There must be a wealth of interesting stories amognst us here.

Near misses, chopper incidents, training problems etc etc.

One that sticks in my mind is a deck we had nearly finished building/commissioning. It was due to sail so we were jacking up ready to load out onto the barge, we slid the deck support frame under the deck (23,000t deck) and we were just about to continue commissioning when the ground directly under the deck exploded. Turned out there was a pete bog under the ground that caught fire and blew a hole in the dirt. It was initially thought to be a volcano forming (seismic area) but turned out to be a pocket of gas in the pete going off. 3 - 4 metre flames directly under our new production and drilling facility.

Took a few weeks for Red Adair's mob (or whoever they were, I can't remember the outfits name now) to get the fire under control.

One slightly warm but otherwise unharmed facility sailed and was installed on it's jacket a few weeks later.

Any others?

A couple of months ago we were crew changing by Helecopter in Tanzania, it had all been going well until they stopped to refuel the chopper. It seemed to be taking a long time so I went to have a look and was confronted by the ground crew trying to siphon an 85 gallon drum of avgas into the chopper. Turned out someone had forgotten to bring the pump for the fuel cans hence the siphoning which was apparantly taking too long to do so they had decided to speed up the process by using a watering can!!! alls well that ends well and I am here to tell the tale but it was a classic 'only in africa.....

Had a friend who did a relief job on a rig. He was normally on ships. He was there only a few days. On the day of the incident he was part of the helicopter landing party, he decided to test the foam monitor as the chopper was coming in to land... he was on the same chopper going home

Too many over the years...but a funny one that sticks in my mind...

young engineer comes offshore, green as anything and some clown in the office decides I would be the right person to "take care of him" on his first 28 day swing, he gets allocated his cabin and about 20 minuntes later comes down to see me with a "problem" saying there are 4 beds in the cabin, does this mean he has to sleep with other people ? LOL.... had to explain to his only certain people get single bunks offshore and he aint one of them and guess what you have to share the bathroom as well

Few hours later comes to see me again... asking what time do we catch the chopper on Friday... my answer Huh... what do you mean...?...his answer.. Well we work Monday to Friday and go home week ends and come back Monday morning dont we ?

I asked hm if he knew he would be out here 28 days straight before going home....got a glazed look of panic on his face.

He managed to get on a telephone and phoned the office and was gone a few days later, never to be seen offshore again