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Blew a hydraulic hose on a 12 inch suction line 40 feet down in Port Arthur and had to hand signal the whole job
So last Thursday I'm down at a dock rehab job in Port Arthur, sitting on the bottom in about 40 feet of murky water, and my hydraulic hose on the 12 inch suction dredge blows out. Oil starts clouding up everything, visibility goes from like 2 feet to zero, and I can't see my own glove in front of my face. My comms box picked that exact moment to cut out too, so I'm standing there trying to hand signal the tender on the surface that I need to come up. He sees my bubbles going crazy and finally figures it out. I had to do a free ascent along the downline with zero vis and zero comms, which I hate, and it took almost 20 minutes to get up because I was being careful. Cost the company about 4 hours of downtime and a new hose, plus the super was not happy about the oil sheen on the water. Anyone else had a comms failure line up perfectly with a gear breakdown? What's your backup plan when both go at once?
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drews5522d ago
Man that is a straight up nightmare combo, losing your comms and your hose at the same time is about as bad as it gets down there. Been in zero vis before and it messes with your head, so doing a free ascent on the downline with no comms takes some stones. That 20 minutes probably felt like two hours, and I don't blame you for taking it slow. Only real backup I know is a set of hand signals drilled into your tender before you ever get wet, plus a spare hose staged on deck so you're not waiting on a supply run. Glad you made it up clean, and the super can get over an oil sheen.
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