Category: Non-Fiction Short Stories

During the summer of 2001 my agency sent me on a pipe lay job in Iran. The job was touchdown monitoring for a barge being operated by and Indian company whose name I cannot recall, but the ROV-with which I would be working – was operated by CCC in Dubai.

To get to the hotel in question, which was not in the most salubrious part of Dubai, I had to endure a day in the blazing heat of the CCC yard.

Despite its less than salubrious locale, it was a good hotel. Actually Dubai wasn’t a terribly salubrious destination in those days.

Continue reading “Idrotec Flooding the hotel in Dubai.”

Over the Christmas and New Year period of 1998 /1999, I was on a boat rather glamorously named the Flying Enterprise, in the Mediterranean off Alexandria in Egypt.

The boat was neither flying, nor very enterprising, in fact it was an ancient Greek anchor handler, seemingly lost and forgotten far from home, with its Greek Captain, Bosun and Chief Engineer, also seemingly lost and forgotten.

All three wore grimy and sweat -soaked peaked Merchant Navy officer’s caps, almost like the ones for sale in Spanish holiday resorts, but for real.

The captain was dark skinned, with weather lined face, permanently unshaved and looked like Anthony Quinn, who was of Greek descent I think.

Continue reading “Egypt Christmas with Mr Sandman and Pannetone .”

Baku.

Baku is the capital city of the country of Azerbaijan.

Azerbaijan is an ex-Soviet Republic, ruled since independence by a president for life and ex-KGB hard man, similar to Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

Heydar Aliyev, the original president of Azerbaijan until he died in 2003, ruled the poverty-stricken (for most of the citizens) and grossly corrupt country with an iron fist.

His son took over after his father died and still rules there to this day. But Azerbaijan is no longer poverty-stricken, vast oil and gas revenues have flowed into the country from the huge oil and gas reserves found under the Caspian Sea. The more revenues to plunder, the more lucrative the corruption is, and the president, his family and his coterie of oligarchs have become obscenely wealthy, plundering Azerbaijan’s wealth

Continue reading “Baku.”

The bus had no air conditioning, so eleven men in various stages of ‘hangover-ness’ sweated through the traffic on their way to Baku, airport.

Outside a sun-blasted city- one could not believe that winter had really only ended a week ago, there is no spring here and precious little autumn either- sped by.

Brown hairy arms hung leisurely out of car windows, as the drivers navigated their mud spattered white Lada’s, through the traffic at breakneck speed and sudden screeching stops.

Sweat rolled down my chest as I tiredly read my book, but it was incapable of holding my attention.

Continue reading “Baku The bus had no air conditioning”

Written on the DSV Akademik Tofiq Ismayilov in the Caspian Sea offshore from Baku.

Christmas Eve 2010.

Continue reading “Baku The Night before Christmas # 4”

We dove through the winter fog that silvered and made indistinct the familiar tumbledown, Soviet era, dock buildings and cranes of Baku.

The heavy clawing smell of crude oil, ever present in the city, became almost overpowering, as we passed the refinery at the docks, where oil literally dripped down the perimeter walls onto the road outside. 

Continue reading “Baku Driving through the fog to the airport in Baku.”

Turkmenistan

From 2005 to 2016 I worked in the Caspian Sea state of Azerbaijan.

The company that I worked for were based in Baku the capital, but I would normally spend my six weeks at work on a diving vessel offshore from there.

On occasion, our employer would be required to provide personnel for short jobs in Turkmenistan, which is directly across the Caspian Sea from Baku.

Continue reading “Baku Turkmenistan.”

From March 2003 to September 2015, once every four weeks, I got to go home for a month on leave.

Most of my time in Azerbaijan was spent in the Caspian Sea, on a big red boat called the DSV Akademic Tofiq Ismayilov, operating out of Baku. DSV is an acronym for Diving Support Vessel, and that’s exactly what it did, everything on board was directed at supporting the saturation diving efforts of various companies over that period, but mainly McDermott’s.

Continue reading “Baku Going home from Baku.”

A Short Story by Jim Nelson!

For many years I worked in the underwater end of the offshore oil and gas industry.

As a diver I worked on the construction and inspection of oil field structures in the Indian Ocean, the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea, the Mediterranean, the North Sea, the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico.

In 1997 following a decompression accident in the Arabian Gulf I switched to the remote underwater intervention by means of ROV’s (remotely operated vehicles) which were becoming popular at that time. These machines took over many of the inspection and light construction jobs which had been the preserve of divers.

Continue reading “A Cruise to the Azores!”

Job on DSV Favignana in Civitavecchia Italy, December 2006.

In November 2006 while at home on leave from Baku, Idrotec,  the company who had given me a start in the ROV business , contacted me with an offer of two weeks work in Italy.

They had trusted me enough to employ me in Mexico and then Egypt eight years previously, when I was  a total  trainee.  Okay, while I was very grateful to them, they had always been notoriously slow payers, so I suggested if they really wanted me, that they go through my agent

Continue reading “Idrotec Job on DSV Favignana in Civitavecchia Italy, December 2006”