Friday 1 September

2.30am Manuel, Joseph and Olivier launch in the first inflatable, with no lights. The French frigate Prairial seems to take little notice.

3am: Alice and Kate, Mimo and Raoul, Paul and Roger launch, again little attention from the Prairial.

3.30am: Sarah and Morai, Todd and Gilly launch. The crane breaks down on the last launching - Gaia on our side again! Derek reports the hangar doors on the Prairial's heli deck appear to be open. Little bit of stress as Todd's boat refuses to go into forward gear. Lots of shouting from the bridge and between them and Morai. It's finally sorted - a rope around the prop.

Lines from the bow and stern are lowered. Jon leaves. I ask Tim to alert Taupo Maritime Radio that we may want to speak to them later.

Around 4.45: Warnings from the Prairial as we cross the line. At least two warnings about use of force. Alert to Reuters, and Tahiti Team.

We also hear the Vendemiaire warning the MV that Tweety is inside the zone. I tell Thomas. the MVGP is also trying to call the Vega. No response from what I can hear.

5.20 We're boarded: one inflatable with a dozen commandos comes over the starboard side. They get a ladder up but it nearly falls off/crushes the third guy, who has to do a somersault into the boat, so after that they just pile on. The first thing they do is clear everyone away from the bridge windows and spray paint the windows with green, grey and orange paint. Then they take grinders to the doors - from the film in the radio room all we can see is massive sparks flying everywhere. The camera is knocked out of Tim's hand so we lose our vision from outside the bridge.

They get into the bridge and then seem not to know exactly what to do.

Derek says they then went with grinders to the front hatch door on the lower deck, the bridge hatch and the engine hatch (aft). The front hatch has a crude half circle burnt in it. I haven't seen the bridge hatch but they didn't get through it. They got in the engine hatch and then got Rob out and disabled the engine. It's unclear exactly what they did but they seem to have caused considerable damage to the propellor controls. Meanwhile, one of the guys burning through one of the doors caught himself afire. He was wearing just commando overalls, not proper protective gear. Helene Crie from Liberation said he dived over the side of the boat into the water; then a zodiac came alongside, didn't see him and hit him in the head! I guess he got taken home as a war casualty! Another commando who was very grumpy with us all day and spent a lot of time guarding the front hatch also burnt himself and had a finger bandage.

Meanwhile, I'm in the radio room talking to Reuters. First the inmarsat goes dead. Taupo asks if they should state an emergency. Tim says negative. Tim tries to get the squisher going, but the line just rings in London. He calls Comms, gets through, shouts at them, tries to squish again. The line is cut, the lights flicker. We lose Taupo radio, they must have cut the radio antennae. I'm still talking to Jon on the VHF, the commadnos are grinding the radio room door and there is a lot of banging and crashing going on. We have gas masks around our necks in case of tear gas, but its stiflingly warm and by now I guess that they will not need gas.

Tim switches to channel 16 VHF and declares an emergency - PAN, PAN, PAN PAN, This is the SV Rainbow Warrior. The French commandos have taken over our ship, they have taken our safety communications and disabled our ship, they are cutting it up, PAN PAN..."

I keep talking to Jon, who is also talking to the MV. He can't hear Derek anymore, but then tells us he is on deck with Rob. I'm relieved. Jon is still talking to the MV, and they have not been boarded yet when three commandos break in through the radio room door and the black polythene we have taped over the entrance. They go for Tim and Pierre-Emmanuel then try to grab the VHF mike out of my hand. I struggle with them, trying to keep the transmit button down and shouting to Jon, until they pull it so hard they break it off its cable.

They lift the three of us out of the radio room and on to the foredeck. Clearly they have had instructions to be gentle with us - the captain (Laurent ISZARD(?), according to the paper they wanted us to sign this morning) - keeps saying "doucement, doucement". I burn my arm on the still-hot radio room door that they have drilled right through with a grinder as they cart me out of the room by my wrists and ankles, like a sack of potatoes.

On the bow are all the journalists, three visitors and PHilip, Rob and Derek. They put the three of us on the lower deck. It's chilly in the early morning breeze, flat out on the cool iron of the deck and I'm lying in a squalid pool of oil from the broken crane.

Meanwhile, Tweety is overhead, with Paula making spectacular passes over the boat, pursued by two French Super Puma heliopters. Tony is filming frantically. We hear later that they get all the footage back and squished (making two tape drops) flying for 3 and a half hours before landing back on the mVGP.

An hour or so later, some of the commandos get called off to go and intercept another inflatable -- they must be inside the lagoon by now, so we feel heartened about that.

As usual, chaos and indecisiveness then hits them. We spend hours just sitting on the deck chatting, winding them up by asking for food, toliets etc and refusing to be interrogated. They escort us everywhere and don't allow us to go on the bridge. At one point they tell me that if I go up and talk to the people on the foredeck that I can't come back down to the lower deck. I laugh. And ask half way up the stairs to the bow whether I should be going up or down. ANyway, Philip is OK (the reason I go up) - they let him get his malaria pills. Eni seems happy, Oscar and Vito are cool, they get stuck into the pamplemousse and bananas and have water and fruit juice.

We have no idea what is happening, so I get the emergency food supplies out of the radio room (which freaks them out!) and we settle down on deck.

After midday, they decide to put us under tow. The Centaure comes over with a light looking tow rope, which surprise, surprise breaks within an hour in a great creak and snapping. They come over later with a wire cable more suited for ocean towing. Rob is scathing about their skills, saying if they were a commercial towing operation they would have lost the job by now.

The journos get bored pretty quickly, and start hassling the military to get back to Moruroa. Jean-Marc is great. Eventually they process the journalists (about 11am?) and I think they will go soon. But no. Midday or so, we hear on Radio Australia (Tim Lambon still has his radio) that the MVGP has been seized as well. A reporter on the Tui says they heard their MAYDAY from the radio room, as they were being boarded by commandos from helicopter. They also say that Jon is still up the crow's nest. It's rather hilarious that the rest of the world knows via radio news that Jon is still on the boat, while the French military still haven't worked this out. Instead, they accuse Derek and then Tim (both bearded) of being the captain.

The journos manage to negotiate using Christophe's $15000 portable sat com phone. It's rather surreal sitting on the lower deck hearing Christophe's distinctive German echoing overhead (he's on the bridge), but comforting the rest of the world now know where we are. Andy is pleased because he calls ITN in time to get live on the late news. Tim calls Comms and also talks to Reuters. Blair tells him the divers did get into the lagoon and under the barge. Still no sign of getting us off the ship.

At about 5pm they ask if the crew will transfer to Moruroa, or stay with the ship, be towed with it to Hao and then flown to Tahit.. We agree that until we know the whereabouts and status of both the rest of our crew and captain, we will stay with the ship. They refuse to say anthing about them, just say we have 30 seconds to make up our mind. We stay. Later they tell us the rest of the crew will be flown to Tahiti early tomorrow and get there at 5am. We ask what the MVGP is doing - they say the crew will stay with the ship too.

By this time we are all pretty hungry after just fruit and nuts, bananas and chocolate all day. So I get some crackers, cheese, olives etc together, Andy or Christophe pulls out a plastic water bottle of whisky and we declare cocktail hour. We're all too tired to drink but a couple of the journos manage it.

Sometime after 10.30pm, all of us crew are completely zonked out and have been allowed to go to our cabins to sleep. At midnight, they transport the seven journos and 3 visitors to Moruroa on board the tranpsort vessel.