Island Thieves

By Barry Nunn and Susan Nunn

The world has gone mad and seems to be just getting madder. They want out but can they pull it off? What kind of life will it be if they do? No people, no phone, no internet, no money, no shops, and no going back! They will need extreme cunning, guile, hard work, and a lot of good luck to do it, but they have decided to try. Swapping their current lives in this crazy world for white sandy beaches, warm turquoise water, coral reefs, forest, savanna, and best of all, they will have it all to themselves. The downside of this move is they must disappear and become invisible, and stay that way forever. There will be many things they will never do, see, hear, taste, or smell ever again, but they will still have far more than most. This new life is an extreme choice of that there is no denying, will it be worth it? Only time will tell. Will their future be time spent together on this beautiful tropical island? Or the alternative, being apart in prison.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tablo Publishing
• Release date: Oct 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9781685835460

Book preview

Chapter 1

The bow of the Sara Jane slips below the surface of the cobalt blue water. A single floating shipping container; the swirling eddies, the bubbles, the only sign of the sinking of this glorious and well-loved ship. The ship slowly descends; then stern first - briefly stirring up some of the fine almost white sand - she gently settles in her final resting place on the ocean floor. She lays thirty metres below the surface; two hundred metres from the shore of this lush tropical island. This resting place had been very carefully chosen by her owner.

Al, now just floating above her, the wheelhouse looked so close it was as though he could just reach down and touch it; but even the highest part of this was still fifteen metres below him. He lay drifting on the surface transfixed, watching the bubbles escaping from the wreck; over the next half an hour he watched them becoming less frequent and smaller. The colour of the deck and superstructure being the very light-yellow colour it had recently been painted, made for the almost perfect camouflage. It had been both a nightmare and a godsend, nightmare because Al hated painting with a passion and this was a huge job to take on by himself, also doing it only after they were underway on that last voyage, made it a very rushed job. But also, this work was a godsend because it had taken Al’s mind off second, third, and fourth guessing himself; wondering what he had missed, or if he had planned for absolutely everything?

From where he was now snorkelling - right on top of her - and even in such crystal-clear water, she blended into her new home very well indeed. Al was thinking and hoping she would be close to invisible. Even an aircraft flying at an extremely low altitude, and very slowly, a person would struggle to see anything amiss. If a boat were to come to the exact spot Al was in now, directly above her, it would take a good eye and somebody who was expecting to see a sunken ship for it register. This was as good as Al could have hoped for, all his hard work making her blend into the seabed, just another box he can tick on his meticulously constructed list of things necessary to make this new life they had chosen, work.

She was now part of the ocean environment and nature would work fast to claim her, already there were fish starting to explore this new thing in their ocean. The speed at which nature works, and the ship gets encrusted with all the new life, will be an interesting thing for them to watch; back in their old life it would be something they would probably photograph or even film and use the footage to make a documentary about.

It was possible to get a large size boat into the bay area as Al had only just proven, although in getting her here he did manage to do some damage both to the reef and to Sara Jane herself. Seeing as she was to be scuttled anyway, his only fear had been that she really got stuck on the reef. He had known it was going to be a tight fit and he had steamed in through his chosen route at nearly full speed. This was a massive adrenaline rush and something Al would never have dreamed he would ever actually do. He did think at the moment he heard that unmistakable metal scraping on rock, what would Andy have said? The ship slowed substantially as she hit, and they were lucky to be braced ready for the collision or they could have both been injured. Her inertia carried her through though, the reef succumbing to the collision, but also having its vengeance on the ship. As the Sara Jane clears the reef there is a terrible vibration coming from the drive train. Unsure even if they still had a propeller? Al puts her in full reverse thinking if the prop is severely damaged, or something in the drive chain actually let’s go, he may have to drop the anchors early to be able to stop in time.

The ship does slow down, not as fast as he hoped, but enough, and she is almost stationary as they approach the spot he had chosen. He then drops the rear anchor, now letting line out as he goes, he slowly edges her forward to the exact spot, then anchors away; the massive front anchor drops down also. Al keeps this chain taught so the ship can’t move. Now it was time to start the actual scuttling.

He discovered she had indeed suffered quite badly from the collision and was taking in water. It was coming in enough that she would now probably sink even if a full crew had battled to save her. No point in doing things slowly now though, Al had plumbed up the massive fire pumps so he can manually fill the ship with sea water, he had various valves so he can balance the weight bow to stern to keep her fairly level. Even with the unplanned leaking assisting, he calculated it would still take the best part of a day, so he got ready for yet another crazily busy day.

Firstly, to finish loading those first supplies into the shipping container, and then onto all those other last-minute jobs he needed to do. There were many, and he was thinking it was going to be one hell of a productive day if they were to get it all done. High on their list of priorities was to ensure there would be as little pollution as possible, some small amount was unfortunately inevitable. Ensuring the main engine oil and all the diesel was captured was the first mission on his list. Aside from the main engine, there were also a few other smaller diesel motors that the oil would need to be removed from, and he went about draining every sump on board into sealed containers, these he secured in the wheelhouse. The diesel in the main tank he had a use for in their new life, he closed all the valves on the pipes coming from the tank, except the two pipes that led up to the wheelhouse, these were valved off up on the bridge. One was from the bottom of the tank the other from the top. These he could connect onto at a later date and pump the diesel out. Being a new ship and built to comply with all the new standards, Al was sure the tank was strong enough to take the pressure the water exerted on it now it was thirty metres down.

He had loaded the various batteries into the small shipping container on the deck, they were both really bad pollutants, and also would be very useful to them on the island. Some were massive though and lugging the biggest ones from the engine room up to the deck had really put him to the test. With his rigging skills he had used pulleys to save him a lot of the manual work though, the biggest weighing in at over fifty kilograms each, it was as much as he could do to lift them, but looking on the positive, being this heavy, also meant their charge lasted ages, when it comes to batteries it is definitely a case of big is better.

There were enough hazards with the fringing coral reef and the mostly rocky shoreline that it would only be a fool to try and navigate into this bay, unless there was a very important reason like Al and Jo had. Them having a much bigger picture and so much at stake for getting to that perfect spot. The sort of boat small enough to get into the bay easily, would not be large enough to have the fuel range necessary to get here from the nearest land-based fuel source, so a shore launched motorboat coming in here was very unlikely or almost impossible. Really the only risk of visitors would be a tender from some sort of large pleasure yacht, and in Al's experience the people who owned such vessels, generally didn’t venture too far from the luxuries of the mother ship, especially if it was not going straight to more five-star luxury. This spot was as close to perfect as Al could possibly have dared to dream, only time would tell if it truly was good enough for their needs.

With still lots to do Al swims to the shore and as he reaches his new home, even the last bubbles have worked their way out from the hull of the ship, those that hadn’t made it out by now would be entombed where they were, only when she rusted away would they finally escape back out into the atmosphere. Al walks up the fine white sand beach and into the palm trees and the arms of his beautiful wife Jo. The amazing new life for them just became a huge reality, no turning back now.

Thinking what they have just done and signed up for is now unmistakable and also irreversible. They are sure there will be many challenges to overcome, but they were very confident in their ability to not just overcome, but to triumph. Exciting, but at the same time frightening, thinking of all the things that they know they will never have, or do again - bringing trepidation and a sort of fear - but both convinced they had made the right decision. This, by a long way was the biggest adventure that this very adventurous couple have ever been on, hoping all the years of planning and practicing for this move will pay off.

The things they knew they would be living without now actually gone, is a huge reality check. The little things like, catching up on the news headlines in the morning like Al used to do, to the massive things like, no medical care apart from what they can do for themselves. This was possibly the most daunting of all the things they had left behind, mostly because there was no way of telling even what medical care either of them may need in the years to come, let alone what they could potentially do themselves. They had both spent a lot of time researching signs and symptoms of lots of the possible ailments, they had with them a very extensive medical kit, and they thought they would even be able to do fairly simple surgery if push came to shove.

Unfortunately, the drugs they had brought would over time lose their potency and probably be worthless in the not-too-distant future. Could they just increase the dose of them as their potency decreased, or even find a natural replacement? Time alone would tell. Not only was it the drugs that had a use by date, absolutely everything they had brought with them had some sort of time limit, some measured in years, others in decades, but they had to realise things didn’t last forever. They now had no way of getting new things, unless it could be produced from the island’s resources and their ingenuity they would be going without. No popping down the shop, no ordering supplies online and get them delivered, these were things of the past now. To make a choice and go off on an adventure without certain things was one thing, they knew it was only living without them temporarily, or realistically they could have actually just gone back and got them, but this time it was massively different; no going back to get anything now, and no going back to that previous life. The first few months would be a massive test though. They really only had the bare essentials in the shipping container, and most importantly they would need to keep a very low profile, to the point of being invisible.

When ships such as the Sara Jane go missing and insurance claims are made, the people who insure them and consequently must pay out large sums of money make sure they are intently looked for, and even then, they try everything possible to avoid paying out at all. When ships go missing with very expensive cargos on board, they are looked for even more thoroughly. Al and Jo had known their life choice would affect a lot of people, especially those close to them. They had taken it upon themselves to make sure their loved ones were at least financially looked after.

At this point, for Al and Jo money was of no direct importance to them whatsoever. The boat itself was well insured and as it was working as a cargo vessel, so the contents were very well insured too, possibly overestimated by Al when he did the last sailings manifest. Al had been careful to alter the inventory to make it less like an if I were sent to live on a deserted island shopping list and more of an everyday plain, dull type cargo manifest that would fit in with what they used to carry. It had taken some planning and imaginative paperwork, but there should be no reason for raised eyebrows even to a person with a good knowledge of Al and Jo’s lives. The only way to prove what really was or wasn’t actually on-board would be to find and salvage the wreck, and if that happened the whole thing would be all over anyway.

The couple had always had a good, or most would say great standard of living, neither of them had signed up for a massive reduction in that in the long term. They both were prepared to go without some things, and having to work harder, but mostly just working differently, back to the old ways of doing things. They definitely planned to still maintain the good things in life though. They were both people who liked to keep busy anyway and both of them spent most of their downtime tinkering, trying to improve how they lived. This would no longer just be tinkering in the downtime but a full-time job.

The time they had spent in the veggie garden would be invaluable now, horticulture, yet another topic they had tried to be as knowledgeable about as they could be, it was going to be very useful indeed for this next chapter in their lives. They would be living in hiding for now, no single sign of them being on the island could be left. It would be challenging and frustrating not being able to explore their new home, they would have to be patient though and keep themselves invisible. Once they were convinced the searching was over, they could afford to take a few more risks, but they would always have to live in a way to make it close to impossible for anyone to be able to see that this previously uninhabited island now had two permanent residents.

Chapter 2

The Island itself was roughly three thousand hectares and was twice as long north to south as it was east to west. At the northern end - taking up nearly a third of the whole island - was an extinct volcano. It must have had an almighty last explosion which had blown most of the southern third of the crater away. On this flank it now only reached to a height of about fifty metres and had shallow sloping sides of loose rock and boulders, it was the fact that this huge crater was full of fresh water that had brought the island to Al’s attention in the first place. The supply of fresh water was the number one box that had needed to be ticked when Al was searching for the right island, and this was as close to perfect as he thought possible.

The crater’s walls were far higher and steeper on the other two thirds of the caldera, having a fairly steep pitch to its internal walls, the sort of slope that you would be able to scale, but would have to be done in many parts on all fours. The external walls however were the sort of place that would be heaven to a professional rock climber who was looking for a challenge. These other two thirds were solid rock, and close to vertical in some places, as these outer walls dropped away to the ocean - they just carried on down and down - plummeting to incredible depths only a short way offshore. This, Al had discovered on the echo sounder when the Sara Jane traversed this spot getting to her final resting place.

At the bottom of the southern external slope the landscape changed quickly from the bare loose volcanic rock into thick forest. This southern end of the island was now covered in areas of dense trees, with coconut palms, banana trees, and various others that Al had never seen before. Al and Jo had done lots of research into all the topics they thought would be useful, but they could never expect to remember it all; luckily, they had brought lots of that research with them. Then as the terrain carried on towards the southern shore, the bigger trees thinned out, and about three quarters of the way from the craters base to the southernmost point these larger trees stopped, and nature had allowed some of the shorter types of flora to flourish. There were a few larger areas of meadow as you would call it. This whole southern end was mostly grasses and shrubs. With this large diverse eco system, and the ocean itself, the island could sustain them for food easily as it was, but they had other, better ideas about that side of things in the future too.

Al and Jo’s Island was one of four at the moment, the other three roughly thirty, fifty, and seventy kilometres to the west respectively. The closest one was about the same area as their island but very long and skinny. It had a similar sort of environment to theirs too, with large palms and also the shorter grassy types of flora. This could have suited them, but the disadvantage was that they would have had to rely on rainwater alone. This island must have had a very different volcanic life with no real sign of a crater. It almost seemed more like the earth had split apart and just a long ridge had risen up.

The second island over had been eroded away over the millennia to the point that it was just a wide gently sloping hill that Al guessed was just under half the size of their island, this older island was only maybe ten metres above sea level at its highest point. It did have some vegetation on it, but it was now only low growing plants, with nothing much above head high.

The furthest island away, in its day would have been maybe twice the size of their island, but all that remained of it now was just a scattering of rocky outcrops outlining its former glory. From these patches of rock, it looked like it had been almost perfectly round so this