For those in the know of the offshore world it is common knowledge that during your time offshore you run out of provisions especially in our current location, Africa. These things are usually pretty trivial and there is usually a substitute available. For example we have run out of bars of soap at the moment so we are forced to use the hand pumps that hold the liquid stuff. It is a minor annoyance to me (being a traditional bar of soap in the shower user) but not a big deal. However some things just cannot be lived without.We are currently working on our current job along with 2 of our other new-build vessels the Seven Seas (my old boat) and the Seven Oceans. While we were out in the field one of our sub-contractors required a piece of equipment to continue some testing. The Oceans was in port at the time so it was asked if they could bring it out to the field for us so we could transfer it to ours and save around 24 hours of vessel time (which in monetary terms is quite a few hundred thousand pound).
This was no problem for the Oceans however they only had one request - we needed to trade them some tea bags. They had run out and being of a mostly British crew found they could not live without the staple British drink (Booze is not allowed on board....) We accepted this trade and returned the crane hook with a large supply of tea bags to fullfil our side of the deal.
