Off Garden Island , Australia ( CNN ) -- Docked at the largest naval base in Western Australia Monday is a ship with a bright red hull and the weight of the world resting on the shoulders of its 30-member crew . To some , the ship represents their only chance at closure after the disappearance of loved ones on Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 . To others , it 's the best chance of solving one of the greatest mysteries in modern aviation . Departing just after sunset , the Australian Defense Vessel Ocean Shield sets out to the search zone in the southern Indian Ocean , one of the most remote places on Earth , some 1,100 miles off the coast of Western Australia . It will take three days just to get to this corner of the world , where waves are taller than many buildings , and the seas conceal mountain ranges . CNN asked to ride with the crew of the Ocean Shield to document their journey . But the mission is too long and too important to allow for the added burden of carrying journalists onboard . Anxious wait . So we sit in a chartered fishing boat named Thunder and wait anxiously for the Ocean Shield to begin its journey . Our expectation of a Monday morning departure is quickly dashed . So we wait on the water , watching the boat and filing hourly live updates . The 6:30pm departure time is pushed back an hour . At 7:30pm , the ship still sits at the dock . The Ocean Shield finally departs just before 8pm , cloaked in darkness , only its deck lights guiding the way from Garden Island , out of Cockburn Sound , and into the Indian Ocean . We watch as the Ocean Shield makes its way up the narrow channel headed for the open sea , traveling so fast our 60-foot fishing boat ca n't keep up . `` We started out , he was running about 8 to 10 knots and started picking up speed , '' says our captain , Ray Ruby . `` I think by the time he was doing about 15 knots we were still in the channel . '' Battery race . And there 's a reason that the team aboard the Ocean Shield is in a hurry . The batteries on the underwater locator beacons , or pingers , attached to the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder have less than a week before they 're set to expire . And these crew members are the only ones equipped to find them . They carry the latest technology from the U.S. Navy , including a towed pinger locator , or TPL-25 , a giant underwater microphone that will listen for the pings from the black boxes . Then there 's the Bluefin-21 , an underwater robot that can scour the ocean bed , looking for signs of wreckage . But there 's a problem . More than three weeks after MH370 is believed to have gone down in the southern Indian Ocean , no wreckage has been sighted . And that means the team aboard the Ocean Shield does n't know where to look . `` No matter how specialized or sophisticated this equipment is , it wo n't do any good unless that search zone can be narrowed , '' says Commander Mark Matthews of the U.S. Navy , in charge of the 11-person team on board who will operate the TPL-25 and Bluefin-21 . Matthews says in order to have a hope of hearing the pingers , the search area needs to be reduced from more than 100,000 square miles ( 259,000 square kilometers ) to less than 1,000 ( 2,590 ) . And the only way to do that is for search teams to find and confirm debris from the airliner , and to use computer models that can trace back currents and conditions and help pinpoint where the plane went down . Disappointment . But with each new day in the search zone , and each new discovery , comes new disappointment . Objects sighted by search aircraft and pulled from the ocean have no link to the missing airliner . And while the water is like glass here in Cockburn Sound and the waters are less than 100 feet deep , out in the search zone , it 's 14,000 feet to the bottom , with conditions that are some of most punishing on the planet . As the Ocean Shield opens up its throttle , we try to keep its striking red hull in sight , hoping to follow it on its mission for as long as we can . But then , a nearby vessel flashes an S.O.S . signal with its spotlight . Our captain makes the call to divert and try to help . `` Tomorrow it could be me , '' Ruby says . We pull alongside , where we learn another charter boat has blown its engine in the middle of a busy shipping lane . As we tow the boat to safety , the Ocean Shield disappears on the horizon , closing the gap in its search for MH370 . Perhaps a few miles closer to finding even the smallest bit of closure for the families of the missing . And answers for the rest of the world .
An Australia ship has left port to try to locate `` pings '' from missing airliner MH370 . Some see it as the best hope of finding the vanished Malaysia Airlines flight . It carries state-of-the-art equipment to detect pings from the black boxes . But man in charge of the gear says it is no use unless search area can be narrowed .