Sailing thriller
Sailing thriller – sometimes sh*^% happens...
oh… Sorry, but before we go to Tobago, we just have to tell you about the sailing. Boy, that was a hell of an adventure! Vincent had been excited already for few days about this passage. Ocean sailing is a feast! Whales, dolphins… we eat, we sing, we read books, listen to the stories, watch movies, and … there is no school.
To avoid the misunderstanding, this story happened on the 14th of April 2019
It started easily with the nice wind, mild waves, and an optimistic attitude. We were still on time to welcome our Parents at the airport.
As you might have heard about the situation in Venezuela, you (the non-cruising readers) probably haven’t heard much about piracy off the coast of this beautiful country. In the cruising world, especially here in lesser Antilles, this is kinda ongoing topic at sundowners. And obviously, stories grow and grow, like a gossip or angler’s catch. I guess people have this need for thrill, extra excitement in the daily routine. Or maybe they are just super cautious as they are sailing with their families, on their “homes”, and with all belongings on board. When you start thinking of going to an area like this, you tend to listen to the stories. We caught few gazes of disbelief when we mentioned Tobago. Then we read noonsite.com* – didn’t help much either 🙂 Luckily we met Keith on Carriacou, who gave us a totally different perspective, so we said “f-it, locals know better, vamos!”
The sailing was super pleasant. Beautiful weather, reasonable equatorial current, the wind just like it supposed to be, waves in the regular oceanic height of 1,5 – 2 m. Around 3am we started to see some lights. 2 cargo ships heading to Brazil**, far, far away – some red light to the port, and some red light to the starboard. Radar clear. Nothing strange. We were sailing dark, so we were observing the ocean for the appearance of any boat quite carefully. Lights of Tobago started slowly to appear on the horizon, suddenly we felt that we are strangely slowing down. Rudder turned to the port and jammed. What the..?… Crap! fishing nets! floating! We couldn’t move – net tangled around the rudder. Were those red lights indicators of fishing nets? Who does it that way! bloody hell!
Fishing net filled with some serious fish, dark night. Luckily the wind died, however, waves picked up. We spotted a fishing vessel at a distance of about 3 miles from us. No signal on the radar – most likely wooden. They saw us too, so no way we could cut the net and run – not that it hasn’t crossed our minds. They slowly started to sail towards us…
what to do, what to do, WHAT ARE WE GONNA DO????????
I felt hairy panic coming… hot breath on my neck, heartbeat at the speed of jackhammer…
they gonna arrest us and make us pay for the net ($$$$$$$)!
Tobago is not famous for being supportive of cruisers!
What if this boat is pirates and we cannot move?…
What if we damage the rudder?
What about the propeller?
WEARESCREWED!!!WEARESCREWED!!!
is this the end of our adventure?
bloodyhell
NO!!!!
what to do, what to do, WHAT ARE WE GONNA DO????????
We started to hear the voices on the other boat. English or Spanish???? English or Spanish? Freaking out! – Spanish! O F$%^&ck! – Venezuelans! In few seconds half of the list above expired replacing it with few other points concerning pirates! In few seconds I relived also all the ugly stories that we heard before.
Small, maybe 12m, wooden boat, at least 10 men onboard. Being normally quite stress-proof, I held on to the thought that that is statistically impossible that all the Venezuelans are pirates, but my brain was completely overloaded. I repeated it like some crazy mantra. Meanwhile, Marcin tried to contact them on the VHF. No response. About 100m from us they started to pull the net, but the effort was useless as, by that time, the net was already twisted twice around our rudder. Boats were dancing on big waves without any control. Tied up with the fishing boat by the net, we started to fear for our boat. Marcin kept calling them, but all in vain, so after half an hour he released pan-pan and started to call Tobago Cost Guard. I bet that fishermen heard us all that time, because only a few seconds after calling the Coast Guard, two of the fishermen jumped into the water and started to swim towards us. Imagine the scene. Two big guys with knives in their mouth, black water filled with big fish trapped (or not) in the net, us – completely stuck. Boat moving 2 meters up – 2 meters down. What would you do?
They quickly cut the net on both sides of the boat, but we were still trapped, so I, with my high school Spanish***, started the desperate conversation with my hands, leftovers of words and grammar, begging them to release us from the net. It took them another 30 long minutes of hard struggle to cut us out. The sea was too high, and their boat had to sail away. No way they could swim back. We invited them on board, as they were dead tired and were barely holding to the lines.
Jesus and Miguel, both Venezuelans. Somehow we managed to understand that they were illegally fishing on Tobago’s coastal waters, therefore afraid of the local Coast Guard. They would have to sneak back to Venezuela. That there is war, no food, increased criminality. On the way back they would have to give half of the catch to police or pirates, who knows what is worse. I felt grateful that we were ok, but also sorry that we damaged their net. Luckily that we haven’t cut ourselves out. They knew how to do it and we would probably damage their net more than necessary. We tried to get closer to their boat for another hour, then we hugged goodbye, and they both jumped to still very black water! We guided them with a spotlight until they reached their boat. Good luck to both of you Jesus and Miguel! Hope this war is over soon.
War… we keep forgetting how tragic it is. Hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis – we can’t do much about it, but this? done by people to people. Caused by somebody’s overgrown ego, unfulfilled power hunger, but mostly greed. Hurts poor people the most.
*Noonsite – used to be the best cruising website for cruisers around the world, covering most of the useful information about entry ports/customs/immigration/duties, dangers but also nice places to see. we find it now slightly abandoned. We still reach it, but do not rely on it – especially after Tobago!
** It’s not magic, we don’t own a crystal ball 🙂 – it is AIS, an automatic tracking system. All commercial ships and the majority of ocean-going yachts have it. We can see the name, type, speed, direction, etc. and they can see us – very useful.
***High school Spanish means – one year of Spanish, 20 years ago. Translates easy to extensive hand conversation with few words and surprisingly good grammar 🙂 Thank god we learned Latin and French as well!!!
Tobago…. only 15 miles away but seemed so far away. The wind was slow and we were so mentally and physically exhausted that we let Heniek (the autopilot) do the job and tried to sleep for a while. Around 10 am. Vincent woke us up with his famous “Gooooodmooooorning!” – at that moment we realized that he slept through all of it! Lucky him!
Yo-ho!
Tobago is getting greener and greener on the horizon…
P.S.
By the way, on arrival to Tobago we learned that that night, just 20 miles to the west, was a real pirate attack.
