I’m back on the boat now along with the rest of the crew, despite a little hiccup in New Orleans. I had travelled down to New Orleans on tuesday, as per schedule, but the agent wasn’t there to pick me up at the airport. So I made my own way to the hotel and checked in okay, but when I asked about details for the pickup in the morning the hotel had no information. I went to bed expecting a wake-up call at the crack of dawn (or more likely in the middle of the night!) but woke up at 7:30 am with no call. I had breakfast then began to wonder where everybody else was.. so I called the co-ordinator on the boat and was told that everyone had been picked up at 3:00am to go to the heliport, but not to worry as they were all on their way back to the hotel again! (it seems that the agent, not having collected me from the airport, didn’t know that I was at the hotel and hadn’t bothered to check with the reception!) The others had got to the heliport and flown out to within 25 miles of the ship when the helicopter turned back as the weather was too bad for it to land on the ship. So it was an extra night in the hotel with me having the advantage over everyone else as I’d had a proper nights sleep! So thursday morning it was a 3:00am start (again, for the others!) down to Fourchon and the heliport. The first helicopter was only a small one so I ended up sitting up front with the ‘driver’. The ship had come in close to land for better weather, so after a 2 hour bus ride and 2 hours hanging around at the heliport, the flight itself was only 6 minutes!
