Hurricane Isaac, he wrote...

Hurricane Isaac has come and gone, and Louisiana is more or less still here a week later.  

Isaac was a very slow moving storm, at times stationary and reversing course. Many of the destructive effects came from persistent winds that lasted for two or more days in areas on the east side of the storm.  In the flooded community of Braithwaite, the southerly winds from Isaac backed up the Mississippi river to such an extent that the levee was topped, flooding the community and forcing a number of rooftop rescues that brought to mind Hurricane Katrina.  This after the Mississippi was at a LOW level prior to the storm.  There were many power lines downed and the pace of restoring the power in the wake of Isaac may have caused the early retirement of the Entergy CEO after much criticism from frustrated residents of New Orleans.  

For our part, we evacuated our helicopter bases in far southern Louisiana and relocated ourselves and the aircraft to Lafayette, which experienced maybe 2" of rain and 30-40 knot winds during the peak of the storm on the west side.  We returned to most of our bases on Thursday, a day after the storm passed, but were on generator power for nearly a week, and very little aircraft activity is going on down the delta in places like Venice, which are still very much wind damaged and without power. 

Some very strange things happened due to the strength and the duration of the winds.  On the west side of the storm, persistent NORTH winds emptied out a canal in Delcambre and blew all the water out of Lake Peigneur.  It was somewhat surreal that as people were fleeing potential levee breaches on the east side, small children were driving their four-wheelers around on the bottom of a muddy lake bed on the west side.  

Much worse for Mississippi (and better for the marsh) was the killing of over 15,000 nutria rats that washed up on MS beaches and were being disposed of by contractors at the time of this writing.  

If you know anything about Louisiana and specifically New Orleans, you will not find it really surprising that residents are agitating for more taxpayer money for more levees to protect their below sea-level homesteads from a fourth or fifth hurricane induced destruction, and Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu stated recently that they have a "right to live there".  

Me, I'd move... but what do I know?  

For more on why the marsh will never come back and the state of LA has doomed itself to save the port of New Orleans, see my previous post on this topic.  

Russian subs in the gulf!

Nice to know we are not alone out here, as there are Russian subs operating in the Gulf of Mexico.  

The article states that "it is also not known why the submarine conducted the operation".  

Uhh... to clown the US Navy?  Just sayin'.  

Change you can believe in

If a picture is worth a thousand words, this picture will not need much introduction.  This is an aerial shot of one section of Fourchon, Louisiana, drilling central for the Gulf of Mexico, taken on the 27th of October, 2011, over a year after the gulf was long since cleaned up.  


Boats.  Parked.  Everywhere.  In better days, these boats would be out supporting drilling operations and only in port to load and unload.  Unfortunately, this has been the scene since shortly after the Deepwater Horizon disaster.  Followed by an initial uptick in business for Deepwater Horizon response, and followed by a very long and ongoing period of governmental interference with drilling operations in the gulf.  


This is the "boot on the neck", the "boot on the throat", and the tough talking administration judging "whose ass to kick".  Unfortunately, the rest of the industry, and particularly the third party providers like these boat companies are still feeling the pain, and do not factor into the new jobs bill or the 99%.  


By the way, BP just got a new permit to drill in the gulf.  Better luck next time, guys.  

Why helicopters?

Helicopter lease rates in the Gulf of Mexico can easily run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars a MONTH, with added surcharges for fuel, extra hours, and night flights... how can anyone afford to pay such rates, and why does everybody seem to travel by helicopter in the gulf?  


1. Particularly in support of drilling operations, time is money. A deepwater drilling rig may lease for over $500K/day, and if the drilling project is held up for a day because the rig needs a part or a specialized contractor to move forward, the added expense for helicopter support is a mere rounding error in the drilling budget, which is in the multi millions for each well drilled.  


This brings up an interesting point.  If oil companies are making those obscene profits, do you imagine that any of those profits are rolled into further exploration, which is obscenely expensive?  And do you think that each time they drill a hole that they actually HIT something that gives them a big payoff?  Sometimes. And sometimes they're just out several million for a dry hole.  It happens.  


2. Drilling and production operations are quite geographically dispersed even in the Gulf of Mexico, and the tendency is to move toward deeper water, further and further out.  If you have twenty or thirty people spread out at various locations up to 150 miles offshore, a relatively fast crew boat (20 knots or so) can take 18 hours to do a crew change, while a couple of helicopters can pull the same crew change before lunch gets cold.  A large drilling operation can easily have 80-100 people on board one rig.  Figure in additional overtime costs for paying your outgoing crews for the delay, and the high rates for third party contractors waiting on transportation, and the helicopter again begins to look like a pretty good deal.  


3. Some deepwater exploration projects are served by increasingly larger and more expensive aircraft such as the Sikorsky S-92, which sells for around $20 million per copy.  There are reasons for this too, and reasons that companies are willing to pay a premium for such aircraft.  


One is that newer and more capable aircraft are safer, with additional power and up to date survivability equipment if the worst happens and the helicopter does go down.  Top tier companies are willing to pay a premium for the safety of their people, mindful of the costs of cutting corners and the price of liability and lawsuits.   


The second is a function of distance offshore.  The FAA limits a two-pilot crew to ten hours of flight time per day.  If a round trip to a location 250 miles offshore takes 4 flight hours, then you get two trips per day, per helicopter, period.  


So the ONLY way to increase your throughput of people in and out of your deepwater properties is to use faster aircraft (more flight time per day) or bigger aircraft (more seats on each flight).  


And now you know. 

Wisdom o' the Gulf

(Originally published in Autorotate Magazine)

ERRWOLF’S GENERALIZED GULF WISDOM

(or, “Mistakes I’ve Made Lately”)

A sleeping passenger is a happy passenger.

A quick walk around inspection is the cheapest insurance you can get. 

Get rushed, get complacent, get hurt. 

How would you explain what you are doing right now to an accident investigator?

Pay attention to the old farts.  Well, most of them. 

Jet A etiquette: When on the beach, take as much fuel as you can carry.  When offshore, take no more fuel than you need.

A swimming passenger is a most unhappy passenger. 

Work boats are in a unique position to notice changes in the weather sooner than anyone else.  Many of them have radar.  If they start calling YOU to tell you about the weather, I hope you’re tied down. 

Turning the blade by hand before starting is a good way to check for those annoying tiedowns you may have forgotten. 

Want to meet a crane operator?  Land and take off when he’s operating the crane and doesn’t know you’re there.  

A passenger who had to take the boat because of bad weather may be a crabby passenger, but he’ll live through the ride. 

Some great truths in the Gulf of Mexico:

1.   You will have a headwind when you are short on gas.

2.   You will have bad visibility if you’re not sure where the destination is.

3.   You will have more flight time than sleep time the day after you stay up too late. (Try it, it works)

Above all else, fly the aircraft. 

Wash your own dishes and sheets and you’ll live longer.

A passenger who is upside down in a helicopter full of water is the unhappiest passenger of all.  This is why you should brief your passengers, preferably before you leave and not halfway through an emergency procedure.

If you need help at the shore base to put 30 gallons in your Bell 206 at 7AM on a Thursday, you are part of the problem. 

There are two times when you especially need to do a walk around inspection of the aircraft:

1.   When you are unfamiliar with your aircraft, and:

2.   When you are all too familiar with your aircraft. 

The more you check the weather, the less you will be surprised when some weather shows up. 

Don’t feel so paranoid, they’re all trying to kill me too. 

Fly safe, EW  

To the boats

My current contract involves crew and cargo transport to a fleet of boats which operate 150-250 miles offshore.  I've attached a couple of videos of boat landings as seen from the helicopter.

There is a lot of camera bouncing in the first video where I attached the camera to the dash with some velcro. The helicopter doesn't bounce like that, but the camera sure did at the bottom of the approach.

The second video where the camera was mounted to my headset shows is less shaky, but the door post blocks some of the video!

In the shots where you can see inside the cockpit some of the screens look very strange, like the video is being drawn right before your eyes, that has something to do with the camera frame rate and the refresh rate on the screens.  Through regular eyeballs it would just look like a normal screen display.