De Grasse fend off agressors

After months of aggressions and harassment's, from a country sending its naval forces to try and sabotage our exploration, endangering the lives of civilian mariners going about our daily bread, blatantly disregarding international law. We finally saw the French frigate De Grasse coming to our assistance and chased the assailant away.

This story, the worst of a few, and very dangerous provocations  Nov 14th 2008.
In those days I was working on a different type of Seismic vessel. Harrier Explorer, Towing a long cable 10 Km long, and in addition towing the "source", air guns aft of my vessel
(See pictures below).

 "Source", 6 "Gun floats" carrying many air guns, hanging underneath.

 Streamer we were towing. Also one of many "birds"  
used for adjusting streamer (cable) depth.

 How it looked like from the stern(facing FWD)

 

 From the main mast (facing AFT) "Source"(Guns blasting away)

Wake(trail in the water) of deflectors both sides separating the floats 

And seeing (HE) from the side.

 

(Excerpts from my ships log, country and ship names XX' d out)

Vessels involved Harrier Explorer (HE), War Ship Xxxx(WS1) and War ship Xxxx(WS2).

(HE) was shooting seismic for a country, when suddenly a neighboring country
war ship turns up and informs me that I am not allowed to continue. I contacted
the local coastal radio station, who said that I was in the right, and foreign warships
were in the wrong, and so the problems started. 
After having “shadowed" us for a couple of days. interfering and demanding us to cut our operation short on occasions. One night  they started to move in, one from

each side…Starboard and Port side, The two XXXXXXX war ships, Using the
“pincer movement”, approached the (HE) with collision course.

(HE), displaying the signal "Restricted in her ability to maneuver", towing 10 km streamer
and a "source" behind the vessel, tried to establish contact with both  war ships (WS1) & (WS2), calling them by their XXXXXXX names as well as military markings of their hull, no success. (HE) gave 6 short blasts with the ships whistle, and used the search light to get their attention
but with no result. (HE) reported the situation to "local coastal radio station",  who was
standing by, and monitoring the developments.
(HE) reduced the speed, enough to still have control of the equipment, alter course was not an option, since (HE) was caught in a “tightening squeeze” between the two war ships.

The most aggressive vessel where the vessel (WS1) on the starboard side. He continued towards (HE) with a closest point of approach (CPA) 0,0 nm, which means collision, in Time CPA 7 minutes. He clearly wanted me to stop, which would have caused serious damage to all my equipment and possibly my vessel. When he was 0,3 nm of (HE) starboard bow, then (WS1) altered course to starboard, thus avoiding the collision.

Then both vessel run parallel with (HE), at a distance of half a mile(0,5 nm)for approximately 30 minutes, emitting acoustic” high pitch” sounds, trying to disturb our operation. Not succeeding since our equipment work on other frequencies, but a bit scary, and waking the crew up, since the sound penetrated the hull into cabins. Some crew called the bridge and asked what was going on?
 
15th Nov 00:14lt . both (WS1) & (WS2) moved to a position 1,5 to 2,0 nm on either side of our vessel. continued to follow us, steaming parallel with our course and continued to harass us for a couple of months.

Constantly shadowing us, occasionally, crossed our bow or came close to our equipment

Deflector 75 Mtr out from Starboard and Port quarter,
separating the "floats"with "guns", behind the vessel apart.

Ever present day and night for months...

 



After a few months of  harassment, reporters phoning and wanting comments

(which I could not give, company policy), and discussions at UN.

we suddenly got a friendly "man of war" by our side....

....Frigate De Grasse

 

Radar picture from what felt a bit like "pay back" from my end. 

Jan 28^th: 0845lt

French warship D-612 “De Grasse” , joins us and confirm our presence in  XXXXX  waters and
she will be monitoring our operations and be "standing by ” in the vicinity (which she did).

 De Grasse informs” harassing warship” to stay away minimum 8 nautical miles since De Grasse will conduct live gunnery exercise. “Harassers” move away, and De Grasse request permission to come within 2 nm on our SB side.  0900lt De Grasse launch “Balloon” with “hanging object underneath”.  After 5 minutes when Balloon reached altitude they start firing. 0930lt exercise end, quite impressive show. 

 

As stated previously, there where additional incidents,

at one time the two frigates were joined by two  F16 fighter jets

"mock attacking" us for 40 minutes. I briefly mention this event in the blog

"Border disputes" Photo's and also containing a short cell phone film clip.

http://captainniitslog.blogspot.dk/2012/04/boarder-disputes.html