It is startling enough to have black-masked commandos hijack your boat on the high seas, but when the orders and the threat that any who resist will be shot are barked in Australian accents on the far side of the world, it becomes surreal.

In the early hours of Monday, a Herald news team was aboard the Challenger I, the smallest but fastest of six ships in the Free Gaza Flotilla, which came into lethal conflict with the Israeli Navy while sailing in international waters about 110 kilometres north-west of the Gaza Strip and well off the Israeli coast.

As the killing started on the big Turkish ferry, the Mavi Marmara, and it seemed just a matter of time before the other slow boats in the flotilla would be commandeered by the Israelis, the Challenger I's English skipper, Dennis Healey, pushed the 25-metre cruiser to top speed, about 18 knots. Initially, four Israeli Zodiac-like assault boats were tailing us, but they were unable to get close because of the powerful wake Healey was ploughing across the water.

But then the Israelis gave Healey pause for thought. With previous boat runs to Gaza under his belt, he knew what it was like to have his vessel rammed by an Israeli boat, so he cut the motors, allowing the craft to slow to a drift.

Other veterans of earlier runs - the Palestinian lawyer and head of the Free Gaza Movement, Huwaida Arraf, and the deceptively demur Scottish postal worker Teresa McDermott - yelled to all on the fly bridge to brace for a collision as the powerful spotlight on the bigger Israeli boat bored into all on deck while the vessel positioned its bow to Challenger I's starboard side.