Climbing up a
ladder on solid ground can be anxiety inducing for people who don’t routinely
use ladders, but even for the most seasoned ladder user the thought of climbing
a ladder when miles out to sea is just as terrifying.  Sure, there’s no hard surface to worry about
landing on if you fall but we’re not sure dropping into choppy water is any
safer.  Add in the high winds and sea
spray and the prospect of having to climb up an offshore wind turbine is
frankly fear-inducing.

Onshore wind
turbine engineers have the relative luxury of being able to ascend inside the
turbine pillar; however, this isn’t an option for offshore turbines where the
engineer is fully exposed to the elements. 
In both cases a fall arrest system and safety line are mandatory but the
physical exertion of making that climb is enough to make you go weak at the
knees. 

Pict
Offshore, a Scottish firm who install offshore wind turbines in the Atlantic,
have partnered with Ørsted to go ladder-less at three of their sites off the
east cost of America.  The innovative Get
Up Safe (GUS) personnel winch system removes the need for climbing, as well as
the more dangerous task of transferring from the deck of a small vessel into
the wind turbine ladder.  This task is
arduous even in relatively calm seas, so by removing this step the entire
process becomes much safer.  The GUS
system even tracks the location of the support vessel deck, to stop engineers
being dropped into the water in conditions where the deck is moving away from
its intended position.

Ørsted’s GUS
system is now being trialled at offshore wind farms off the UK coast and is
already in use at Hornsea Two, which is set to be the world’s biggest offshore
wind farm when it is finished later this year. 

If you’re
confident on ladders and you have sturdy sea legs then your next challenge has
to be surfing on a ladder.  The first
record of this insane feat was in 2011, at the Kommetjie Festival in South
Africa.  New Zealander Michael Grendon
had his eye on the prize of Most Entertaining Surfer, and reckoned the best way
to go about winning would be to surf in a way no-one had ever seen before. 

Attaching a 5-rung
step ladder to the surfboard must have been the easy part, because it certainly
took a lot of practice to be able to get the board surfing and then climb the
ladder reliably enough to compete in this manner.  Luckily, New Zealand has some of the best
surfing spots in the world, and he had plenty of time to perfect the art of
ladder surfing.

Professional
surfer and YouTube daredevil Jamie O’Brien also tried his hand at ladder surfing
in 2021, this time using a 6-rung stepladder mounted to a surfboard.  It took a lot of attempts to get up to the
fifth rung of the ladder while staying upright, but he managed it, riding the
home-made board all the way to the shore. 
For a man who has previously surfed on a door-length window this must
have been great fun to do.  We think
we’ll stick to climbing ladders on dry land for now though.