Have you ever been on a rig tow?

As medical professional, the expatdoc has worked all over the world. He usualy functions as medical advisor on land based remote sites, or off shore cruise ships and oil rigs.

Currently he is part of the crew on board an oil rig, that is being towed from Singapore to Lagos, Nigeria - via Cape Town. Towing is one of the methods used to move oil rigs between locations. Oil rigs can also be carried piggy back style on board large carrier ships - called heavy lifts.

This particular journey will take a couple of months to complete and the expatdoc will try and feed the blog with the more interesting episodes on board the rig.

Here follows a couple of lines.

In the stormy, early hours of 07 Febr,2008, SEDCO 702 crossed a magic, invisible line somewhere on the storm tossed waves of the Indian Ocean. Now, we're halfway to Cape Town! And storm tossed it was: 60 knot winds, 5 meter swells - all from Tropical Cyclone nr 38. Out here - they don't get names.

But we're relieved too. Relieved, like a dog tucking in it's tail to avoid a kick from behind - we've managed to skirt nr 39 - which is now behind us: 150 knot wind speeds in that one! Phew! This rig can safely handle winds of up to 110 knots - after that it's ballast down and sit it out!

But even a 60 knot wind, hits like an oncoming train -sending a shudder through the whole structure as it howels around the high tower.
I've been tired the whole day - and I suspect not only from the Stugeron I took against seasickness - but also from tensing my muscles the whole day against the constant, sometimes violent, rocking washing machine churning. I'm looking forward to my bed - looking forward to escaping for a while into dreams of sunny, solid, far away places.

The captain promissed that on Sunday, we turn left - then we'll be in the Mozambique channel - and should pick up speed. Hopefully we'll make up then for the time we've lost now - just crawling along behind the tow tug. We'll see.

In the end, we chugged past the eastern shore of Madagascar sometime during the night of 11 February. We're at least 50 miles off shore - staying in international waters. But for us medics on board, we can now breath a sigh of relieve - at least - at last - we're once again within helicopter range. Once again, people can afford to fall ill. A week ago - we would have been in dire straits if this happened - no helicopter would have been able to reach us -we were just too far away from land.

The weather is still miserable - like the North Sea - according to the hands that have worked in that storm tossed, icy place.

But so far so good, at least we'll be turning the corner into the Mozambique Channel soon