Today’s front page story about the arrival of the first Yemeni LNG supply in the Boston area involved a few reporters, a photographer, and lots of hours.
I sat in car with Essdras Suarez from 2 a.m. until about 6. It’s not the situation you’d expect to be a case study in gadgetry, but it was.
We used a laptop with mobile internet to access Marinetraffic.com and track the position of the 935-foot Maran Gas Coronis tanker and its escort ships. We combined with that GPS equipment to place ourselves in the best possible positions to observe the ship and take photos and videos. I also had a police scanner programmed to the marine and Coast Guard frequencies. A lot of that was encrypted, but we were able to track updates on when the ship was about to be visible from our first vantage point in East Boston.
The police scanner was also interesting, because it allowed us to hear when the police were chasing us — which was a lot. We got stopped six times and asked for identification, including three spots in East Boston, twice in Charlestown and once in Everett.
Essdras had the Canon 1D Mark IV, one of the best cameras in the world, which does stills and videos.
I had the humble Flip camera, which failed to capture any usable video in the pitch black of 4 a.m.