BBC Nile

Chasing The Nile

"There she is." I said through the intercom, "Eleven o'clock low, about ten miles out." 

I pointed out the left side of the helicopters cockpit showing the pilot where our target lay. There, off in the distant vog sitting on the hazy blue sea was our ship. As we came closer it looked like we were approaching a tall masted sailing ship from the 1800's.

The wooden masts and yards holding the vast canvas sails of an ancient tall ship across the Pacific were not present on the BBC Nile today. The huge mast like structures were in fact giant steel gantries lashed to the deck enroute to a shipyard in Europe. But for a moment as we flew towards her I swear you could imagine her being a beautiful fully sailed wooden ship approaching Hawaii after transiting the vast Pacific Ocean. Ah, but that was not what was happening today. How had I come to be flying over a windswept sea chasing a modern day iron sailing ship?

I had gotten the call from a Singapore based shipping company informing me that they had a ship crossing the Pacific enroute to Europe via the Panama Canal that would be sailing through the Alenuihaha Channel between Hawaii and Maui and could I possibly meet the ship in the channel and shoot some aerial photos of it?

Sure I told them, send me the details. The ship it turns out is a brand new transport ship carrying a massive array of hundred foot tall plus steel gantries strapped to the deck on their way to a shipyard in Europe. They sent me a bunch of sample photos of the type of photos they would expect to receive from me. The first thing I noticed from the samples they sent was that this was not going to be a shoot from an airplane like mine. I mean the first photo I looked at was taken directly in front of a moving ship from no more than a hundred feet above the sea. I've used up a lot of karma flying my plane low and slow to get a clients photos, but a hundred feet over the raging sea surface of the Alenuihaha wasn't something I was about to test my soul with.

In Hawaii when you find that you need to fly low and slow over tall mountains, hot flowing lava or raging sea's, the man to call is Ben Fouts of Mauna Loa Helicopters. I have flown with Ben for over 15 years and he has never turned me down for an aerial photo assignment. He always figures out a way to make our flights safe, visually correct, affordable and most of all fun.

I began to communicate with the vessels captain via e-mail. He being a European type skipper we had some interesting online back and fourths before we decoded each others codes and could talk Mano a Mano about our plans. We'd figured on meeting midway between Hawaii and Maui in the infamous Alenuihaha Channel on the morning of February 20th. Ben gave me the phone version of a thumbs up and all looked to be good.

The evening before the agreed upon morning rendezvous of me, Ben and the huge ship, I received a cc message from the captain to his overseers in Singapore that the massive gantries on the ships deck had been acting like huge sails and as such they would need to pull into Honolulu Harbor to replenish their fuel bunkers in order to make it to Balboa. Now they would sail into Honolulu on the morning of the 21st and sail through the Kaiwi Channel in darkness that same evening to Panama.

In the old days they used to say "The telegraph wires were smoking" when an urgent message was being transmuted over them. Well, if e-mail wires could smoke they most certainly would have been when I got that message. I was in touch with my clients in Singapore, his client in Germany and the ships captain somewhere a couple hundred miles west of Hawaii. After a series of frantic communiques it was decided that I was to make my way to Honolulu and get the photos no matter what.

As I walked towards the Hawaiian Airlines desk at Kona airport to check in for my flight to Honolulu I congratulated myself for making the decision the night before to fly commercially instead of flying my own plane to Honolulu. There was a massive unstable front sitting just south of Hawaii that was threatening to march north and shut down all general aviation flights between the Hawaiian Islands.

Carrying nothing more than a heavy camera bag I approached the Hawaiian Airlines desk. The woman ahead of me standing at the check in counter wore the jacket and pant suit of a lawyer or senior sales manager. Her demeanor and arm waving told me she was most definitely unhappy about something and when she stomped off I had to assume it had something to do with her flight. "There was a power outage at the inter island terminal in Honolulu, all flights are delayed by at leads two hours." she said in disgust as she swept by me.

Crap! I have to be in a helicopter lifting off from the tarmac at Honolulu in three hours and they're telling me I may not even leave Kona for two hours? I walk a spot by the gate that I can see the runway and spot my airplane, N8126M. I can run home, grab my flight bag, fuel up and be in the air in 30 minutes, an hour and forty minutes later I can be in Honolulu.

"Aloha! Hawaiian Airlines passengers flight 117 bound for Honolulu, your flight will be departing at 9:25 arriving in Honolulu at 10:20, please stand by for boarding". Problem solved, I'm going to get to my destination in time.

10:20 turns into 10:30 and then 10:45 by the time I catch a cab and head down Lagoon Drive for the Mauna Loa Helicopters office. I pay the cabbie, race up the stairs to the second floor office and make my presence know to anyone inside asking where I might find Coleman Smith my pilot for this days adventure.

"Called in sick I'm afraid, Chris will be your pilot today" I am told. "Alright then, where's Chris? and is he experienced in flying aerial photo flights like Coleman?" "Not sure",  I'm told. "He's down fueling up the R44 right now."

Chris arrives and he is in fact a fine young man, though his mustache reminded me of mine at 17. It turns out he has flown only one aerial photo assignment before today. Ah well...I have to meet a huge cargo ship some twenty miles southwest of Oahu in twenty minutes or I am going to lose a whole bunch of money. I have a pilot who hasn't really flown low and slow photo shoots in thirty knot trade winds over open ocean and the VOG is creeping in over Oahu resulting in no tropical island background for the arriving vessel. Oh well, Just another day at the office.

Here is a self portrait of me just before take off after Chris and I headed to the R-44 helicopter and strap ourselves in. A few delays on the ground and we are on our way to the vast Pacific Ocean south and west of the island of Oahu.

After lifting off from Honolulu I gazed at my iPad. I had entered the latitude and longitude given me by the ships captain the night before. Using GPS the pad pointed us southwest and off we went. After some ten miles or so I looked up and their it was, just where the captain and Steve Jobs said it would be!

I got the last shot I needed of the ship sliding beneath us as we were being trade wind blown down her length and told Chris to slide around and let's see if we can get my new friend, the ships captain, to come out on the flying bridge so I could grab a photo of him at his office which he could send it to his mom.

We dropped down, matched the ships sped and crept forward until we were just a few dozen yards from the ships bridge. My wild waving was rewarded by Captain Michael coming out and saying aloha to us! I grabbed a handful of shots of him and we peeled away heading back for Honolulu.

As we were closing in on the mouth of Pearl Harbor I saw an aircraft carrier directly in our path. In the deeper waters just offshore of the ship were many other U.S, Navy ships forming up. It turns out it was the USS Stennis carrier battle group preparing for a trans Pacific crossing.

This was an assignment fraught with many opportunities for failure, but it all came together thanks to Captain Michael, Pilot Chris, somewhat decent weather and no small amount of good luck.

I have to tell you, certain things in life get your blood flowing and your senses tingling and hanging out of a little helicopter at five hundred feet over the blue Pacific is definitely one of them!

 Like I said: "Just another day at the office..."

Mahalo,

Brian


If you would like to see more photos of the shoot please click here or paste it in your browser:


http://www.hawaiianimages.net/gallery/nile/index.html




Stay tuned as I have some video of this helicopter shoot that I will post when I find the time to make it!