Time for a Lottery ticket!

Lucky the tail rotor snapped off so quick.

Hope the pilot had his brown jocks on.

Wow

It looks like he just had it a bit light on the skids, ok as the boat was going up but when it was going down the pilot found himself taking off prematurely. He did a great job to get it levelled out, loosing control of the tail of a heli is one of the worst things that can happen especially when it is already pitched forward, if he panicked and punched up things would have been a lot worse.

"Faaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrkk!!!! I need a beer!"

Very luckey he got it straight back on the deck his tail roter got broken in all that if had lifted off another foot as above said punched it it would off just spirled into the big blue weeeeeee.

I'm no heli pilot. However taking off from a object moving in multiable diminesions is really f - ing hard. Hope my theory make some sense....

On boats there is side to side(listing), up/down from the swell and the angle which changes end to end from up / down motion....i guess you would call it pitching, and the boat is moving forward at a given speed.

So when you power up, and pull on the collective(up/down control) at the right time, and power so you take off, and the boat just doesn't drop away from you , you also need to apply some forward force on the cyclic (forward/backwards and sideways control) to try and somehow reasonably match the forward speed of the boat so you don't just slide off the back.....from a standstill.....now thats hard.

If the boat was pitching forward at the time...which it seemed to be as is was in the up position on the swell, when you pull on the collective, instead of a pure vertical motion relative to the horizon(yes to the boat) you are suddenly already moving forward instead of direct upwards, and then with the forward input on the cyclic to compensate for the boats motion, the boat just reaching the top of swell rise and dropping away from under you,
it would be to easy over cook the %'s of controls......it suddenly looks like you going to fast forward into the back of the ships bridge, without enough vertical lift to clear anything....you pull back on the cyclic to slow forward motion, which pitchs the tail rotor down on a boat deck. As soon as the tail rotor stops.........you turn into a spinning top............
Even at pilot error.....What a save on the pilots part to drop power and get it back down and level.......could have gone pear shaped in about 2 sec.....

my 2 cents....

A bit more info about this incident. Apparently, wave action was making it very difficult for the pilot, plus one securing strap not releasing properly. That's what the two assistants are doing.
Quote-This is a Turbine Enstrom Helicopter on the Heli Pad of a Greenpeace ship some where off the coast of Ireland. One of the deck straps has not been released correctly, with what was very nearly disastrous consequence. Pilot skill and quick thinking saved the day.