My Story!

Hello all! Welcome to my travel blog for the summer of 2011. My name is Tanner Garcia, and I work with my family aboard our boat, the 165 foot Research Vessel Aquila. This summer we are traveling the Pacific as part of the Pacific Islands Restoration Project, a multinational effort to rid a number of islands of invasive rat species. This summer we will also be the worlds smallest aircraft carrier (ha!) with a full air wing consisting of two Bell Jetranger helicopters and four remote-control models our chief engineer brought along! For those that aren't familiar with the process, the main method we are using for the eradication is arial broadcast of poisoned bait pellets. Where needed, the helicopters will also be supported by hand broadcast teams on the ground. So that's what is goin' down, but where?? The baiting islands are Palmyra Atoll, the Phoenix Islands of Kiribati, and Henderson Island. The Aquila and our family are based out of Seattle, Washington. All of the major prep of the boat happened in Seattle, but the major resupply ports for us are: Honolulu Hawaii, Apia Samoa, and Mangareva in French Polynesia. This is the condensed version of our summer, for all the juicy details, keep reading!! Adios!
-Tanner

Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Different shades of blue

Two days out of Samoa and all i see is blue! Blue sky, blue water. More blue water. More blue water! Nine days to go to Mangareva, luckily the ride has been pretty smooth. Unfortunately, the tradeoff for a smooth ride has been a top speed of about 7.5 knots. Patience grasshopper..... Writing this, it strikes me how truly fortunate I am to be here. I get the 430 to 7ish watch every morning and the sunrises are spectacular! The Phoenix Island project ran beautifully, even though we had to change a jet engine in 4k and put a new set of tail rotor blades on pa. Now that we got those out of the way, Henderson will be a party! With only one helicopter baiting, we were able to keep up with the Kiwi pilots but the real test will be with both choppers running at full speed! The second helipad should pay off the most here, as we can be loading one helicopter while refueling the other, and possibly load two helicopters at the same time. Now THAT would be cool! Now if only we had a third helicop
ter... Dear Santa... *sigh* hahaha ahh if only. Going from Samoa to American Samoa was pretty funny. In Apia, everyone knew us as the boat with the helicopters. In Pago, we were just the boat with two helicopters. There were probably five or six tuna seiners in town and each one had an R-44 on the deck for tuna spotting. Now that the satcomms are back up, I will be trying get a post out each day and hopefully a daily picture as well. stay tuned!
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