ECHO Home – The adventures of the Survey Ship ECHO during the marathon nineteen (19) month deployment of the vessel have featured in these columns on a regular basis and the ship is now safely home.   During the deployment, the ship made 24 port calls Valletta (Malta), Salalah (Oman), Limassol (Cyprus), Gibraltar, Bahrain, Mina Rashid (UAE), Dubai (UAE), Jebel Ali (UAE), Mombasa (Kenya), Mumbai (India), the Seychelles, Haifa (Israel) and Tripoli (Libya).

The ship has been away for 593 days with 421 actually being at sea (just under 71%), on a voyage of 74,000 miles, the equivalent to 2.5 times around the equator.  The 29 strong crew is rotated whilst on deployment.      The ECHO surveyed over 3,150 square miles - equivalent to the surface area of Cyprus; and conducted 181 sea bed samples, the deepest of which was 974m, and 986 surveys using sound.      Over 45,000 rounds of ammunition was expended, two of which were fired in anger on a real 'quick-draw' incident against a suspected Somali pirate vessel.      Firing two saluting cannon rounds proved sufficient to deter further night approaches by suspect criminals.

Whilst on deployment standard emergency drills included 78 fire and flood exercises, 81 man overboard exercises and 200 sets of breakdown drills.    In total 600 litres of paint were used to maintain the ship, whilst some 400 litres of ice cream was eaten.     The ship's crew played football against eight different nations and lost 10, drew one and won two; the biggest win being 5-2 against the Jebel Ali team and the biggest loss 9-1 against a Maltese side.    Other nations played included China, Libya, Oman, India, the United Arab Emirates, Kenya, Malta and the RAF in Cyprus.