Date: FRI 5-MAY-95 16:59:06 GMT
Internet Diary

Brent Spar Internet Diary

We have now started our sixth day - a fairly gloomy one as far as the weather is concerned. In spite of this and the other difficulties, morale is very high - in good part thanks to the cook. We have an impressive array of ingredients - fresh vegetables (boxes of cabbages, celeriac, peppers, carrots and sacks of potatoes), plenty of dried foods, milk, juice, bread and biscuits.

We have only one toilet in operation - flushed using a bucket of sea water which you have to collect by lowering the bucket 25 metres to the sea and then pulling it back up. It is really soul destroying when you mis-time swinging the bucket over the lip and spill it all so you have to start again.

The worst thing, apart from not having running water, is the damp. It feels like the sea fog has permeated every nook and cranny and although all the fixtures and fittings, including mattresses and blankets have been left they are really quite damp.

Part of the morning was spent making safe the walkway around the lower deck with planks of wood from the helideck and monitoring for the hydrogen sulphide gas that can form and could reach our level.

It is rather like the Marie Celeste as there are still notices on the walls, menus, warnings about only residents being allowed to use the videos. In the office areas there is still a great deal of information in the cupboards and personal effects such as postcards - it's as if everyone left in a hurry. The movement of the sea makes loose doors creak open and shut, adding to the illusion of the ghost ship.

The generator hums constantly but the only sounds last night were the flapping of the Greenpeace flag boldly displaying "Save the North Sea" from the helideck and the eerie fog horn sounded over the last two days. One of the crew is going to make a recording for posterity!

The weather is slightly worse today - the sea is quite rough and the Spar is swaying - gently, but enough to knock you off course as you walk across a room. From the office window, one of the eight closest rigs can be seen - at night which ever way you look there are flames from these and from those further afield. There are so many crowded together. this makes the suggestion by the Government that the rigs here be dumped in situ even more shocking.

The sea birds are not too frequent, but we have seen fulmars, gannets and a bird of prey flying near to the spar - possibly a merlin. There is nothing see apart from the rigs, their support vessels and the occasional helicopter.

We have been heartened by the publicity this action has and still is generating around Europe and beyond - even in Beirut.