Jaime 7

 Jaime is from Scotland and the charisma of the group, swearing like nobody I have ever met, from a village "north of Inverness" which is like way North. His father a butcher and Jaime's first job, unsurprisingly I suppose, on a clean-up crew at an abattoir.

Following his schooling, Jaime spent 11 years on an oil rig in the North Sea with 300 workers mostly "from prison or just plane crazy."  The sleeping rooms had six bunks ("just disgusting mate") in constant use between 12-hour shifts.  "I saw waves 100-feet as high as the rig" he recalls.  Not holding the stair-rail a sackable offence - "they'd ship you right the fuck home" given how dangerous it was.

Jaime's rig, TOTAL's Elgin platform, 150-miles from shore, experienced the largest gas blow-out on record - the UK 22/4b blowing in 2012 - which sent a gas jet shooting 200-meters out to see.  The blast knocked down Jaime's friend, who is lucky to be alive, and had the sense to pull an emergency lever cutting the power on the rig ensuring no sparks could blow the thing up.

Every helicopter in the North Sea was on the evacuation.  TOTAL, for its part, had no clue how to stop the blowout and called in the Red Adair Service and Marine Company famous for extinguising fires in Kuwait following the 1991 Iraq war. 

Four Texans showed up via a Chinook, removed their cowboy boots, examined the leak for a few minutes, then departed.  The next day they returned with a jerry-rigged vice grip which they attached to the active pipe and turned, capping the valve and stopping the gas flow - "insane how dangerous it was", says Jaime, who estimates Red Adair made $40 million for 24-hours work.

Jaime now lives in Doha and is responsible for a rigs-simulator program. He is doing a solo crossing.