You only need one

The arrival home of a particular young sailor the weekend before last brought with it a lot of public attention throughout Australia. Some was sincere, some contrived by media companies that had spent huge sums on exclusive rights. But at the Sydney Morning Herald we hadn’t opened our cheque-book to cover Jess Watson’s solo-sailing record attempt so we were on the outer from the outset.

In the final week of her voyage, as she neared the heads of Sydney Harbour which would mark a full lap of the globe and the end of seven months of solitude at sea, media and public interest started to build at a rapid rate. But if you were not a party to that commercial arrangement, you would have to locate the sixteen year old and her 34-foot yacht somewhere in the Tasman Sea without any assistance from her land based management team (or should I say “media management” team?).

Never mind. Where there’s a will there’s a way, and it proved quite straight forward for all but one media organisation to find Jessica about sixty nautical miles off the New South Wales south coast.

But flying across sixty miles of open sea (and back again) is no minor aviation feat apparently, and it requires a twin-engine aircraft with certain safety-equipment on board. That distance, likely intended to make it harder for the freeloaders, forced upon us a change of aircraft and a bit of a delay in getting airborne. So the fading light, the weather and Watson’s media plan were all conspiring to make life interesting for photographer Quentin Jones who set off to bring back a page one picture for Saturday’s Herald.

Earlier in the day it had been our plan to launch a helicopter and a photographer from Wollongong but when it became obvious Jessica was sailing so far out to sea, it became necessary to use a larger aircraft based in Sydney. Quentin Jones answered his mobile at about 2pm and we briefed him on his task. Quentin and reporter Kate Benson drove out to the Executive Jet Base at Mascot where the helicopters live, and awaited their 3.15pm pickup.

However by 3.15pm the aircraft hadn’t turned up. Nor had it by 3.30pm, 3.45pm, or 4.00pm. The clock was ticking, the helicopter was late and we were getting nervous. It turned out the pilot, Mark, was ferrying a 60 Minutes crew out to the yacht and they had struggled for quite a period of time to locate Jessica. So not until after 4.45pm were Quentin and Kate in the air. With 20 to 30 minutes’ flying ahead of them, and with last light around 5.20pm, any delay at all in finding Jessica this time would cost us the picture.

Once they were upon her, the last rays of daylight were hitting the water but barely were they bright enough to illuminate her yatch. Cue the world’s biggest fill-flash – the helicopter’s spotlight.

On his Canon EOS 1D Mark IV cameras (one with a 400mm f2.8, the other with a 135mm f2.0), Quentin shot 82 frames in the course of 7 minutes in driving rain while Mark dealt with the five metre swell below. When daylight had faded completely, and the ocean was rendered jet-black, Quentin and Kate left Jessica alone for one last night at sea.

Back in the office, having not heard from them for almost an hour by now, we were looking at the black of night outside our window and working on contingency plans for what was feeling more and more likely. But then my mobile rang: definitely the sound of a helicopter cockpit, but no voice. Then it dropped out. OK, they’re back in mobile range but did he get the picture? Texting. Fingers crossed. Waiting. The phone rings again.

“Got it,” he said. And that was that.

Success that Friday night was about cutting edge technology, a super experienced news photographer, and having one of the best pilots in town. Saturday’s page one picture was shot at a 30th of a second (handheld) at f2.0 and at 12,000 ISO. So without our new 1D Mark IVs it wouldn’t have happened.

Of the 82 pictures shot by Quentin on this assignment, a sum total of two worked. But you only need one.

Sydney Morning Herald May 15 2010 edition with sailor Jessica Watson on her last night at sea, photographed by Quentin Jones.

wade@wadelaube.com

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