Sarah Kanowski

Incredibly successful.

Far more successful than the US Navy SEALs and the British Marines.

Interestingly for Australians, we would get on board and the smugglers would be so impressed and overwhelmed but also terrified by what we had just done.

We'd come with helicopters and sparks and we've come in and taken control of those ships very aggressively.

And they would be fully expecting that we were going to kill them.

But we didn't need to kill them.

We didn't even need to injure them.

If we had control, we had control.

So what we would usually do within the first 20 seconds of taking control is we would yell loudly Australian and we would lift up a Velcro patch showing the Australian flag.

And in a second, it would diffuse all the tension because they were just so relieved that it wasn't the Americans.

So Fowl 12 was the most notorious smuggler.

It had beaten many, many boarding teams over the years.

It was kind of the biggest prize.

If a team could get that, they'd be the greatest team in the history of these sanctions.

And it was huge.

you know, hundreds of metres long.

And we were getting briefings on it of all the booby traps that they had and everything that they were going to do to stop any team.

And we heard that FAL 12 was on as a mission and we were nervous about that and we were waiting around for that and then they said it's a go.

So we're getting in that boat thinking we've survived so far but someone's probably going to be in trouble tonight.

So we're thinking maybe this is the night that we die.