All at Sea

When Pirtek Ipswich General Manager Steve Green, took down a parts list over the phone at 5pm from an anxious marine customer recently, he had no idea that he was about to cast off one of his staff for the next three days.

'Volunteer'
Having spent the evening trying and failing to identify the part numbers, Steve arranged to have the customer met as early as possible the next morning to identify the parts and rectify the problem. The early morning 'volunteer' was Technical Sales Manager Gavin Nason who duly arrived at Brightlingsea expecting to find a moored ship with a problematic pump. He was, therefore, somewhat surprised to be led to a rigid inflatable boat that would take him to the site of the real problem that was anchored some eight kilometres out in the Thames Estuary.
"The customer turned out to be an immobilised windfarm workboat, with a problem pump and a damaged spool valve. Working alongside the ship's engineer, I removed these for identification and phoned the replacement parts order in,” Gavin says. “These were guaranteed to be delivered by courier direct to the dockside for 8 am the next morning. Sure enough the parts arrived, and I was duly shown aboard the inflatable again."

Breaking Waves
After a couple of hours, the parts were fitted, but because of bad weather, an operating test was postponed until the following day, requiring yet another visit. And the fun was far from over, as Gavin recalls. "To say the crossing back was bad is an understatement,” he adds. “Waves were breaking over the bows.”
Much to Gavin’s relief, the weather proved so bad the following day that the owners decided to bring the boat back to Harwich where a full operating test was run and the boat was returned to service.

ETA 1 Hour
"It’s funny. On the first journey out into the Estuary, I kept thinking of the Pirtek catchphrase, Anytime. Anywhere. ETA 1 Hour,” Gavin Nason concludes. “Astonishingly, we managed to keep that promise even out at sea because, amazingly, we arrived on board in just 40 minutes."