The whirl of the twin 115 horsepower engines picks up as the propellers of the three-tonne rescue speed boat churns the choppy blue waters somewhere east of Sardinia.
"You ready? Let's do this!" says Jeremie [EUobserver is only using the first names of crew members] to his three-man crew on the speed boat, coined the Easy 1.
Within moments the Norwegian-flagged Ocean Viking begins to recede on the horizon, as Easy 1 hits over 40 knots per hour.
"Okay," says Jeremie, signal...
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Nikolaj Nielsen, an EUobserver journalist, is embedded on the Ocean Viking for the coming weeks, reporting exclusively from the boat on the Mediterranean migration route.