Short on Tea and Patience

Today marks week four of my current hitch.

I am three days away from setting a personal record in number of consecutive days offshore. I am two days away from reaching 150 offshore days this year. I am a week away from my scheduled departure date.

A few days ago I had no scheduled departure date. When people asked me how long I was out here for, I'd blithely reply "When we're done drilling!". But now the problem is that nobody seems to know when or where that will be. Various estimates include: 2500 feet deeper, 1000 feet deeper, 300 feet deeper, and yesterday. In the meantime we're "Waiting on Weather" due to rough seas, and not drilling.

After a bunch of back-and-forth on prospective plans -- one possibility is to fill the last 15000 feet we drilled and kick off at an earlier point to do a sidetrack well -- I decided that enough was enough and I was going to go home at the five week mark. I've already got my relief lined up and I'm making plans to be home for Thanksgiving.

I had planned on using this hitch to learn as much as possible about nuclear operations. As it turned out, I learned some (not quite enough), and now I'm running out of energy to process all of this into retrievable memory in my brain. I have been on two jobs before where I got to see all the preparation in running a nuclear tool: programming the tool, loading the source, starting data acquisition at surface, but both times I was sent home before we got very far. I've never seen a complete nuclear run. And I'm never going to get my next promotion until I do.

But there's only so much that a person can take.

My longest hitch ever was 6 weeks in Wyoming. Just under a year ago, I spent Thanksgiving on a rig in the middle of some sandy mountains. But while there I was able to take a couple day trips to the tiny little towns that were within a reasonable driving distance, so it never really felt like a full 6 weeks of work. Comparing the length of a hitch on land to the length of a hitch offshore is like comparing apples to oranges. There is no comparison.

My cell manager's longest hitch offshore was 75 days. He was hired about 5 years ago when things seemed a lot less pleasant for people in our job. His first year alone he had more than 260 rig days. I can't even fathom that.

But now I cannot help keeping a running countdown till my estimated departure date. No matter how I try to avoid thinking about it, my brain is always tracking the days now that it's set. Depending on the drilling plans, we might even leave earlier due to finishing the well -- but I can't depend on that so I'm trying not to even consider it. Regardless, I'm leaving no later than Tuesday. For now I'm running out of tea, so it's going to be enough of a hardship to have to ration my supplies.

Until then...