wherein i am envious of husband's workplace

last monday, i took a little jaunt with husband down to the harbor in esbjerg, where he works on a daily basis. he had a day off, but needed to pick up some wood he'd bought. wanting my year-end day at the beach, i rode along.

esbjerg is the port to the danish sector of the north sea. there are oil platforms out there on the horizon and quite a lot of offshore wind farms going up, so there are some exciting vessels in the harbor on a regular basis. like the sea fox 5, a wind installation vessel. and a floating hotel for all those wind farm workers to stay in.

and there was the old maersk frontier, a platform supply vessel (PSV) that must have been taking on supplies for one of the platforms. it used to be my job to make sure all those guys onboard had the proper training to do their jobs safely.

but my favorite one in port on monday was the pacific osprey. it's a huge wind installation vessel owned by swire. it was built at samsung heavy industries in korea (i've been there!), but finished and named in denmark (which sounds a little unusual). i have to admit that seeing such a ship makes my heart beat a little faster.

it has an enormous 1200 ton main crane. it has six jack-up legs, which can lift it out of the water and hold it in place for stability as the enormous wind turbine components are lifted into place.

these are just the bow thrusters, which help maneuver it into place. you can see it was jacked up on its legs there in the harbor.

here's another shot that shows the legs a bit more. they are 105 meters long, so they can lift the ship up, even in fairly deep water.

and husband is invited to a meeting onboard next week! he was a little hesitant to tell me, because he knew i'd be dead jealous. i think i'll just send my camera with him. i did tell him that he has to make more effort to appreciate that he gets to look out his window and see such things on a daily basis.