The Sicilian Job.
In 1982 the Italian company Saipem, using a satellite controlled lay-barge named Castoro Sei, was laying the 155 Km sub-sea Trans-Mediterranean gas pipeline between Tunisia and Sicily.
The work involved joining sections of 66cm diameter steel tube and laying them 610metres beneath the sea, where repairing leaking joints is challenging; therefore, every weld was radiographed, approved or reworked before being submerged. Radiographs were taken using an X-Ray robot called a crawler operating inside the pipe, and that’s why I became involved.
Scanray-Scandinavian X-ray(UK) was busy in 1982. One Friday in July, I was dispatching a food inspection system and a team to Ireland, a project team to Prestwick airport Scotland, and I had two problematic microfocus X-Ray systems working 24/7 in Germany inspecting parts for the Tornado’s jet engine. Besides that, Scanray’s majority shareholder BIX was pressing me to send an engineer to Sicily because of crawler problems on Castoro Sei. When I said I didn’t have anyone spare, BIX’s Chairman demanded that I go. I refused, Scanray’s MD was on holiday, and it would leave no one in charge. He countered:
“So, everything comes to a halt if your MD is away”.
That’s Chairman-speak for ‘Your boss will pay for this when he gets back’. So, reluctantly I agreed to go.
Late Saturday morning I landed at Leonardo da Vinci Airport Rome, in my case I had spares, an oscilloscope, a toolkit, and clothes for a few days away. At internal departures, I discovered my Alitalia connection to Sicily had taken off before I had arrived. Sometimes, you have to accept that things are just not going your way.
I booked into a hotel in Rome and had a consolation dinner of Fettuccine Alfredo and a bottle of Chianti followed by tiramisu and Italian coffee.
Sunday midday I landed at Trapani Airport Sicily, but I couldn’t get off the plane as it was surrounded by families having emotional reunions. When I finally got to the information desk, I found that all the taxis were taken. The desk lady told me I was in luck because the Trapani bus would be along in two and a half hours. It was hot, I sat on a bench, put my feet on my case, and dozed off. The next thing I knew the lady was shaking me. “L’autobus di Trapani è qui”.
I stowed my case and found a seat on the bus next to a wizened old Sicilian. The old guy kept looking at me, and I worried I might be the subject of mistaken identity, you never know how that might end in Sicily. Finally, he said:
“You English?”
“Yes,” I replied in surprise.
“You boys come through ere in forty-three”.
I expected more, but he turned away, and that was the end of the conversation.
Saipem had a base outside Trapani, so when we passed a compound with stacked pipes, I shouted to the driver to stop. The bus drove off leaving me and my case in a cloud of dust. I went to enter the compound but jumped back as two bloody great snarling Alsatians charged the gate. I could see a man in a small office, feet on a desk talking on the phone. With his back to me, he was oblivious of my presence. If anyone tells you noon is the hottest time of day in the Mediterranean, well it’s not, it’s four in the afternoon, and I was left standing under the sun for fifteen minutes while that prat chatted away with two dogs ready to tear me apart. He finished the call, saw me, restrained the dogs and drove me to Trapani. Leaving me at a hotel, he said someone would pick me up in the morning. The next day I was driven to a helicopter waiting on a clifftop. In the front seat was a uniformed pilot explaining the controls to a trainee wearing an open check shirt and jeans. As the engine started the pilot handed me ear defenders. Surprisingly the trainee took the controls, and we rose backwards into the air. Suddenly, the pilot dived across, and a struggle ensued between the two men, but the trainee wouldn’t give up control. Eventually, the pilot relented, the nose dipped forward, I recovered, and we headed south across a turquoise sea towards Tunisia. Half an hour later, after twice looking down onto open sea, I saw the welcome H of the helipad as the trainee made his third attempt to land on the Castoro Sei lay-barge.
I ducked beneath the spinning rota and ran to the edge of the helipad where a surly Scot was sheltering from the down-draft. He put out his hand, so I handed him my suitcase. He told me to F*** off, so I put down the case and shook his hand, apparently being the technical manager of Scanray didn’t carry much weight here. The BIX supervisor said the radiographs were coming out light with low contrast, they had to expose the film longer causing the crawlers to overheat and the batteries to run down quicker, continually changing crawlers in the pipe was slowing the pipe laying rate. If the problem were not sorted soon, BIX would be back-charged for the delays. The cost to run the lay-barge was $100,000 plus a day, that’s why the Chairman wanted someone on site ‘molto rapido’.
By the next morning, I had tested each crawler on deck, as there was nowhere else to work. I could find nothing wrong with the Scanray equipment, so I called for a meeting with Saipem’s operations manager, the nearest thing to God on the lay-barge.
Signor Giovanni Alberti listened politely as I explained that the Scanray equipment was operating to specification. The issue was with the BIX operation, I couldn’t help him, it wasn’t my problem. When I’d finished Signor Alberti was silent for a moment, he stroked his chin, pushed out his bottom lip, and nodding slightly he calmly gave me the offer I couldn’t refuse.
“Mr Butler, I make ita very simple for you. You dona fix my problem, I dona call for di elicopter”. Softly, the theme from the Godfather began playing in my head. As far as Signor Alberti was concerned, I had the word ‘engineer’ stamped on my forehead. It was definitely my problem now.
Over the next nine days, I became an expert at maintaining robots in a hostile operating environment. I serviced and re-calibrated the BIX crawlers, replenished the batteries and finetuned the X-Ray equipment. I became something of a sleuth because the film problems persisted, I questioned the crawler operators, the film processing people and the inspectors who spent their days in dark rooms peering at radiographs on light boxes looking for weld defects. I wrote everything in a notebook and at night I re-wrote my notes on A4 sheets making link charts to try to locate the source of the problem. I widened my inquiries to stores and deck crew, and that’s when I struck lucky. Radiographic film and chemicals should be stored at not more than 24ºC, but a container had been left on deck for a week; near Tunisia, in summer the container could have reached an internal temperature of plus 50ºC. I tracked the start of the problem to that container. Luckily neither BIX nor Scanray were responsible. I wrote a report and went to see Signor Alberti. He acted quickly, new film and chemicals were brought in, and the results were positive. Hoping the espresso and pasta machines were all functioning, I asked Signor Alberti if I could go home. He never apologised for my unlawful imprisonment, but he did put me on the next ‘elicopter’ out.
In case you think this was some sort of a holiday, I will tell you about ‘hot racking’. On a lay-barge, because there are more people than beds, outsiders are allocated free bunk space between work shifts. I might be in a bunk for just an hour, and then some big hairy welder would throw me out; I would then have to go to Personnel to ask for a new allocation. It was often better to just sleep in a chair.
What I learned from this experience was, if an Englishman wants you to do something he may use a veiled threat, but with a Sicilian, you know exactly where you stand.
Safely back at Heathrow, I found my car had a flat battery, and I had to call out the AA.