The Journey Begins

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Using any mode of transportation for 30+ hours will generally bring you great distances. My mode happened to bring me to the opposite side of the world. The flights actually weren't too bad, but I did have a small panic attack when I woke up in the middle of a 12 hr flight, and noticed that we were flying over Afghanistan, between Kabul and Kandahar, and towards Pakistan........aren't we at war there still?

I arrived in Labuan, and I really did not know what to expect. I knew it'd be different. The captain picked me up from the airport and we stuffed my bags into the back of this crappy rental car he had--the trunk and a/c didn't work, and I had 100lbs of luggage and was wearing jeans in the 95 degree heat and 1000% humidity.

As soon as we hit the road, it was like sensory overload after such long flights. They drive on the left in Malaysia, and there were a million cars on the road. It seemed like everyone was honking. There were scooters zipping in and out of lanes. We were passing Mosques on the way to the shipyard, complete with prayers being played out of loudspeakers. The ride was intense. I felt like I was in a scene out of Blackhawk Down.

On arrival at the boat in the shipyard, I spent a little time getting familiarized with the boat before getting to work. One of my first jobs was to adjust the 4 floodlights on the mast to be angled in a way that would make us appear to look like a fishing boat at night underway. Why would we want to look like a fishing boat? 'That way, the pirates won't bother us if they think we're a fishing boat' was the response I got from the captain...........did I mention we don't have any guns onboard?

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Photos

747
long haul

Flight Path
out of RPG range?

Rolled Out of the Shed
The boat making it's way back to the water.

Final Push
Final Push