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Visiting JB115
In the beginning of 2010 Henk and Barry were invited by Nico to see the JB115 from the inside. This is their story...
When you are a volunteer of the Seafarers Mission in the Eemshaven you meet a
lot of different people. In the spring of 2010 the jack-up barge JB115 was
parked in the Eemshaven. It is a kind of drilling ship which transports
the foundation of a windmill and places it on the right spot (hopefully).
This time a huge transformer had to be shipped to a location north of the German
island of Borkum, but the weather conditions were not right so they had to
wait a while (bad for the company, not so bad for us). So, many
crewmembers came to the Mission in the evening.
One of crewmembers was Nico. A German from Berlin who speaks Dutch fluently. On board he was a electrician. One evening Henk and I asked Nico if we could see the JB from the inside. Nico said he had to ask the captain for permission. We said okay we’ll wait. Nico turned to the person next to him and spoke to him. Then he turned back and said “Ok, you are welcome…”. So it was the captain sitting next to him, sorry captain, but you can’t see at someone’s nose which job they have on board. But it was obvious that we were to trust, you could see that from our noses… The next day we went to the JB.
Nico welcomed us aboard. We came at the right time… dinner
time! There are always different nationalities aboard a ship, on the JB too. A
cook has to be multi-culti and this one was. He made dinner for the different
cultures, and as a good Dutch we mixed it all together and made stampot from it:
Bami with real Dutch zuurkool (or was it German sauerkraut?). Anyway it tasted
superb. You can try it at home.
After dinner we went sightseeing on the JB. For us,
landlubbers, a special experience. On the ship all is well organized and all the
machines are duplicated, so when one machine fails the other takes over. This is
all we can say about the machinery because of our technical ignorance, sorry.
Very impressive was the rescue boat. The orange boat was hanging out. In this
small boat 85(!) crewmembers could take place. We never thought that so many
people would fit in the rather small boat. Only the mate could see
outside, the rest is fully tied to the boat and can’t see nothing.
After the tour we sat down and drank a little. Then it was time to go home… Nico, danke schon fur die beeindruckende Mittag und bis bald(?).