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Whisky Running
I found myself in Mauritius, in the Indian Ocean, with very little
money. As usually seems to be the case, fate brought salvation fairly
soon, this time in the guise of a navigation job. There is this reef
about 240 nautical miles north of Mauritius called Cargados Caragos
Shoals. A rather large sailboat had been chartered by a group of
oceanographers to visit the shoals and arrived back in Grand Bay the
day after I arrived, having failed to find the reef. Remember, this is
before the days of satellite navigation tools. It just so happened that
one of my big interests had been celestial navigation and by that time
had become quite adept at it. Of course I secured the task of
navigating the vessel back to the reef. Once there, while the
oceanographers did their research, I had time off to explore the reef.
As I put my head in the water, I knew I had struck gold. These guys
were studying the migratory habits of the spiny lobster. I could have
told them right away where a goodly portion of them would be migrating
to as soon as I had my way with them.
On my return to Mauritius, I quickly befriended a local Indian guy
named Som, who had contacts (surprised?) in the hotel business. Come to
think of it, he had a few other contacts too. I persuaded him to locate
a commercial deep freeze unit and a portable generating plant. (I had
no engine or electricity on Moya). We collected together many plastic
jerry jugs for all the gasoline and set off for Cargados, quietly.
In five exhausting days and nights of diving, Som carrying the sacks,
me in the water, we had the deep freeze chock-a-block full. Praying for
the generator to keep running, and also for fair winds, we made the
downhill run back to Mauritius, where the booty was quickly sold and
three quarters of the money vanished before I could grab it. Still, it
was enough to put a lump in my pocket. I cleared Mauritius immediately
and sailed for South Africa , searching my mind for a way to put that
lump to good use.
Lo and behold, there in the duty free store in Cape Town, sat on the
shelf rather aptly named King Robert whiskey. Not only was it the
equivalent of two US Dollars a bottle, but the bottle bore a surprising
resemblance to Johnny Walker bottles. I promptly purchased three and a
half tons of it and found a new friend, with a swimming pool. Two days
later I retrieved the now naked bottled and went to the local printer
with a Johnny Walker label in my pocket. It took three days to glue the
new labels on and pack poor little Moya to the gills. I used cardboard
crates and left only a narrow tunnel in the middle up near the cabin
roof to sleep in and an area around the galley stove so I could cook.
Then I set sail for Brazil, this time praying somewhat more fervently
for fine weather. The vision of heaving cases of whisky overboard in a
gale was a constant recurring nightmare on that passage.
On arrival in Brazil, I chose a small town in the north, the customs
officer came to clear me in in his little diesel boat. He tied it up
alongside, climbed aboard and started to go down the companionway. He
reversed out and settled down in the cockpit to complete the clearance
procedure. When he came to the inevitable ‘anything to declare’
question, I trusted my sixth sense with trepidation and replied
in the negative. He seemed almost happy with the response and very
rapidly completed what was left to do. Then he made a great show of
closing his briefcase, loosening his tie, making sure I had no doubt we
were going ‘unofficial’. His next action was to rub his hands together
and blurt out – ‘So how much do you want for the whiskey?’
We spent 3 nights, in the early hours, transferring the cargo to the
small government boat, on the side of Moya that shielded him from the
town lights.
There was the Royal XXXX Yacht club directly opposite where I was
anchored, not that anyone had yachts, but it served as a social club
for the local aristocracy. I thoroughly enjoyed the sight of the club
members Oohing and Aahing over the smoothness of this African rotgut
for months thereafter. I also enjoyed the huge lump that would no
longer fit in all of my pockets together.
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