Speaker 1: Federal regulators made it official. Vineyard Wind will be the
Speaker 1: first large scale offshore wind energy project in the United States.
Speaker 1: This project will generate enough electricity for about four hundred
Speaker 1: thousand homes. The CEO of Vineyard Wind, Lars Peterson, says
Speaker 1: this new project will kickstart the industry. Vineyard will be
Speaker 1: the first to use a new turbine that stands more
Speaker 1: than eight hundred and fifty feet tall, with each of
Speaker 1: its three blades stretching more than the length of a
Speaker 1: football field.
Speaker 2: About fifteen miles south of Nantucket, off the coast of Massachusetts,
Speaker 2: a massive new wind farm is rising out of the
Speaker 2: Atlantic Ocean. The project is expected to start delivering electricity
Speaker 2: this fall. Those turbines will bring the Biden administration closer
Speaker 2: to its goal of the US generating thirty giglewatts of
Speaker 2: power from clean offshore wind by twenty thirty. But that
Speaker 2: goal won't be easy to Building those super tall wind
Speaker 2: turbines is not cheap, and some projects have faltered.
Speaker 3: Costs have gone up, price of steel has gone up.
Speaker 3: These giant towers use a lot of steel. All of
Speaker 3: a sudden, the project's costs are higher than they expected.
Speaker 2: That's Bloomberg's Will Wade. He got on a big boat
Speaker 2: to check out the wind farm, and a bit later
Speaker 2: I talked to Nick Schultz. He's a commercial diver working
Speaker 2: on this project, and I asked him what it's like
Speaker 2: to build a wind turbine in deep water.
Speaker 4: Most of our day.
Speaker 5: Is just making sure it all goes right, because you know,
Speaker 5: when you pick up something that weighs a million pounds,
Speaker 5: you've got to have it as safe as you possibly can.
Speaker 2: I'm West Kosova today on the Big take the answer,
Speaker 2: my friend is blowing it. Well, you know, Will, you
Speaker 2: went out to see this giant wind project. What was
Speaker 2: it like?
Speaker 3: It was really fun. I had to go to Cape
Speaker 3: Cod in the summer of Like all my coworkers were like, wow,
Speaker 3: that's a real hardship assignment.
Speaker 2: Well, journalism can be tough.
Speaker 5: It is.
Speaker 3: We had a about two hours due south from Hyanas
Speaker 3: out past Martha's Vineyard, and then when we get there,
Speaker 3: there's six monopiles sticking out of the ocean. The monopile
Speaker 3: is the foundation that they're going to attach the turbines too.
Speaker 3: Eventually there's going to be sixty two turbines, so they'll
Speaker 3: have to do sixty two monopiles and then they go
Speaker 3: out and attach the turbine. So there were six of
Speaker 3: them there and they're sticking out of the ocean maybe
Speaker 3: fifty feet, But then a couple of miles away they've
Speaker 3: got the substation. That thing was just huge. They needed
Speaker 3: four model piles for that, and then they built the
Speaker 3: platform on top of that. It's a couple one hundred
Speaker 3: feet up and then the substation. And you know, when
Speaker 3: you're in the ocean, it's hard to see scale. So
Speaker 3: this thing is literally almost as big as a football field,
Speaker 3: just sitting on a platform in the middle of the ocean.
Speaker 3: So all the turbines are going to be wired to
Speaker 3: the substation. The substation takes the electricity and it puts
Speaker 3: it on a big cable and it sends it all
Speaker 3: the way to shore.
Speaker 2: And so they have these platforms, these monopiles that the
Speaker 2: turbines will go on. And then how big are the
Speaker 2: turbines themselves going to be? I think we've all seen
Speaker 2: those things, you know, the big blades spinning.
Speaker 3: Yeah, if you've ever seen a wind turbine on land,
Speaker 3: you know it's big. But the ones they make for offshore,
Speaker 3: they're even bigger. They're really big. So these are going
Speaker 3: to be about eight hundred and fifty feet tall, and
Speaker 3: I did a little math that works out almost exactly
Speaker 3: to the height of the Washington Monument with the Statue
Speaker 3: of Liberty stacked on top. This project's going to be
Speaker 3: sixty two of them. It's about eight hundred megawatts of capacity.
Speaker 3: That's going to be enough to power four hundred thousand
Speaker 3: homes in the region. It's a big project.
Speaker 2: And how long has this been under development.
Speaker 3: It's been under development for a long time. They got
Speaker 3: their initial power purchase agreement back in twenty eighteen.
Speaker 2: So they're just now starting to put these turbines up.
Speaker 2: How long until this thing is up and running.
Speaker 3: It's supposed to be complete in early twenty twenty four,
Speaker 3: but they told me that the first ones that are
Speaker 3: going to be installed, they're going to be wiring up
Speaker 3: as soon as they can. They should be delivering electricity
Speaker 3: in October already delivering.
Speaker 2: Wow, that seems pretty soon.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's really soon. This will be the first electricity
Speaker 3: from a large scale US offshore wind project. There are
Speaker 3: two other offshore wind projects in service in the United States,
Speaker 3: but they're really just test projects. One is near Block Island.
Speaker 3: It's just thirty megawatts with five turbines. That was the
Speaker 3: first one, and then there's another one down in Virginia.
Speaker 3: It only has two turbines. There was really just, you know,
Speaker 3: a demonstration project.
Speaker 2: So I imagine that people who like to use the
Speaker 2: beach and own property along the shoreline don't really want
Speaker 2: to look out and see giant turbine spinning. Can you
Speaker 2: see it from the shore?
Speaker 3: I mean they're big. You could see them from a while,
Speaker 3: but I'm told that you will not be able to
Speaker 3: see it from the shore.
Speaker 2: We talk a lot about how we're trying to wean
Speaker 2: ourselves from natural gas, from coal, from other fossil fuels,
Speaker 2: and move toward wind and solar. Why did it take
Speaker 2: so long for a project like this to get underwig.
Speaker 3: This has just been a slow moving industry in the
Speaker 3: United States, and certainly since this is the first big project,
Speaker 3: it's getting a lot of attention. They all have to
Speaker 3: go through a lot of environmental reviews. You've got to
Speaker 3: go through state and federal oversight, You've got to do
Speaker 3: all of those environmental impact studies. The fishermen had plenty
Speaker 3: to say about the topic. It takes a long time
Speaker 3: to get all of the approvals that you need.
Speaker 2: And there's a whole bunch of other projects also planned
Speaker 2: up and down on the East coast. Is that right, Yeah.
Speaker 3: Offshore wind is a big component of the US's climate strategy,
Speaker 3: and there's about seventeen projects that are planned running all
Speaker 3: the way up from the mid Atlantic up to the Northeast.
Speaker 3: President Joe Biden has set a goal of having thirty
Speaker 3: gigawatts of offshore wind and service by twenty thirty, so
Speaker 3: we'll see if we get there. But we're starting to
Speaker 3: hit some snags because this is such a slow moving industry.
Speaker 3: Vineyard Wind is under construction now, and there's another project
Speaker 3: almost in the same area, South Fork Wind. It's under
Speaker 3: construction now. They'll probably be finished faster, but they won't
Speaker 3: have electricity delivered as fast, or so they say, but
Speaker 3: South Fork Wind is much smaller. But after that, nothing
Speaker 3: else is under construction, and instead we've seen several projects
Speaker 3: trying to get out of their agreements, trying to cancel
Speaker 3: some of their contracts, trying to renegotiate their contracts. So
Speaker 3: here's the problem. The basic business model for an offshore
Speaker 3: wind project is you plan your project. Then you have
Speaker 3: to get a PPA. That's a power purchase agreement. That
Speaker 3: means you've got someone on shore that's willing to buy
Speaker 3: the electricity, and they're usually run for decades twenty twenty
Speaker 3: five years as standard, So you have a utility usually
Speaker 3: that says we'll buy your electricity at this price for
Speaker 3: this length of time. As a developer, once you have that,
Speaker 3: you're good to go. You take that to the bank
Speaker 3: and the bank says, ah, this company we trust is
Speaker 3: promising to give you money. We'll loan you money. Now
Speaker 3: you've got the bank promising to loan you money. You
Speaker 3: can take that to your suppliers and say, we would
Speaker 3: like to buy one hundred wind turbines, and the bank
Speaker 3: is promising to loan us the money, and the suppliers say,
Speaker 3: all right, we're all good to go. That's how it's
Speaker 3: supposed to work. What's happened here is these projects take
Speaker 3: a long time. So Vineyard Wind got its PPA in
Speaker 3: twenty eighteen, it lined up its bank, it's financing, it
Speaker 3: lined up its supply deals. It's good to go. Other
Speaker 3: projects that got their PPAs later, they're encountering big problems
Speaker 3: with inflation. So they got their PPAs they started to
Speaker 3: line up their financing. When they went to line up
Speaker 3: supply deals, costs have gone up in the past twelve
Speaker 3: eighteen months. Price of steel has gone up. These giant
Speaker 3: towers use a lot of steel. The supply chain has
Speaker 3: gotten all bogged down. It takes longer to get there
Speaker 3: components that go into all the gears and the electronics.
Speaker 3: Those costs have gone up. All of a sudden, the
Speaker 3: project's costs are higher than they expected, and the developers
Speaker 3: are crunching the numbers and they're like, wait a minute,
Speaker 3: we promised to deliver electricity at this price. We can't
Speaker 3: deliver it at that price. Our costs have gone up.
Speaker 3: Now they're stuck. So we've seen a lot of projects
Speaker 3: that have gone back to the utilities, back to the States,
Speaker 3: and they're saying, we have a little problem here. We
Speaker 3: can't deliver the electricity that we promised to deliver, not
Speaker 3: at that price. Can we get out of that deal?
Speaker 3: And they're not getting a lot of sympathy at all.
Speaker 3: The utilities of the States are going, nah, no, you
Speaker 3: promised us that power. We want that power. So, for example, Avanngrid,
Speaker 3: the developer of Vineyard Wind has another project right in
Speaker 3: the same area. It's even bigger. It's called Commonwealth Wind.
Speaker 3: It's going to be one point two gigawatts, so that's
Speaker 3: about fifty percent bigger. The Commonwealth Wind project agreed to
Speaker 3: pay a penalty to get out of that contract because
Speaker 3: it can't make money. They're going to try and rebid
Speaker 3: in a January auction and see if they can get
Speaker 3: a higher ppa. We'll see how that works for them.
Speaker 2: When you went to them and asked them about it,
Speaker 2: what did they have to say?
Speaker 3: They said that they're hoping to find a way forward
Speaker 3: with their projects.
Speaker 2: After the break the challenges of building more huge wind
Speaker 2: projects like this.
Speaker 6: When I think about climate change, I think jobs, almost
Speaker 6: one hundred wind turbines going up off the coast of
Speaker 6: Massachusetts Rhode Island. Jobs manufacturing two thousand, five hundred ton
Speaker 6: steel foundations that anchor these offshore wind farm to the seafloor.
Speaker 2: Will you mentioned before that President Biden has this goal
Speaker 2: of thirty gigawatts of wind power. Exactly what does that mean?
Speaker 2: A gigawatt sounds big, but what does that translate to?
Speaker 3: Well, it is big, it's a lot of power. But
Speaker 3: what it translates to it's harder to measure. So, for example,
Speaker 3: Vineyard wind is going to be eight hundred megawatts.
Speaker 2: A little side note here to help wrap our brains
Speaker 2: around this, there are one thousand megawatts in a gigawatt,
Speaker 2: So this eight hundred megawatt project is eighty percent of
Speaker 2: a gigawatt.
Speaker 3: And they say that's going to be enough for four
Speaker 3: hundred thousand homes in the area. So keep in mind
Speaker 3: it's in New England, because a gigawatt of power in
Speaker 3: New England isn't the same as a gigawatt of power
Speaker 3: in Texas.
Speaker 2: Why is that?
Speaker 3: Texas is really hot. They use a lot of air conditioning.
Speaker 3: That's a lot of electricity, So a gigawat there won't
Speaker 3: go as far as a gigawat in Maine, where they
Speaker 3: don't need as much electricity.
Speaker 2: So the idea is that powering an air conditioner is
Speaker 2: more than powering a light bulb exactly.
Speaker 3: Plus you have to think about what kind of electricity
Speaker 3: it comes from. One of my standard measures is a
Speaker 3: nuclear power plant, a big conventional nuclear power plan. Most
Speaker 3: people can probably just imagine what it looks like. Those
Speaker 3: are about a gigawatt each but they run night and
Speaker 3: day twenty four to seven, almost three hundred and sixty
Speaker 3: five days a year. A gigawatt of wind power they're
Speaker 3: not going to run twenty four to seven. The best
Speaker 3: winds are usually at night. So a gigawatt of nuclear
Speaker 3: will go further than a gigawatt of wind.
Speaker 2: Just because it's operating twenty four hours a.
Speaker 3: Day, because it runs around the clock.
Speaker 2: They're placing these giant turbines out in the Northeast.
Speaker 3: Why the US Northeast is one of the two best
Speaker 3: places in the world for offshore wind power, And there's
Speaker 3: two reasons for that. One, the winds are strong and consistent.
Speaker 3: And two, and this is really important, the water's not
Speaker 3: very deep. Vineyard wind's going to be in about thirty
Speaker 3: to fifty meters of water. It's like one hundred to
Speaker 3: one hundred and fifty feet. That is not a huge
Speaker 3: engineering challenge. When you go off to California, for example,
Speaker 3: off the whole West coast, the water offshore gets real deep,
Speaker 3: real fast. So you couldn't build an offshore wind turbin
Speaker 3: like that in a thousand feet of water.
Speaker 2: So what are they going to do about that. Is
Speaker 2: there a solution to that.
Speaker 3: Yes, they're experimenting with floating wind farms, so they won't
Speaker 3: be on monopiles that are bolted to the bottom of
Speaker 3: the ocean. They're going to be literally these floating platforms
Speaker 3: with a wind turbine attached to it, and they're going
Speaker 3: to anchor them at the bottom. It's an experimental technology,
Speaker 3: but they say it's a lot easier to do because
Speaker 3: you can build it on shore and then tow it
Speaker 3: out to sea, so that should be faster and cheaper.
Speaker 3: But it's still new and unproven.
Speaker 2: And those things aren't going to be bobbing in the water.
Speaker 3: They will bob in the water, but they have counterweights
Speaker 3: on the bottom, so they'll bob down and bob back up.
Speaker 2: And the turbines will always stay straight up and down.
Speaker 3: They'll move around a little bit, but not so much
Speaker 3: that they don't work.
Speaker 2: Europe has been building these wind farms for a long time.
Speaker 2: They're way ahead of the US.
Speaker 3: Why are they, Oh, it's really simple. They don't have
Speaker 3: as much space. Europe's not as big as the United States.
Speaker 3: If you drive across the country, you're going to see
Speaker 3: so much wind farms out in the middle of the
Speaker 3: country in Iowa, Nebraska, they've got tons of space and
Speaker 3: it's really windy there. Europe is much especially Western Europe,
Speaker 3: it's much more dense. They don't have as much space.
Speaker 3: They had to go offshore. There's another reason why offshore
Speaker 3: wind in the US, especially on the East coast, is
Speaker 3: a good idea. It's close to where the people are.
Speaker 3: All those wind farms in Iowa, very far from New
Speaker 3: York City where there's so many people that need electricity, and.
Speaker 2: So then you have to run all those lines further.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we need thousands of miles of transmission lines in
Speaker 3: this country. It's actually a huge problem for the renewable
Speaker 3: energy transition.
Speaker 2: Are there any precautions they have to take? They're building
Speaker 2: these things in the ocean. There's a lot of wildlife
Speaker 2: all around them.
Speaker 3: Well, they're really concerned about whales. They don't want the
Speaker 3: construction to disrupt the whales. Everybody loves the whales. I'm
Speaker 3: out on the boat and it's really beautiful and I
Speaker 3: was thinking, Wow, I hope we get to see some whales,
Speaker 3: and the people in the project, I hope we don't
Speaker 3: see whales. If we see whales, we have to stop work.
Speaker 2: So actually they have to pause the project if they see.
Speaker 3: Whalel Yeah, no construction allowed when there's whales in the area.
Speaker 2: So how much is this big project going to cost?
Speaker 3: A vineyard wing that's about four billion dollars and that
Speaker 3: substation was like almost a quarter of it. I was
Speaker 3: like nine hundred million dollars for that.
Speaker 2: Will you mention there are a lot of other projects
Speaker 2: in the works up and down the East coast. What
Speaker 2: about in those big open spaces in the middle of
Speaker 2: the country. Are we going to start to see more
Speaker 2: and more wind farms across America?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, there's still plenty of wind farms under development
Speaker 3: all across the country. Wind and solar if solar takes
Speaker 3: up a lot of space too. They're all key components
Speaker 3: of the green energy transition that the US is trying
Speaker 3: to pursue. They're even planning one in the Great Lakes
Speaker 3: Icebreaker wind in Lake Erie near Cleveland.
Speaker 2: And how long do they think it'll take for Joe
Speaker 2: Biden's goal of thirty gigawatts of wind power to be real?
Speaker 3: Well, the target's twenty thirty. We'll see if we get there.
Speaker 3: In terms of the projects that are delayed, right now.
Speaker 3: I don't think that they're going to be killed. I
Speaker 3: think there's enough desire. I think there's enough interest from
Speaker 3: the governments and from state governments in having this clean energy.
Speaker 3: I think they're going to find a way forward, but
Speaker 3: it's going to take some time to work through this.
Speaker 2: Will thanks so much for coming on the show. Happy
Speaker 2: to be here when we come back. What is like
Speaker 2: to go to work on the ocean floor.
Speaker 4: My name's Nick Schultz.
Speaker 5: I'm a member of pile Driver's Local Union fifty six.
Speaker 5: I'm a commercial diver and pile driver, and I do
Speaker 5: all kinds of marine construction.
Speaker 2: So, Nick, you've worked on some of these big offshore
Speaker 2: wind projects. Your work in the water is on the
Speaker 2: kind of the infrastructure that goes beneath these giant turbines. Yes,
Speaker 2: and that's really what's been happening right now as they're
Speaker 2: preparing to start putting up the first of them. Can
Speaker 2: you describe what that work is like. I mean, you're
Speaker 2: out in the middle of the water and you're putting
Speaker 2: in these really big structures to hold giant turfines.
Speaker 5: Yeah, the foundations themselves, that's our kind of work.
Speaker 4: What we do here at the pile drivers.
Speaker 5: We do the big monopiles, and those are enormous. They
Speaker 5: like thirty feet around in four inch thick steel and
Speaker 5: it takes them like almost a whole day to get
Speaker 5: one in.
Speaker 4: But there's so much stuff we do in the water.
Speaker 5: Recently, I started doing what's called a big bubble curtain,
Speaker 5: and that's like to reduce sound noises for the animal
Speaker 5: life in the area. It's really like an I've never
Speaker 5: seen it before, never even done it before, and it's
Speaker 5: like one of the neater things we do because they
Speaker 5: do acoustical readings.
Speaker 2: So a bubble curtain what exactly.
Speaker 5: Is that it's a giant hose that they lay around
Speaker 5: the perimeter of the pile they're driving, and they pump
Speaker 5: a large amount of air through it and it creates
Speaker 5: a continuous wall of air bubbles to the surface and
Speaker 5: it reduces the noise from the r of the pile
Speaker 5: because it starts off at like one hundred sixty decibels
Speaker 5: and with the bubble curtain, they can get it down
Speaker 5: closer to under one hundred.
Speaker 2: And that's when they're trying to put down the foundation
Speaker 2: by basically just pounding it into the ocean floor.
Speaker 5: They use a massive hammer that generates close to two
Speaker 5: million pounds of forest with each blow. They're trying to
Speaker 5: reduce the sound to protect the wildlife in the area.
Speaker 2: And that's what they're using to stabilize these giant platforms.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's the initial foundation that these sit on, and
Speaker 5: they're massive and they go into the ground probably one
Speaker 5: hundred twenty feet one hundred and fifty feet.
Speaker 2: What are they there for, Like, why are they trying
Speaker 2: to reduce the sound?
Speaker 5: In water, sound travels like four and a half times
Speaker 5: faster than in the air, and when the sound hits
Speaker 5: the air bubbles it slows it down.
Speaker 4: So they usually put one.
Speaker 5: Or two of these curtains around to lessen the sound
Speaker 5: for in case there's any animals or wildlife in the area.
Speaker 5: It doesn't damage anything. I mean, they have a pretty
Speaker 5: strict protocol. They run where we're not allowed to work
Speaker 5: at all if they're in within a certain perimeter if
Speaker 5: they spot a whale, like, all work has stopped till
Speaker 5: the whale leaves the area for at least an.
Speaker 4: Hour or more before they let you continue working.
Speaker 2: Does that happen a lot.
Speaker 5: Yeah, some days it's really frustrating because you get all
Speaker 5: set up to go, and.
Speaker 4: Then you can't do anything for half the day.
Speaker 2: Can you describe what it's like to put one of
Speaker 2: these giant piles down?
Speaker 5: The one ship on Vineyard Wind one is the Orion.
Speaker 5: It's like nine hundred feet long. It has a massive crane.
Speaker 5: They put one of these big piles into like a cradle.
Speaker 5: They stand it up with this giant cradle, and then
Speaker 5: they set it on the seabed and they let it
Speaker 5: settle out, and then they swing the crane over and
Speaker 5: they put their giant hammer that then smashes it into
Speaker 5: the ground.
Speaker 2: You have those piles down, then what happens.
Speaker 4: They have to put a.
Speaker 5: Cage in that has sacrificial annos.
Speaker 4: To keep it from rotting.
Speaker 2: Most people, like me, I have no idea what a
Speaker 2: sacrificial anode is.
Speaker 5: What is that They attach something that's like the aluminum
Speaker 5: gives up. It rots away faster than the steel wheel,
Speaker 5: So the aluminum goes away before the steel.
Speaker 4: Does, so it protects that part of it, so it
Speaker 4: keeps it from rusting and rotting.
Speaker 5: They aluminum will disappear before the steel disappears. And then
Speaker 5: they put a transition piece on which is eighty seven
Speaker 5: to ninety feet tall, and that's the piece that gets
Speaker 5: it up to like.
Speaker 4: A working platform.
Speaker 5: And then there's another section that goes up in the
Speaker 5: air that the turbine sits on. That's another like two
Speaker 5: hundred feet tall, and then the turbine sits on top
Speaker 5: of that, and then they put the blades on after.
Speaker 4: There's a lot to it.
Speaker 2: And what's this work like? Like when you're doing it?
Speaker 2: Can you describe just what it's like to work in
Speaker 2: that environment? I imagine it's pretty unusual. Like most people's jobs
Speaker 2: are way different than this job.
Speaker 5: I mean, honestly, the hardest part is being away from
Speaker 5: everybody because you go to work for four to ten
Speaker 5: weeks and just not being home to do your normal
Speaker 5: things or you know, like I have a wife and kids,
Speaker 5: I have a single mother at home while I'm at work,
Speaker 5: and that's probably the hardest part.
Speaker 2: I imagine A large part of your job just must
Speaker 2: be troubleshooting what sorts of stuff can go wrong.
Speaker 4: Like most of our day is just making sure it all.
Speaker 5: Goes right, because you know, when you pick up something
Speaker 5: that weighs a million pounds, you've got to have it
Speaker 5: as safe as you possibly can.
Speaker 4: You got to look at everything a couple of times.
Speaker 5: You know, it's not like you know, I drop a
Speaker 5: two by four building a shed, I might, you know,
Speaker 5: bruise my toe you drop something this big, I want
Speaker 5: to know what happens.
Speaker 2: Well, I imagine you must have some pretty strict safety protocols.
Speaker 4: We do. We do.
Speaker 5: We go through one hundred and eighty hours of training
Speaker 5: on top of the training we already have.
Speaker 2: We do a lot of and what is that training?
Speaker 2: What do you have to do? Like, what's an example
Speaker 2: of the sort of safety training you have to do.
Speaker 5: We do like a see survival training that the Global
Speaker 5: Window Organization puts on, a forty hour rigging course, another
Speaker 5: twenty four hour rigging course. We got to be CPR
Speaker 5: to the helicopter egress training, which is people find fascinating
Speaker 5: because they turn a helicopter upside down with us in
Speaker 5: it and drop it in the water and we have
Speaker 5: to escape it.
Speaker 4: As part of the training.
Speaker 2: They ditch a helicopter in the ocean and you have
Speaker 2: to get out of it.
Speaker 5: They have like a training center that they have like
Speaker 5: a car body of the helicopter that they do in
Speaker 5: a pool and safety divers.
Speaker 4: But they do teach you how.
Speaker 5: If your helicopter crashes, how to get out of it.
Speaker 2: Because that's how you get to and from the site.
Speaker 5: Yeah, a time we have to fly in and out,
Speaker 5: whether like if the ship can't make port and they
Speaker 5: have to do crew change, they'll change us out via helicopter.
Speaker 2: You said that you spend weeks away. How long do
Speaker 2: you get off after you complete a shift.
Speaker 5: Some of the boats are on six weeks on, six
Speaker 5: weeks off, some of them are four weeks on, four
Speaker 5: weeks off. But it's all subject to change on schedule,
Speaker 5: like sometimes it's give or take, but that's generally like
Speaker 5: your regular rotation. We work twelve hours a day, sometimes longer.
Speaker 4: Every day. There's no real days off. There's always something
Speaker 4: to do.
Speaker 2: You talked a bit about the safety training, but how
Speaker 2: do you learn how to do this work? Did you
Speaker 2: have to go to.
Speaker 4: School for this?
Speaker 5: Through my union, we have an apprenticeship program. This is
Speaker 5: a few of our members that haven't gone, but almost
Speaker 5: all of them have gone to it. It's a four
Speaker 5: year training period. I also went to dive school. I'm
Speaker 5: a certified commercial diver. That took me like six months also,
Speaker 5: so I've probably spent four or five years training myself
Speaker 5: on top of all.
Speaker 4: Our upgrades and whatnot.
Speaker 5: We get on top of it for specific projects like
Speaker 5: the wind farms.
Speaker 2: Do you use diving in your work?
Speaker 5: Yes, we have to do some work underwater, some underwater excavating.
Speaker 2: What's that like?
Speaker 5: The first time I did it, it was a little
Speaker 5: scary because I was brand new, probably like ten twelve
Speaker 5: years ago. That's what I started doing, was submarine cable work.
Speaker 2: When you go into the water, now, are you still
Speaker 2: a little bit Oh?
Speaker 5: Now, no, I'm pretty confident. But when I was new,
Speaker 5: you go twenty thirty one hundred feet under the surface
Speaker 5: of the water, and it's a little nerve wracking to.
Speaker 4: Be in with.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I imagine, how'd you decide to get into this work?
Speaker 5: When I was younger, I was I worked as a
Speaker 5: driller for a little while, and I had met some
Speaker 5: commercial divers and the housing crash around two thousand and
Speaker 5: eight started. I was having trouble finding decent employment there
Speaker 5: for a year or two, and I remember the divers
Speaker 5: telling me that they made pretty good money all the time,
Speaker 5: and I was like, well, there's water everywhere and old
Speaker 5: bridges around this country. I'm sure that will keep me
Speaker 5: employed for a long time. And then once I got
Speaker 5: doing it, it was the variety of jobs I like.
Speaker 5: I probably have seven jobs I do.
Speaker 2: What's best part of your job?
Speaker 4: I like what I do.
Speaker 5: It's big, it's neat. Not a lot of people get
Speaker 5: to do it. It's always an adventure.
Speaker 2: Nick, I really enjoyed talking to you. Thanks for taking
Speaker 2: the ten. Okay, thank you, thanks for listening to us
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