Thieves, guns, and late-night slams Lindsay McRory August 25, 1996 The boat robberies continue in the Dominican Republic, although local authorities in the port town of Luperon have caught a few suspects and thrown them in jail. The last raid was a few nights ago aboard Cataloose, cruisers from Switzerland. They were aboard and sleeping at 2 a.m. when two men climbed their anchor chain. Peter blasted them with a searchlight and sounded a horn. The banditos jumped quickly overboard and, within minutes, a small flotilla of dinghies began scouring the mangroves. We didn't find anyone. The Comandancia did not like this at all. He radioed all boats in the area and invited anyone with a firearm checked in at his office to come retrieve it--so they could shoot burglars. The cruisers quickly divided into two camps. We tried to conduct a meeting but half only wanted to talk about whose dinghy they would use to dump the bodies out in the sea. The other half talked about how scared they were of the armed group. Personally I do not believe stealing a few pesos and some clothes is worth a death sentence. The guns issue rages on. The two camps seemingly allow no middle ground. It is interesting that those boats with guns don't take a small-scale approach. They have lots of them on board, and we have yet to meet a boat with just one gun. The typical inventory: two handguns, a shotgun, and a rifle. Guns are amazingly difficult to get in Canada, but anyone interested in weapons stocks up in Florida, hence the Canadian contingent is as well-armed as anyone else. We carry no weapons. I don't know how to use them and hurt myself enough with power tools. And with children aboard, it would be an accident waiting to happen. Two days later the Comandancia came around and collected the guns and things returned to normal. Since then the cruisers here have grouped together and established response plans, equipment lists, and "buddy" radio channels to use when something comes up. Last night we went to sleep with one eye open. Around 2 a.m. Hakuna Matata was hit at full speed by an obviously big boat. We were knocked over on the side. Wesley fell out of his berth. Lockers flew open. A few seconds later we were hit again on the same side. This did not seem like an accident. I shot out of the aft cabin hatch but it was pitch black. I couldn't see a thing. I just heard the whine of a high-powered engine screaming at full RPM. Wham! We were hit again. Denise radioed a mayday and I grabbed the search light and spotted the culprit: a 25-foot wooden launch. The boat was used by one of the commercial boats here, and had a brand new Yamaha 40 outboard screaming away. On this night, it was captained by a sailor who was drunker than a skunk. He ripped across our nylon anchor rode, severing it, then hit our chain anchor rode. It ripped his new outboard right out of the transom. The operator "Benito" was hanging on, with both hands, to a quickly sinking motor still running at full throttle. They were doing high-speed doughnuts in the water. Old Benito couldn't let go of the motor long enough to shut it down, and every time he completed a circle he hit us again. Denise's mayday brought a dozen dinghies over in a few minutes. Benito's new motor finally sank and died. Everything was quiet. Now there was a dozen boats, each with a high-powered light trained on Benito sitting in his now engineless launch. There must have been at least 10 million candlepower beaming on him. It was as bright as a night baseball game. As drunk as he was, it was easy to see he just wanted to crawl silently away. After we all stared at him for a few minutes, we cast him off to drift alone in the mangroves. Luckily Benito's launch had car tires affixed on the bow and sides like bumpers. All Hakuna Matata had to show for the incident was a lot of black marks near the bow and a cut anchor rode. We set a second anchor near the now lost CQR 45 with the dinghy. Then one of the cruisers gave Benito a tow back to town. Benito had had a little time to sober up, he kept repeating "excusa, excusa, excusa, mas brugal" which translates roughly to "excuse me, excuse me, too much rum." It was 5 a.m. before we went back to sleep, but we woke at 6:30 to start searching for our anchor. If we delayed too long the winds would be up and the chain would sink deeper into the ooze making recovery more difficult. I dredged for the chain with the dinghy using a big grapnel hook. It took only 30 minutes to find it. We then moved Hakuna Matata to a more remote section of the harbor. With all of the discussion around guns recently, I started to ponder what might have happened during the Benito incident if we had one on board. With two hurricanes and a tropical storm heading for the Caribbean, now is not a good time to be heading out. Anyway, this place sort of grows on you.