Covered Bridge in Reliance, TN in the Winter.

Covered Bridge in the Snow

It has been a very busy week, inventorying, demolitioning, and planning for the rebuild of our flooded house.  But, I took a break today to take advantage of some of the beautiful winter weather we had. Right around the corner from the Hiwassee Outfitters, this covered bridge  leads to a bed and breakfast. All about 100 yards from the Hiwassee River.

Home Sweat Home

Flooded Basement

Well, I made it home from my two month hitch offshore only to find the water pipes in our house had busted about a month prior. The whole interior of the house is destroyed. From every square foot of hard wood flooring to every linear foot of dry wall. The insurance process has started and today we will begin the demolition. Sorting out what is salvageable and what isn’t is going to be a nightmare. Our good friend Dean Tulluck, the manager of Hiwassee Angler is letting us rent one of the Lodges Cabins for the time being and we’re slowly getting organized. I’ll add updates here as they come and be sure to post our progress once in a while.

On a side note, to help with some of the financial strain I’ve reduced all prints and products on my website by 50%, so if you or anyone you know would like one of my prints, now is the time. Use the coupon code 1/2OFFTILLFEB15 at check out.

West Sirius DP Drilling Rig

As technology progresses and our need to become more self reliant on our own oil grows, we move farther offshore into deeper waters to satisfy our need. In depths greater than 8,000 feet, drilling rigs have limited options for remaining on station and drilling their holes. On method is using anchors, this is becoming out-dated quickly, and when you consider that when drilling this deep each drill rig anchor chain would need to be over 3 miles long. Now to effectively hold the rig in place, most rigs use 8 anchors spread out – 2 from each corner, sometimes more. The West Sirius, pictured above uses no anchors. Instead it uses what is know as Dynamic Positioning, or DP. DP is rated by the number of sources (GPS, Acoustic Beacons on bottom, Signals from land, etc…) and the redundancy built into the vessel.  The West Sirius is a DP3, meaning it has triple redundancy and can maintain position within a couple feet, even with the loss of on of it’s bridges, engine rooms, or loss of a signal coming from satellite, land or sea floor. Pretty amazing it you think about it.

It’s Raining Sunshine…

Raining Sunshine

Yet another beautiful morning in the Gulf. Weather is building and the job is running long, but we still have those awe inspiring sunrises over the gulf. I’ve been out here since the 29th of November and believe me, I’m READY to go home. Hopefully it will happen soon.

The morning was calm enough to get a 5 exposure range HDR, taken about 7am in the morning,

Freedom, for a day to two…

Eagle on Perch in Prince Rupert, BC

My Chopper will be here later today. I get to touch land for a day or two. Weather is picking up and the vessel I’m on now has a Thruster down and needs to return to port for repairs. So, I get to get off and head to another vessel to continue the project. Hopefully I’ll be heading home in a few weeks. Believe me, I am ready. It’s been a little over a month already and two months by the time I get home. I’m hoping for a month off, we’ll see.

The photo above is from my and Brooke’s trip to Alaska Last year. We stopped off in Prince Rupert, British Columbia for a few days waiting for the ferry to Haines. Prince Rupert is a beautiful little town on the B.C. coast. There were at least, from what we could count, 50-60 Bald Eagles that called the tree tops in Prince Rupert home. Feeding from the spoils of the local fisheries and the rich coastal waters they thrived. I had never seen an Eagle as close as we could there. I was truly magical seeing these giant birds of prey chasing each other, fishing, and perched in the tree tops all around the city.

THIS IS HOW YOU FIX CONGRESS!!!!! A friend sent this along to me. I can’t think of a reason to disagree.   I am sending this to virtually everybody on my e-mail list and that includes conservatives, liberals, and everybody in between. Even though we disagree on a number of issues, I count all of you as friends.

My friend and neighbor wants to promote a “Congressional Reform Act of 2009”. It would contain eight provisions, all of which would probably be strongly endorsed by those who drafted the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.  I know many of you will say, “this is impossible”.  Let me remind you, Congress has the lowest approval of any entity in Government, now is the time when Americans will join together to reform Congress – the entity that represents us.   We need to get a Senator to introduce this bill in the US Senate and a Representative to introduce a similar bill in the US House.  These people will become American hero’s..  Thanks, A Fellow American.

Congressional Reform Act of 2010
1. Term Limits: 12 years only, one of the possible options below.
A. Two Six year Senate terms
B. Six Two year House terms
C. One Six year Senate term and three Two Year House terms

2.  No Tenure / No Pension:      A congressman collects a salary while in office and receives no pay when they are out of office.

3.  Congress (past, present & future) participates in Social Security: All funds in the Congressional retirement fund moves to the Social Security system immediately.  All future funds flow into the Social Security system, Congress participates with the American people.

4. Congress can purchase their own retirement plan just as all Americans.

5. Congress will no longer vote themselves a pay raise.  Congressional pay will rise by the lower of CPI or 3%.

6. Congress looses their current health care system and participates in the same health care system as the American people.

7. Congress must equally abide in all laws they impose on the American people.

8. All contracts with past and present congressmen are void effective 1/1/11.

The American people did not make this contract with congressmen, congressmen made all these contracts for themselves.     Serving in Congress is an honor, not a career.  The Founding Fathers envisioned  citizen legislators, serve your term(s), then go home and back to work.

New Year, new Offshore Photo

Well, it is the New Year. 2010. For those of us in the ROV business, let’s hope this year goes a little better than last. For those of you that don’t know, myself and about 50 of my fellow ROV pilots, technicians, supervisors and superintendents we put out of a job towards the end of last year. Poor management decisions, poor economy, a crooked investor bent on milking the company dry were all contributing factors (in my opinion) to DMT shutting it’s doors. But definitely one of the nails driven into DMT’s coffin came from the United States Federal Government. I’ll briefly explain. After Hurricane Katrina and Rita came through the Gulf and showed us that no matter what, nature is in charge, the US Congress made an exception to a little rule that protects American jobs at sea called the Jones Act. The Jones act provides several factors of protection to the American seaman and offshore worker. It also limits and restricts the ability of foreign vessels to work in American controlled waters. After the hurricanes came though and created havoc in the Gulf, Congress allowed these foreign vessel to operate in the Gulf to get our petroleum infrastructure back up and running as quickly as possible. Problem was, after that was accomplished, the Foreign vessels have been allowed to remain. This created a problem because the foreign vessels can hire crews that don’t get paid as much. Philippino, Malaysian, Indonesian crewman may only get around $150/week (which is good for them and I don’t know the exact figure, but compared to what is paid to an American it is very low) allowing foreign vessels to operate much cheaper.

September 17th of last year, that exemption was set to expire. It’s no longer needed, the infrastructure is back up. Last year also the DMT Emerald sat at the dock, unable to compete for 7-8 months draining the company. The investors were ready to infuse the company with more funds on the prospect that the Gulf work would be picking back up once the exemption expired. On September 17th, for whatever reason (maybe it was Obama’s promise to increase jobs…Ha) Congress decided to extend the exception.

So, now I’m posting to my blog, working for a Brazilian company on a British boat, owned by a French company, while still 50+ or so of my American, very capable and knowledgeable friends are sitting at home, collecting unemployment, unable to find work.

I am fortunate I have work right now, but if this keeps up, how many more are going to be added to that “Job Creation” strategy our current leader has planned for us?

Ok, that was my rant for the New Year.

The photo above was one of the ROV’s being recovered in the heavy weather that greeted us the morning of the New Year.

2009 New Year’s Blue Moon

There’s only so much one can do from a bobbing boat in the ocean when shooting a photo of the Moon. Happy New Year!!!

2009 New Year Eve's Blue Moon

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!

Nature's Fireworks

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!! I started looking through my photos for something appropriate for today and for the longest time couldn’t find anything. Then I remembered, Vancouver, B.C.! One of the first stops Brooke and I made on our trip from Seattle to Alaska last year was Vancouver, B.C. As typical of our unplanned and off the hip trip, we spent the arrival night pouring through the usual tourist flyers located in the lobby of most hotel and one flyer caught our attention. We really wanted to see the Capilano Suspension Bridge located in the Vancouver Rainforest just outside of downtown. We got there fairly early only to discover that they wanted about $30 to walk across a foot bridge, EACH! Well, on a traveling budget, we considered that way too much. As we were leaving a beautiful garden caught our eye inside a Condominium neighborhood just outside the gates of the Bridge’s Park. No one was around, so we tip-toed in to get a few photographs of the beautiful and abundant flora. Snapping away, we barely noticed the arrival of the site manager. He was very pleasant, he showed us around, and agreeing that the cost of admission to see the bridge was too high, he showed us the spot that they take all the photos for advertising the very bridge they were trying to charge us to walk across. He explained the history and the ecology. Far better than any self guided tour the Bridge people offered.

So Brooke and I made a series of photographs throughout the property. I’m not sure what the name of this flower is, if any of you do, please let me know, but it was the only one in my collection that reminded me of fireworks. And so it is here. Since I’m still at work, offshore in the Gulf of Mexico, 150 miles from land, this is the only fireworks I’ll see.

So Happy New Year to all.

Eye catching Trash

Paint Cans

Paint cans on the back deck can be a great subject if you stop and look.
Happy New Year to everyone. Hope you all have a safe New Year’s Celebration. Wish I could join you.
I pushed the HDR a little far for effect. Again, this is a pseudo-HDR comprised of one exposure. I was walking down the deck, saw this and SNAP.