Junior's Legacy

In July 1996, when businessman C. Kirk Rhein Jr stepped onto his Paris bound flight at New York’s JFK airport, he could have had no inkling of what was to come. A short circuit in the centre wing fuel tank ignited the fuel-air mixture causing a small explosion, setting off a chain reaction leading to a fireball. In the midst of this airborne furnace, a changing of the centre of gravity and loss of aircraft saw the plane pitch up before plunging to its complete destruction in the North Atlantic. If death wasn’t by fire, it was by impact. A bad day all round: flight TWA Flight 800 was an unfortunate choice.

What he surely couldn’t have also guessed was that his legacy would be remembered in the form of a rusting metal scrapheap bearing his name. I never knew C. Kirk Rhein Jr personally, and no doubt he preferred giant grinding hulks to pretty flower gardens or benches with plaques by means of memorial, but should his ghost have drifted from the North Atlantic to the Indian Ocean between Mozambique and Madagascar, I cannot help but think he would have hoped for something better. Built in 1976 in Norway and revamped and renamed in 1997, the C. Kirk Rhein Jr semi-submersible oil platform is a wretched haunt for any man, living or dead, as it binds a rag-tag bunch of reluctant foreigners together united in misery and the common goal of making money.

It is here, you may have guessed, that I find myself now. I left the crisp chill of Aberdeen on Sunday morning, arriving in baking Johannesberg just under a day later. Famed for its lawlessness, the sprawl of this vibrant, menacing city welcomed me with a snarl, or perhaps it was a smile, as my plane landed (without catastrophe, you’ll be glad to hear) and I promptly spent the day relaxing in an international hotel right next to the airport – my entire South African experience.

My Mozambique experience was even less adventurous. Arriving the following afternoon, myself and my two colleagues, The Hamiltonian and Biff, had our visas processed and sipped soft drinks on the airport roof, admiring the endless stretch of straw hut homes around us, until it was time for our chopper to swoop down, grab us and then deposit us on the memorial turf of Mr Rhein Jr. A minimal and an unenthusiastic induction was given, then we were free to enjoy our new home for the next month: an 8-bed leaking portacabin right next to the helideck.

Yes, our sleeping quarters are quite spectacularly awful. Without adequate bedspace in the main body of the rig, we’ve been shoved in some makeshift portacabin. The eight beds are crammed in tight, all of them too small for a grown man to lie down straight in. The room has no light, and only four of the eight bed lights work. Mine isn’t one. There is air conditioning, mercifully, but not exactly waterproofing: there are two windows to outside, which leak and have covered the adjacent top bunk beds in mold. This morning a pool of water was on the floor. I need not say that the toilet is entirely out of action – I instead have to make my way into the main quarters to rest my sorry ass on a choice of two toilets (the third is broken). Toilet paper appears only sporadically.

Being nightshift, which will be starting tonight upon the arrival of our equipment, I can look forward to helicopters landing up to three times a day during my sleep. You may imagine this is not an event you can readily sleep through. However, it seems unlikely I’ll be sleeping anyway, as the two windows in the cabin don’t have curtains and the light streams through. Maybe I’ll try stacking duvets and pillows in front of them. Fortunately, so far only four of the eight beds are taken, so this is possible. I’m not looking forward to the other four beds filling up, as they inevitably will, and this room becoming even more congested.

That’s my moan of the day, anyway, partially justified as this is about the worst accommodation I’ve ever seen on a rig. Not the worst ever, as Big Fat Prick and the six man room on the P5 in Brazil with the blaring TV was less tolerable, though in that the case it was more the company I had to share with than the room itself, which was moderately comfortable. So in fact this room, with the neighbouring helicopter, the broken lights, the leaking and curtainless windows, the lack of toilet and the tiny beds takes the accolade of worst living quarters I’ve experienced on a rig.

The rest of the rig is still a piece of junk, but not quite as bad. The catering crew are Indian, so I’ve been enjoying daily Indian meals quite a bit. There’s internet – just – but when we move into our working unit tomorrow we should have regular access, and our working unit is spacious and well-positioned. Getting to the stiflingly hot gym involves a treacherous ladder, but it is well equipped. But really, that’s about it – this rig is crap, frankly. C. Kirk Rhein Jr must have been a right prick to have earned this legacy.