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Pirates of the
Bahamas?
3/31/03
Blaine Parks
Friday, March 28,
2003
Latitude: 22 degrees 27.0 minutes north.
Longitude: 75 degrees 08.6 minutes west.
At 2050, ten minutes before my watch was to begin, Janet woke me in a
panic. “Blaine, I’ve been
watching a boat on the radar for the last half-hour. They’re running with no lights and appear to have altered
course towards us. They’re
now within one and a half miles and closing.
I think you should have a look.”
Quickly climbing out of bed and getting into my harness/inflatable
life vest, I’d hoped Janet was wrong.
But she wasn’t. There
was definitely a boat running ‘dark’ and on a course that would
quickly intersect our own. It was time to take evasive action.
We had left Ragged Island, in the Jumento Cays, earlier that afternoon.
Our plan was to sail through the night, arriving at Long Cay, in
the Bight of Acklins, at daybreak. The
skies were overcast from a weak low-pressure ridge to our south and we
were making five to six knots under full sail on a starboard tack as we
worked our way eastward. What
little moon there was wouldn’t be coming up until the early hours of the
morning. It was dark enough that making out Charbonneau’s bow was
near impossible. And now we
had what looked like uninvited company.
Fortunately, we had left Ragged Island in company with two other boats,
WindWalker and Romana. Unfortunately,
we had tacked to the north so we could sail instead of motor, while they
had continued to motor-sail directly eastward.
Some simple calculations told me that they would probably be 10-15
miles from us now – too far to help at the moment, but still within VHF
radio range. Hailing them on
the radio, I rapidly relayed our dilemma.
I told them that based on what Janet had seen before waking me, and what I
was seeing now, we were going to turn off all our lights and tack in front
of the approaching boat hoping to slip by without them seeing us.
If we couldn’t see our bow in this darkness, I thought, maybe
they couldn’t see it either. Janet
turned off all our running lights and I turned off all the lights on our
electronics, leaving only the radar showing with a very dimly lit screen.
Holding our collective breaths, we watched the mysterious boat pass
right by where we would have been if we had stayed on course – lighting
up the water with a spotlight as if looking for us.
We sailed on in the darkness towards our friends to the south and east.
As Janet and I breathed a sigh of relief, the little blip on the
radar screen turned towards us again.
Making six knots under sails alone, we started the motor and pushed
the boat speed up to seven and a half knots, keeping our eyes glued to the
radar screen to gauge our progress.
We brought WindWalker and Romana up to date with our situation as we raced
off in their direction. Whatever
type of boat was following us, it wasn’t a fast one.
We were slowly pulling away. Considering
our communications options, WindWalker suggested we change from the VHF
radio, which the boat following us probably had, to our single-side band (SSB)
radios. We discreetly agreed on a frequency by describing the radio
net that normally transmitted on that frequency each morning.
We never said the actual frequency over the radio.
If the boat following us had an SSB radio, it would take them a
long time to search through the thousands of frequencies looking for us.
Once we connected with WindWalker on the SSB, we passed our coordinates,
course and speed. By all
accounts, if the radar could be believed, we were outpacing the boat
behind us, a boat that we still had no idea why they would be following
us. Call us crazy, but we had
no interest in stopping to chat with them on a moonless night far from any
real sense of civilization. We
pressed on.
By 2200, Charbonneau had pulled four nautical miles ahead of the boat
behind us. We were still
motor-sailing and running with no lights.
I thought it was time to throw them off our trail again and relayed
my intentions to WindWalker and Romana.
With Janet ready to release the jib-sheet, I turned the helm hard
to port and we quietly tacked back towards the northeast.
With the sails trimmed, I cut the motor.
Charbonneau pulled along at six knots.
Again, we watched and waited to see if the mysterious boat would
change course with us. They
stood on their course and we pulled away quickly.
Fairly certain that we’d seen the last of that boat, we thanked
WindWalker and Romana for standing by with us on the radio and suggested
we return to our normal VHF radio frequencies.
We continued to sail ‘dark’ for another thirty minutes before
turning our navigation lights back on. It was one of the very few times when we were
happy to have a dark, moonless night.
So, why did they choose to follow us?
What did they want? Were
they just curious fisherman coming to trade with us?
We’ll never know and we don’t regret not finding out.
Two days earlier, a tattered sloop hailed our friends aboard Sukha
as they made their way along the Jumento Cays.
A man was waving his arms wildly from the bow of the boat, trying
to get Sukha to slow down. They
allowed the boat to get within hailing distance.
The boat was a Haitian sailing sloop, presumably lost, on their way from
Nassau to Haiti. Greg and
Perri, aboard Sukha, exchanged some simple navigation information with the
man on the bow regarding the inlets between the Jumento Cays and the
Atlantic. Feeling more
comfortable about the boat’s intentions, Sukha slowed enough so they
could come alongside and passed several freshly baked muffins and sodas to
the grateful Haitian crew. They
said their good-byes and returned to their respective courses.
For Greg, Perri, and their three children aboard Sukha, it was a
moment they’ll remember fondly.
Perhaps that’s all the boat following us was interested in.
Maybe they were lost and in need of some navigational information.
Could we have helped them with some food and directions if we’d
slowed? Or could we have
found ourselves being boarded by men with more than food on their minds? We haven't heard of any acts
of piracy in these remote regions of The Bahamas, but we weren't
interested in being the first statistic, either.
Again, we’ll never know what the boat wanted with us and we’re
just as happy to not know. Something
about the situation didn’t feel right.
And when all we had was our intuition to go on, we think we chose
wisely, at least wisely enough that I’m still capable of writing about
the ordeal.
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