well-deck

A couple of men were sheltering from the following wind in the well-deck before the bridge, quietly smoking.

The Lonely Sea MacLean, Alistair, 1922- 1985

Three minutes later, dressed in my outer clothes and dripping like a blanket that's just been hauled from a wash-boiler, I was on my way up the enclosed gangway to the well-deck of the oil-rig a hundred feet above my head.

Fear is the Key MacLean, Alistair 1961

Negotiating the hurricane blast that swept across the open well-deck was no easier this time than it had been the last, and in the intervening half-hour the darkness had deepened until it was almost as black as night.

Fear is the Key MacLean, Alistair 1961

The fourth side gave directly on to the well-deck where the crane was.

Fear is the Key MacLean, Alistair 1961

We were now close up to the side of the ship, but still in deep shadow: the ship lay close in to the massive legs, but the platform overhung those legs, and so ourselves, by a good dozen feet, so that the angled light from the floodlights by the crane on the well-deck above barely succeeded in touching the faraway side -- the port side -- of the upper deck of the ship.

Fear is the Key MacLean, Alistair 1961

I crossed to the far side of the south platform, found another set of rungs and dropped down to the well-deck.

Fear is the Key MacLean, Alistair 1961

That, at least, wouldn't excite suspicion: the wind was strong now, the cold rain driving across the well-deck at an angle of almost forty-five degrees.

Fear is the Key MacLean, Alistair 1961

On this lower level the thin spindly cigar-shaped outline of a crane reached up as high as the topmost level of the columns: the ship was moored directly below this cut-out well-deck, spanning the gap and a couple of steel pillars on either side of the gap.

Fear is the Key MacLean, Alistair 1961

To get to the other side of the rig we had to cross the hundred-foot width of the well-deck where I'd talked to Joe Curran, the roustabout foreman, in the early hours of that morning.

Fear is the Key MacLean, Alistair 1961

The wind on the open well-deck shrieked and gusted as powerfully as ever, but its direction had changed and I had to fight my way almost directly against it.

Fear is the Key MacLean, Alistair 1961