DB16, day 12: taco night.

I would never have guessed it, but taco night makes the divers drool.

The food here is basically cafeteria style, and considering the limitations of an offshore kitchen, it's pretty tasty, with some pretty good options, and even some grilled meats from time to time. There are always desserts and sweets available, all hours of the day, which both pleases and frustrates the crew, who can be heard alternatively praising the day's goodies, and complaining about gaining weight offshore. Tonight was taco night, Saturdays and Tuesdays are Steak Nights, with lots of fish (for the Catholics, on Fridays) and chicken thrown in.

We've been making progress on the project we're working on here, and after a week of the ROV being out of the water, we've been asked to dive the past 2 days. This morning we were even roused from our bunks to get in the water. The rig we're decommissioning has pipes driven into the sea floor (called conductors), which measure about 120 feet from top to bottom. Two of these have been pulled in the past 2 days, and we were there to take video of the cuts as the pipes were lifted (to ensure the pipe had been fully cut).

Tonight we pulled the top deck of the rig. Words can't really convey how crazy it is to see a crane, on a barge, pull the top deck of a rig, weighing in at about 600 tons (approx. 1.2 million pounds.), keeping it lifted for more than an hour, and then dropping it onto a materials barge (about the size of a football field).