The Sea: The Adventure-Book One

By Xlibris US

This is the first book of the series of four. The Sea will take you along on the adventure, by sailboat, around the world. It tells of encounters with pirates, sharks, dolphins, whales, alligators, smugglers, and port authorities. It tells of heroes and fool hardness. It will make you laugh, and the next page will make you cry. This book was written to entertain you and give you some information on what goes on around the world. It touches on some of the problems of people who give up life on land and go to sea for adventure. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did writing it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Sep 5, 2014
• ISBN: 9781499067545

Book preview

Copyright © 2014 by David Belding.

ISBN:      Softcover      978-1-4990-6755-2

                eBook           978-1-4990-6754-5

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

E-mail: [e-mail]

Rev. date: 09/05/2014

Xlibris LLC

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

669942

Index

Introduction

Chapter 1:   Good Bye Land

Chapter 2:   Pirates

Chapter 3:   Sharks

Chapter 4:   Floating Bails

Chapter 5:   Hijacked At Sea

Chapter 6:   The Mirage

Chapter 7:   Saving The Whales

Chapter 8:   Drug Runners or Gun Runners

Chapter 9:   Anchor In A Storm Not Without A Visa

Chapter 10:   Double Trouble-Double Trouble

Chapter 11:   This Is Target Practice

Chapter 12:   The Bermuda Triangle Gives Up One Of It’s Secerets

This book is dedicated to my wife Sherrie. Who put up with me, staying up late nights to write it! And to my sister-in-law Mary who I picked on threw out the book.

Introduction

T his is the first book of the series of four. (THE SEA) will take you along on the adventure, by sail boat around the world. It tells of encounters with Pirates, Sharks, Dolphins, Whales, Alligators, Smugglers, and Port Authorizes. It tells of Heroes and fool hardness. It will make you laugh and the next page will make you cry.

This book was written to entertain you and give you some information

on what goes on around the world. It touches on some of the problems

that people who give up life on land and go to sea, for adventure. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did writing it.

teddy.jpg

Teddy Bear with sword and chalice, the inspiration for this book.

Chapter 1

Good Bye Land

A s buddy Bear, scissor kicked the one gangster in the jaw, dropping him like a rock, while grabbing and taking the gun away from the other one. The police came crashing through the door. Buddy said, while handing over the gun, "looks like the good guys have won a gain.

Thus ending the cartoon script of Buddy the Bear, This scrip would be published next year, in Daily Newspaper. It had been a good run the last two years. I had made enough money to buy the sail boat of our dreams. Now my wife Sherrie and I were off to see the world. First to drop off manuscript then off to the boat, we had been living on for the last six months, after selling our house.

Then tomorrow morning, untie from the dock and kiss the city life good bye. Hello tropical Island paradise. The next morning one little flaw in the plan, I had forgotten about Murphy’s Law. The tide was going the wrong way. When we untied the dock lines, we spent the next half hour fending off other boats. When we were out in the channel the incoming tide was against us, push us away from the sea. I though what would Buddy Bear do in a situation like this? Why of course, he be cool and go with the flow.

So to my wife surprise I headed the boat up stream. While sitting in my captain chair smiling and waving at my fellow boaters still tied to the dock.

Three hours later the tide change and we were headed out to sea. Once out at sea the wind was out of the south west. Of course the wind was out of the south west the direction we wanted to go. We sailed west. We refused to start the motor. Much to my wife dismay, we sailed all night with a plan to tack back when the wind change. But the wind didn’t change. So we sailed one hundred miles according to the G.P.S. and a hundred miles back, taking ten miles toward our destination south, to Mexico, which my wife informs everyone, every chance she gets. At least Mother Nature help out the wind change and we were making good time heading south.

After a stop in Ensenada to clear customs, immigration and help out a few locals who helped themselves to our food locker, fishing gear while we were off the boat sightseeing.

We were once again headed south in a boat that was taking on a lot of water due to a leak around the rudder post

So thinking as Buddy Bear would do and our boat being a trimerran, we would just beach it a little after high tide in a small harbor half way down the Baja peninsula and fix it.

The next day we put our plan into effect. Much to the surprise of the local villagers, who promptly formed a group to push us off their beach? Until we explained in our little Spanish to a shady man in a trench coat, who knew a little English that we needed to repair our boat and the beaching was intentional.

He informed the rest of the villagers, who then instead of pushing stood around and watched. After an hour of work the shady man in the trench coat came on board, and informs us it was break time and produced a bottle of tequila three glasses and passed around a drink. After several of these breaks the repair job was finished and so was I. or didn’t care if it leak or not. So the villagers invited us to party and celebrate. After Ensenada and losing half our supplies, we were leery in leaving the boat unattended, but we went anyway. I spotted one person going toward our boat. When the tide change and once again at high tide floated off the beach I anchored back in the harbor follow by several villagers I found instead of thing missing from the boat, a bag of fruit and five pan size fish had been put on. The fish I put in the refrigerator then after safely anchoring the boat. Check for leaks and finding none went back to shore and partied the rest of the night.

Several days later we thank our host. Who had restore our faith in mankind and sailed south to our island paradise, we thought.

Chapter 2

Pirates

A fter several stops along the Mexican coast, we headed south toward Costa Rica by passing Nicaragua and Honduras and Guatemala, due to the stories from other boaters. We were fifty miles from shore on the second night out when we spotted a light from another boat.

Thinking it was another cruiser like us. We hailed them on the radio; receiving no answer we figured it to only be a fishing boat. When the other boats lights went off, we thought nothing more of it; boaters often turn off lights to save battery power.

The wind had died and we were motoring so we did not hear the other boat until it was next to us. When the other boat turned on their lights, it was a spot light that lit up our whole boat. Several men with guns were on our boat before we knew what was happening. As I reached for the flare gun the only weapon we were a loud to have in Mexico. I saw the flash from the rifle and was spun around from the impact of the bullet entering my shoulder.

I found myself laying on the edge of the boat, hearing the word mottoes having spent several days in the Mexican harbor of Los Mottoes I knew the word meant dead. Thinking they were going to kill me, I unhook my harness. Then rolled over the side of the boat into the water, feeling our trolling fishing line going across my leg, I grab on hoping the eighty pound line would hold as it drag me along behind the boat.

After what seem like an hour (in reality was only minutes. I was thinking I could hold no more. The engine was shut off and our boat came to a stop. Lights showed on the water behind me. I took a deep breath and swam under water to the boat. I came up between the alums (the out riggers and the main haul of our boat) Out of sight of anyone on the boat.

After several minutes listening to shouting and what sounded like someone giving orders in Spanish. I heard Sherrie several times telling someone to keep looking. Then I would hear someone say calamity it means shut up in Spanish then other boat pulled away from our boat and I was about to climb up when our boat started moving without our motor running. So I figured out they must be towing it.

I grab the boarding ladder as it came by, after resting a bit I worked my way up to peek on the boat. There were two men with rifles slung over their shoulder one was steering our boat. I figured the distance and came up with the ideal. I could not get to them even if my shoulder wasn’t hearting so bad. I must have been lucky the bullet didn’t hit anything Vidal I still had use of my hand.

So I duck back down and hung onto the ladder. Thinking what would Buddy Bear do in a situation like this? Ha he would jump up on deck attach both men and recapture the boat and then climb over to the other boat and fight all of the other pirates and save the woman. Then sail into the harbor with all the pirate tied up and turn them over to the police.

Only Buddy Bear was a teddy bear I used in my cartoon scripts. He did things I made up in my mind. But this is was not a cartoon. Buddy was sitting in the warm cabin waiting for me to think up something to do on my own.

The only thing I could think of was hanging on to the ladder ten feet away from two men with guns. Who were thinking they had already killed me and let them keep on thinking that, and make my move when thing were more in my favor. The sun was just rising over the ocean when we enter a small harbor then up a river into the mogul groves.

The boat had slow; I spotted a small out crop of buildings and figured it was a good time to get off. As I let go of the ladder and slip into the water. I spotted a crocodile, oh great I survived being kill by a bullet just to be eaten by a crocodile. I floated and fortunately murphy was not around and the crocodile went on by chasing the boat wake.

After the crocodile went by I swam to the shore. The water was warm but after being drag and hanging onto the ladder half the night my mussels were stiff and sore. So I rested on the bank till I heard a rustling in the bushes. Thinking it was either the crocodile had come back looking for dinner or maybe his family was around. I forced myself to move into the jungle that was made up of thick vines and trees.

It took hours to get to the top of the small hill that over looked the lagoon. There I could see nine boats mostly sail boats there were flag from different countries some boats were half strip of their riggings and other hardware.

There were several men removing parts off of different boats and taken them into a large building. This must be a warehouse as I rested and watched the workers make several trips back and forth between the boats and the building. There were several smaller building one of them had a large radio tower near it and a radar disk mounted on it, this is the one that caught my eye the most.

There was another building a way from the other with the window boarded up and a man with a rifle standing by the door. As I watched I gave up on the ideal of my odds getting any better. I counted forty or fifty men all armed down below me and that was just what I could see after an hour of watching. I was going to need help and from what I was seeing. I needed the Marines. Hell I needed a whole platoon of men and I sure didn’t see any telephone around.

Thinking nothing could be done till night fall. I checked out the situation and landscape. I had not seen anyone patrolling the hill side. So they must have felt safe in their hidden lagoon.

So carefully I moved to the next hill up, after several hours of pushing my way thru the thick jungle I was on the back of the camp. On this next hill I could see the ocean on both sides. No wonder the thought were safe this was an island. There radar tower was high enough to cover all around. They could see anyone who might approach from any direction.

So instead of calling the marines, I better call the Navy and I didn’t need a telephone to do that. On our boat and most boats there is a marine radio better yet our E.P.R.L.B. (emergency personal radio location bacon) it uses satellite signals to notify the Coast Guard of boats in trouble, and their location. To be used only in an emergency and this was sure an emergency. I only had to get to the boat and activate it. I’m sure the pirates were not going to let me just walk across the compound and do that.

It would have to be done at night and swimming with crocodiles was just something not on my list of fun thing to do. That left one other way that was to sneak down the pier. Which looked just about as dangerous, stuck between the two options? I chose the pier, at night all I had to do was wait. Not wanting to try and find my way thru the jungle in the night. I creep down the hill to as close to the compound as I dared then laid down for a long needed nap as tired as I was, I fell right to sleep.

Awaking hours later the moon was up and so was Murphy. The moon was full I could see almost