Down to the sea.

I hope all my readers are either enjoying a day off, or a quiet day at work if they have to work.

To fill time, I offer this long but fascinating piece from the NYT, “The Wreck of the Kulluk“.

The Kulluk was a drilling rig that Shell bought for use in the Arctic. Things did not go well at first. Then they started going badly. Then things got really bad.

There was a loud boom and a shower of sparks. It was gone. Matthews turned to see why the captain was so anxious. He found himself staring at a wall of water — a 50-foot wave, the biggest they had seen. The Alert went straight up its face. “There was this feeling of up and up and up and up and up and up,” he said. He put his hands against the back window to stabilize himself. White water was running over the front window. They couldn’t see anything. “When is this going to stop?” the captain asked.

There are times when I think it’d be interesting to become a seaman. Then I read things like this or Wired‘s story about the Cougar Ace and I remember why I didn’t choose that career.

Comments are closed.