I'm sitting in a Bristow personnel transport helicopter built to carry about 30 people. We're hovering about 2 feet above the runway at Mount Pleasant Airforce Base and I'm wearing a ridiculous (but lifesaving) 1-piece suit with rubber seals around the neck, wrists and ankles. Some of the other guys who I'm sharing this flight with have been in the training simulator and passed an exam to be here (a dummy helicopter cabin is dunked upside down into a swimming pool and if you don't escape to the surface, you don't pass the exam, among other things). My training consists of a 20 minute video, most of which is about how to put the suit on. The video told me that is you're not wearing the suit when the helicopter ditches into the frozen South Atlantic, then you'll live for about 1 minute and 40 seconds. With the suit, you get to tread water for an additional 6 minutes before freezing to death. It's hard to know which is better, given that nobody could get to you that quickly in the middle of the South Atlantic.
This is my first helicopter ride and it's smooth as we lift up into the clear morning sky and traverse the expanse of the land, northward over the occasional house (or farm?) towards the sea. 150km and an hour or so later, the rig comes into view. A little floating city, an oasis in the choppy grey sea. That "H" looks bloody small. Are we really going to land on that? The pilot deftly swings us into position above it and for a moment I have this horrific sensation that everything is fluid and moving (which they are) and all these things need to touch and connect with precision, despite this fluidity. It also feels like we are still, and the world around us is moving, and that the pilot is somehow controlling the platform under us, rather than the helicopter. It's precarious and frightening, and exhilarating.
After a short safety briefing we're shown to our 4-man dormitory. I get the upper bunk on one side and it has a little green curtain that you pull across and a small reading light above your head. This was the most comfortable bed I have ever been in. I was cosy, in my t-shirt and boxers, curled up in bed reading my book, in a steel encased room which was hanging off the underside of an oil rig, 20 metres above the icy, dark, churning ocean, thousands of miles from anywhere (except the Falklands). Strange and incredible.
The food on the Borgny Dolphin was the best in the world. I was told that each plate cost $40 to get to you, when you factor in the location and everything else. And this is an all you can eat kind of place. These crews work 12 hours on and 12 hours off and it's clear to see that an army marches on it's stomach. If I had to battle the elements, hanging of the side of a rig in the dawn hours, I'd want to be able to eat as much as I liked too.
What was originally going to be a 24-hour stopover turned into three days because the weather came in, making flights for the helicopter impossible. Once I had configured the email clients (yes that was all I came here to do, although it was a little more complicated back then), I sat back and read my book for the remainder of the stay. Fascinating though it was doing a tour of the rig, seeing how all it all worked, in all honesty there's not a lot else you can do without getting in the way.
At one point I decided to test the local phone line. In one of the operation houses I picked up a handset, dialled 9 and got the dialling tone in London. I called my flat, to see what my flatmate was up to. The phone was answered by one of our friends, who was visiting. Apparently my flatmate, his girlfriend, and the friend, were crowded around my PC at home playing Micro Machines (a game we were all addicted to) as I called. The 2 hop satellite delay made the conversation a little stifled, but at least it worked.
The day we flew back to Port Stanley the helicopter stopped off at a little farm in the north of the Island to pick up some eggs. These would undoubtedly be going back to Mount Pleasant to make omelettes for the army boys.
This is my first helicopter ride and it's smooth as we lift up into the clear morning sky and traverse the expanse of the land, northward over the occasional house (or farm?) towards the sea. 150km and an hour or so later, the rig comes into view. A little floating city, an oasis in the choppy grey sea. That "H" looks bloody small. Are we really going to land on that? The pilot deftly swings us into position above it and for a moment I have this horrific sensation that everything is fluid and moving (which they are) and all these things need to touch and connect with precision, despite this fluidity. It also feels like we are still, and the world around us is moving, and that the pilot is somehow controlling the platform under us, rather than the helicopter. It's precarious and frightening, and exhilarating.
After a short safety briefing we're shown to our 4-man dormitory. I get the upper bunk on one side and it has a little green curtain that you pull across and a small reading light above your head. This was the most comfortable bed I have ever been in. I was cosy, in my t-shirt and boxers, curled up in bed reading my book, in a steel encased room which was hanging off the underside of an oil rig, 20 metres above the icy, dark, churning ocean, thousands of miles from anywhere (except the Falklands). Strange and incredible.
The food on the Borgny Dolphin was the best in the world. I was told that each plate cost $40 to get to you, when you factor in the location and everything else. And this is an all you can eat kind of place. These crews work 12 hours on and 12 hours off and it's clear to see that an army marches on it's stomach. If I had to battle the elements, hanging of the side of a rig in the dawn hours, I'd want to be able to eat as much as I liked too.
What was originally going to be a 24-hour stopover turned into three days because the weather came in, making flights for the helicopter impossible. Once I had configured the email clients (yes that was all I came here to do, although it was a little more complicated back then), I sat back and read my book for the remainder of the stay. Fascinating though it was doing a tour of the rig, seeing how all it all worked, in all honesty there's not a lot else you can do without getting in the way.
At one point I decided to test the local phone line. In one of the operation houses I picked up a handset, dialled 9 and got the dialling tone in London. I called my flat, to see what my flatmate was up to. The phone was answered by one of our friends, who was visiting. Apparently my flatmate, his girlfriend, and the friend, were crowded around my PC at home playing Micro Machines (a game we were all addicted to) as I called. The 2 hop satellite delay made the conversation a little stifled, but at least it worked.
The day we flew back to Port Stanley the helicopter stopped off at a little farm in the north of the Island to pick up some eggs. These would undoubtedly be going back to Mount Pleasant to make omelettes for the army boys.
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