Operation Barzan!

Sharp eyed readers of Windsurf magazine may have noticed that our intrepid correspondent John Carter has a mild obsession with shooting windsurfing next to large ships, well actually massive ones to be more precise! Back in 2014, in our ‘Pirates of the Solent’ feature, ‘JC’ and his accomplice Scott Gardener tracked down the Marco Polo, which at the time was the second largest container ship in the world. This issue our senior ship spotter has been at it again with the mighty ‘Barzan’, 400 metres of steel and deadweight of a whopping 199,744 tonnes! Read on as Captain Carter tells his salty tale!

- John Carter

THE PLAN

JC - “The basic idea here has always been to capture spectacular images highlighting windsurfing up against some of the largest and most impressive ships on the planet! Since our last escapade the poor old Marco Polo at a mere 396m in length has duly flunked out of the top ten biggest ships to be replaced by a new breed of so called ‘Ultra Large Container Ships’. Ports such as Southampton have expanded to handle these massive vessels with huge drafts and enormous cargo capabilities. The latest container ships are now hitting 400m in length and have far greater capacities. Put one of these brutes on its end in London and it would be longer than the Shard, the city’s tallest building, by over 100 metres! In fact there are only twenty buildings in the world taller than the latest super container ships! In other words, the time was ripe for my crew and I to embark on a new mission and hunt down some fresh behemoths!