Surya McEwen

We...

So we had over 50 boats and the fleet formation was set up in a way that we were trying to make it as likely as possible that some of the boats could break through.

Eventually, when we were kind of south of Crete on the way to Gaza, the first interception happened around 160 people.

nautical miles from the shore which is like approaching the orange zone where we we've come to expect that they'll come that far out to try to to try to intercept and attack the boats the interception process this time took a really really long time really it was quite amazing like the longest last last uh last year in september when we did the mission it took them

over 10 hours, which was easily the longest interception that had happened.

And this time it was more like 40 hours.

Really?

Like a really, really long time to get all the boats.

Yeah.

Um, I guess, cause there was so many of us and the way that we were said, like what our strategy was, it was also, they also did the operation in the daytime, which they've never done before.

They always like to operate at night.

They don't want anything to be filmed or seen.

Um, but I guess because of the size of the fleet and the difficulty with, um, stopping us from getting to shore, they decided to do it in the daytime.

But the boat that I was on was, they came, basically you can see a big prison ship.

which is like the massive military vessel that they've kind of reconditioned into a prison at sea.

And then you can also see another big Navy vessel that's slightly smaller, which is like the jamming vessel that has the technology to shut down like our internet and our AIS and our ways of communicating with the world.

And if you get too close to that ship, everything shuts down and you have no communication.

So it's a little bit of a back and forth, like seeing the ships and trying to find a way to kind of get around and –

um and get away and so we we were sailing for about seven or eight hours in that kind of ducking and weaving process from the first interception and then they came with their ribs like the rigid inflatable boats that they come from the big ships to the little ships with shayate 13 which is like the the navy commando unit that does these operations

There's lots of them on the ribs and they come with their automatic weapons.