John's trip - Canada, Ireland, Netherlands

John’s most recent jaunt with EDN was to Canada, Ireland & the Netherlands. He was away 17 days and ran Safety Leadership Workshops on board 3 different pipe laying vessels. One of these vessels, the Solitaire, sailed from Dublin to Rotterdam and he and his co-facilitator ran the workshops in transit.

He had never been to the East Coast of Canada before and was most impressed with what he saw in Halifax and Sheet Harbor. He just missed out on seeing Paul McCartney’s concert in Halifax, but however did see many of the tall ships arrive.

On arriving in Dublin he was whisked away by car to Donegal and before being helicoptered out to the vessel, got the chance to do some walking – a dream come true. He actually came back through Ireland from the Netherlands and had a night in Dublin Town which was a buzz because U2 was in town. He visited many of the spots that we had both visited 6 years ago when there with Blake & Jonno, including Blake’s old workplace, Kehoe’s Pub.

The Netherlands was the third country he visited because the ship he was working on went into dry dock there and this meant spending about 4 hours in Amsterdam before flying back to Houston via Dublin. We had been there 30 years earlier and what he could clearly remember were the canals, beautiful architecture and the 1000’s of bicycles.

He returned home on a high about his new experiences working offshore with different cultures in a new industry.