Oil And Water

What a crazy week for breaking news in the San Francisco Bay Area. First that whole bridge thing happened, which by the way has not been fixed as of Friday afternoon. Then a ship carrying a load of Gavin Newsom’s hair product sprung a leak in the bay making it impossible to for Gavin to make public appearances thus forcing “The Gav” to drop out of the race for California Governor. Well, I can’t confirm that the ship was carrying his hair stuff, but he did indeed drop out of the governor’s race. Poor Gav.
Today started out looking like just another day. Nothing was really going on, seemed like it was going to be a light day. Then I got a call from Rick Romagosa over at the Chronicle checking to see if I had heard about the oil spill in the bay and wanted to know if I would be going up to shoot some aerials. My mind went back two years when the Cosco Busan crashed into the Bay Bridge (that bridge has had some rough times lately) and dumped 50,000 gallons of oil into the bay. Of course, I was out of town when that happened so I pretty much missed the whole thing. This time I was ready. I got on the horn with my editor Pierce in New York and started to talk about how we would cover this and asked about going up in a helicopter since there were some nice shots from the last spill. As soon as I hung up the phone with Pierce I called over to the helicopter charter company that I use and set up a time for a flight. Not more than 5 minutes after I scheduled a noon flight, Pierce and I were looking at some raw aerial video online of the ship and the spill and we both realized that the oil slick wasn’t that big. At least it didn’t seem that way. We mulled over the flight and collectively decided against it. So, I cancelled it. Then I called him back and questioned our decision and then we decided to best be safe than sorry and I rescheduled the flight. Confusing, right?
The company that I charter with uses Schweizer 300CBi helicopters which are pretty scary to ride in. They are small, almost like a remote control toy. Well, not that small. Every time I ride in these small helicopters I can’t help to think that I may not return. Since our flight today would take us over water, we donned bright yellow flotation vests. That was a little unsettling. It’s not like we would have survived the impact of a crash to use that thing. My pilot Laura and I packed into the cramped cockpit and headed towards the Bay Bridge. Luckily, it isn’t that windy today since this aircraft gets tossed around quite a bit if it is windy. Every time we hit an air pocket my heart stops. I look down and thing about that ride at Great America where you free fall some 20 stories in a matter of seconds. I decide that it would probably feel like that if the Schweizer’s engine died. It takes us about 20 minutes to get over the hill and over the bay. It’s freezing cold flying with the door off. After doing a few passes along the Bay Bridge we head south to find the oil tanker Dubai Star and the oil slick that was supposed to be surrounding it. Unfortunately, the sheen that had been reported by every bay area radio and television station was not visible. We flew around the ship a few times but I couldn’t see any evidence of oil. We did a few more passes along the disable Bay Bridge (nothing like doing two stories at once) and headed back to the airport.
Laura safely put us back on the ground after an hour in the air. I want to kiss the ground but decide against it. Too dramatic.
The oil spill doesn’t seem to be that bad. I wanted to get a different perspective so I drove over to Oakland to see if I could see the ship from the shore. I stumbled across a group of workers from the Port of Oakland who were deploying an oil containment boom and made a few snaps of that. So far, wildlife doesn’t seem to be affected by the spill and there hasn’t been any evidence of oil on the shores of the bay.