Bye bye, Tweety
Over the next few days, as the tour winds down, people will gradually start leaving the Esperanza and making their way back home. However, the first character to get off the ship wasn't a person at all, but Tweety the helicopter who has been ferrying various people over the forests and plantations of Indonesia and Papua New Guinea for the last three months.
Except for Tweety, this doesn't just mark the end of the tour around south-east Asia, but also her career with Greenpeace. After 25 years of sterling service, she's being packed up and sent away for refurbishment, but she won't be returning to work for Greenpeace.
Tweety has been a vital part of many ship tours, not least during the various Southern Ocean expeditions when she was instrumental in tracking down the Japanese whalers. Watching her being lifted off the Esperanza and her personal effects following her on to the waiting barge was the end of a little piece of Greenpeace history.
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Comments
Bye tweets! It was good knowin' ya.
Posted by: Dave | November 17, 2008 8:38 AM
Goodbye Tweety..thanks for all the angles you give us...
Posted by: Serkan | November 17, 2008 10:51 AM
wow! she had a few close calls, and tried to bite me once or twice aswell,I hope the next lot also treats her with the respect she has earned
Posted by: tedhood39@aol.com | November 17, 2008 3:39 PM
You have a very bad URL-Color. I have to move my mouse over each line to see if there is a link. Dont you like links?
Posted by: Tobias | November 17, 2008 9:37 PM
We never, ever found the whaling fleet with that machine.
But good for filming out of.
Ta ta
Frank
Posted by: Frank Kamp | November 19, 2008 7:02 PM
Yeah, I remember a lot of searching for them with it, but not finding it.
If I remember correctly, in the case linked to above, we spotted them on ship's radar and sent the helicopter to confirm.
My favorite Tweety moments were definitely during the Greenland glacier research expedition.
You can read a bit about what it's like to land a helicopter on a fast melting glacier, and a flying lesson from helicopter pilot Hughie in the expedition blog.
Posted by: Andrew | November 21, 2008 12:16 PM