shetland

Wow. It’s still sinking in. It's not every day you get to jump in front of a moving ship and actually make it stop.

Last night – about fifteen minutes before I was turning in – I heard that Chevron's drill ship, the one that we'd been hanging off for over 100 hours, had started up its engines and was heading towards its deepwater drill site north of Shetland.

Chevron had earlier hit us with a legal injunction, which said that if we got on the ship – with the pod or anything else – we'd face massive daily fines that we couldn't justify using our supporters' money to pay.

But we still had to do something. So last night as news came in that the Stena Carron was moving, Ben – our lead campaigner on board – tapped me on the shoulder and asked if I was still up for going tomorrow.

We may have been forced by legal action to end our 100-hour occupation of Chevron's giant drill ship, Stena Carron, yesterday - but that doesn't mean we've given up trying to stop its journey towards a deep water drilling site off Scotland.

Just hours after we removed our survival pod from the ship's anchor chain, it left for a site in the Lagavulin oil field where it will drill an exploratory well in 500 metres of water.

So this afternoon we sent out an actions team in inflatable speedboats to track Stena Carron, now in open seas 100 miles north of Shetland. At 1.30pm they managed to put four swimmers in the drill ship's path, forcing it to stop.

After 100 incredible hours on Chevron’s anchor chain our occupation is over. The pod has come down. But we’re not leaving Shetland, yet.

I just got back from watching Timo and Naz lower the half-tonne pod, where with help from Victor in the safety boat, they used some more of their rigging magic to safely lower the yellow bubble into the rough seas. From there it was towed, bobbing and rocking, back to its home on the deck of the Esperanza.

From Anais in the survival pod on the Stena Carron:

It’s my first time on the Shetland Islands. Rolling green hills, stunning cliffs, great wildlife, castle ruins and plenty of sheep everywhere. You can see how the life of the islands' inhabitants has been shaped by the sea over centuries. I am glad for this glance at another beautiful side of this planet - although we didn’t have much time on land.

We had to prepare an "instant action pack". On Tuesday morning in a hidden-away bay near Lerwick, the back of a van opened and a self-inflating direct action team popped out and unfolded. Boat drivers, a media team, along with the climb team (that's me and Victor from Sweden) boarded two inflatables filled with various gear bags and headed towards our target, Chevron's oil drilling ship, the Stena Carron.

Watch Leila give us a tour of the inside of the pod - the little survival station we've got setup on Chevron's anchor chain.

The pod has everything you need, bathroom, kitchen, hospital .. and housemates.

We'll get you updates from the pod as soon as we get them, follow us on Twitter, Facebook or GoBeyondOil.org for the latest.

-- James on the Esperanza

Nice video footage just in of today's action to attach a survival pod to the anchor chain of Chevron's drilling ship, the Stena Carron.

Now the pod is successfully attached it will make life a bit easier for the activists aboard, enabling them to stay in position far longer than the previous portaledge.

Greenpeace is in Shetland to stop dangerous deep water drilling in UK waters, which resulted in the Gulf oil disaster earlier in the year. Greenpeace campaigner Leila is on hand to tell you more...

We've stepped up our action in the waters off Shetland where - in addition to climbers Victor and Anais on the anchor chain of the Stena Carron – a custom-built survival pod has been brought into play. Two metres in diameter and weighing half a tonne, it's also been attached to the anchor chain of the Chevron-operated drilling ship which was due to leave for the Lagavulin oil field - but now isn't going anywhere.

Slideshow of the latest images from the action

It’s been a hectic day - but a successful one.

We heard at our ship’s briefing this morning at 0800 that our friends were going to attempt to get on Chevron’s massive Stena Carron rig in the next couple of hours and stop it from moving.