required limits. During these seagoing tests, we were continually shadowed by a nondescript fishing boat, identified by those in the know as a Soviet trawler. Oddly however, the trawler never seemed to have any fishing poles or nets in view and the consensus was that our navigation systems were of interest to governments other than ours – paranoia perhaps, but this was the height of the Cold War.

A couple more days were spent in Horten while the specialists worked at perfecting the system and those of us not involved in the process, sought in vain to find somewhere in Norway a reasonably priced glass of beer.

At the end of the week we left Horten on what was a relatively short 500 mile trip northwest to Lerwick. The sea was surprising calm, Pauline was only slightly sick, and the MaK engine performed as I had come to expect from German marine engineering – beautifully. Despite her ungainly appearance, or perhaps because of it, Surveyor acted impeccably, and I was looking forward to getting to know her better.

During the three days it took us to arrive at Lerwick, I had the opportunity to learn a little more about the role of the divers. In these first few days they were doing little more than checking and testing equipment, but over the next few months their saturation diving activities would include long hours in a pressurised atmosphere either in the deep water of the pipeline route or in the hyperbaric chamber between dives. It was a dangerous, but critical role, and one that I suspected fluctuated widely between high adrenaline activity and long periods of boredom.

Our first stop was in the north of Shetland at Sullom Voe terminal where we had our first encounter with Viking Piper. This would allow the telecom specialists to finish the process of synchronising the positioning system and for our skipper and chief mate to get to know at first hand their pipelaying partners.

As we came around the headland at Sullom Voe, the world’s newest and biggest laybarge was at anchor in the middle of the sound about 100 metres offshore. She was enormous and I would have given my eye teeth to have been one of the party who went on board her for a few hours that afternoon – sadly that was never to happen.

Viking Piper was to provide a pipelaying service in many parts of the world over the next 40 years or so and her story is a tale of excellence in maritime engineering. On this day however, she was brand new and yet to lay her first pipe.

The idea of semisubmersible laybarge which would manage the challenges of undersea pipe laying in North Sea weather began in the early 1970s. Viking Piper became the largest and most modern lay vessel in existence. Built over two years in the Netherlands utilising innovative construction techniques she was designed to lay what was described as the mother of all pipelines – the 36-inch line across the terrifying Norwegian Trench from the oil field at Ninian to the terminal on Shetland. She began operation later that summer and completed 40% of the project within its first two months of operation.

There is an excellent documentary showing her in operation here and I urge anyone with the slightest interest to look at it – you won’t be disappointed.

After overnighting at anchor in Sullom Voe, we travelled the few miles south that morning to Lerwick where we received, what was for me at the time, unwelcome and disappointing news.

The operator of the Ninian pipeline project, and Lindinger’s client, was BP Oil. On learning that the new Chief Engineer of Lindinger Surveyor, (me) had his wife on board, the charterer was insistent that since it was BP policy not to have women on their ships in any part of the world, Pauline would have to leave. Their policy extended to vessels under charter to BP. The policy was reversed several years later, but at that time, if I wished to remain on board the ship, I would have to do so alone.

I loved my job and didn’t want to enter into a dispute with my employer, and I also didn’t want to lose the opportunity to be part of this milestone project, but most importantly the idea of Pauline going home was not something either of us wanted to consider.

Lindinger’s marine superintendent, Fru Bielefeld (yes, a woman) had travelled with us from Horten and was thus on hand to represent the company’s interests. She made it clear that the company valued my services and didn’t want to lose me, but they were not going to damage the relationship with their new client over a personnel issue. This was a lucrative long-term charter. I quite understood their position.

A compromise was proposed. Owing to an untimely illness, there was a requirement for a first engineer on one of the other vessels in the Lindinger fleet and a replacement had been scheduled to head out within the next day or so. If I was willing to take his place and be relocated (with Pauline), he could be reassigned to Surveyor and would travel to Lerwick within two days. We agreed.

A few days later, having enjoyed a brief but very pleasant pause in Lerwick, (absolutely on our list of “must go back someday”) and with a new and slightly bemused Maskinchef installed on Lindinger Surveyor, Pauline and I left from Lerwick’s Sumburgh Airport for Aberdeen, the first leg of our journey to our next ship, Lindinger Gold.

She would be waiting for us in Izmit in the Sea of Marmara about 100 km east of Istanbul.

Now if only we had thought to bring summer clothing!