Paphos Life

We sat and watched the huge oil rig as it very slowly headed west. It is now lit up like Picadilly circus. Still moving slowly along.

We saw it as we were driving from Oniros to the harbour. Reminded me of when the Orion rig ran aground off Guernsey in the seventies. Amazing sight, both of them.

On its way to Greece for maintenance, apparently. I never realised they were mobile before.

Dominic wrote: ↑Fri Aug 16, 2019 12:12 pm On its way to Greece for maintenance, apparently. I never realised they were mobile before.

Think they are only mobile if there is a Tug towing them,

It was actually a Drill Ship which is self propelling as opposed to an Oil Rig.

I've lived and worked on a number of them over the years both in the North Sea and the Gulf. That type is a semi submersible which floats on submerged pontoons. They usually use tugs to move them. As Aquilla wrote, it's a drilling rig.

Jim

Well during the day when we were watching it there were no tugs at all and it was moving. So it had to have some method of propulsion.

A tug could be tied off against the rig, easier to control rather than using a tow rope. That way you only need one tug.

Jim

I would have posted the name the other night but was a bit busy.

It was Scarabeo 9, powered by 8 x 12 cylinder engines.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scarabeo_9

It most probably has bow thrusters which holds it in position using GPS when it's drilling. These are not usually for moving the rig from one location to another. The water is usually too deep where they're drilling to use anchors so they use bow thrusters. I lived on a crane barge called the Hermod which used the same technology.

Jim

I remember first seeing the rigs and platforms arriving off the coast of Limassol some years back so one night we popped down along the coast to see what was going on and to try my camera at night.
This was taken on 12 January 2014 - it's the ENSCO 5006, a drilling platform.
IMO: 8764482
MMSI: 636016463

That is what the one off the coast looked like.