Working on the barge Captain Bulganin. Part 2

In the first part, I talked about the journey to the barge - quarantine, trips to other cities, and the road to the closed city of Yamburg.

Now let's continue with life and routine on the pipe-laying barge "Captain Bulganin"

A few words about the barge and what is happening overall.

The task of all this activity is to lay the pipe through which gas will flow from hard-to-reach northern fields to the mainland, where it will connect to the main pipeline network.

The pipe is laid on the seabed, or rather in a trench that is pre-created before laying the pipe, then the pipe is laid and covered with soil to prevent it from floating.

First, the pipes are delivered to the barge with the help of auxiliary vessels:

Then the pipes are transferred onto the barge using a crane, and then they go through inspection and welding inside the barge via a conveyor:

On the barge, there is a workshop where welders work day and night (only in good weather) doing their job

In the end, the pipe is smoothly laid on the seabed due to the barge's movement:

The accuracy of the barge's position is monitored by hydrographers on the bridge:

There are computers connected to satellites that very accurately determine the course and direction.

Another group of hydrographers takes pictures of the seabed from their boat and transmits the necessary data to the bridge:

There is also a winch operator here:

The barge does not move by itself; it pulls itself by tensioning cables that go to anchors cast at a distance of about 1.5 km from the barge.

This distance was chosen here because the depth of the Ob Bay in this place was no more than 3 meters, and the barge was specially made for shallow depths.

Next, we move to the ships that move these anchors:

One night, I needed to visit such a tugboat. This is what it looked like during the polar day:

Inside is all the control of the lifting mechanisms, the captain and his assistants control:

Outside, the anchor lift looks like this:

At night, you could observe the barge from the side:

A bit more about the barge itself. It runs on diesel fuel, which is delivered in a special tanker:

Refueling can take more than a day. Next, you can see several generators at the very end of the barge and a substation:

And another link in this production chain is a dredger. A vessel that pumps out soil for laying the pipe:

I also had the chance to visit one of them.

This is what the bridge looks like, from where the captain controls the movement of the vessel:

And from here, they control the pumps:

And the interior of such a machine:

Also, various everyday things like the dining room and the recreation room. The ship was previously operated by the Dutch, and after them, the recreation room was converted into a gym-laundry room :)

In the next part, I will talk about everyday life on the barge and my work.