By the time we had topped up the drone batteries and become very excited about seeing a large whale we abandoned the intended drone flight until this morning.

Pre-flight checks seemed to go well and soon I was on the side of the boat, drone in hand, awaiting the instruction to launch. Oliver gave the go-ahead and away it went. Reassuringly Oliver hoped he could remember how to fly the thing which I thought was a bit late in the launch sequence. Cries of anguish clearly demonstrated that he couldn’t remember and the drone flew steadily up and away in the wrong direction, oblivious to all frantic attempts to exert control over it. When the little dot in the sky disappeared from view I thought the game was up - confirmed by Oliver exclaiming that it was out of range. “Turn the boat around and go after it” I was instructed. Knowing that the drone has a battery life of around twenty minutes I knew that the chase would not last for long and dutifully complied. At this point Oliver realised that he was pushing one of the control levers the wrong way and once corrected the little dot reappeared and quickly made its way back to the boat. All that was now required was to switch off the collision avoidance systems so that the drone could be brought close enough to the boat for me to grab it. In it came to within inches of my hand before sensing the boat and moving away again with collision avoidance still active. A second attempt resulted in the drone flying slowly along the side deck towards the rear of the boat and away from my hand. And then the miracle happened. The drone flew gracefully into the pole mounted onto the pushpit for the wind instrument. It dropped onto the two fuel containers on the side deck and just before the seemingly inevitable bounce over the side and into the water it wedged between the two containers, unscathed.

Most of the flight had been recorded by the drone and so we do have video footage of Vega for posterity. Oliver was thrilled and relieved to have the drone back and vowed not to use it again on this passage. He was also relieved to have turned off the camera before attempting the landing so there would be no evidence and Will would be none the wiser. He overlooked my daily post.