Tropical Storm Overhead and THEN>>>>

It was early Thursday evening. Tropical storm Lowell is off the west coast of Baja and headed our way to La Paz. The center of the storm was expected to hit us around midnight. Floods and winds were predicted. The winds were only going to reach 40 mph. Hopefully nothing more that a Minnesota thunderstorm.

I had cleared the decks of the boat to prevent anything from blowing away or breaking, closed all of the hatches, ate a sandwich for dinner and settled down to read a book about a ship wreck in the early 1800's off the coast of Africa. The title is "Skeletons of the Sahara". The book is an enjoyable read and I was getting into it when it happen...............

Smash!!!! Bang!!!! Knock Knock!!!! Crash. What the hell had just happened I thought? The sound was coming from the cockpit at the back of the boat. Again, Smash, bang, crash. I opened the hatch a small crack to see if I could see what this monster was. I couldn't see anything in the dark. All I could sense was the smell of death. What could it be?

I wasn't about to walk out there to get a closer look fearing it was waiting for me so it could strike. I locked the cockpit back up a used my light to see if anything appeared in the dark. Rain was coming down hard now and the winds were picking up. Again and again, the boat shook and rocked as the noise continued. Not as often as before but as load. I thought I heard, from the corner of the cockpit, a sound only a wild animal could make as it stocked its' kill.

All that I could hope for was that this unknown creature would soon die. The cockpit was filled with blood making it look like a fresh murder seen. I went back to my book and gave it another 30 minutes to see if the noise stopped. It did. I then sat up from my couch, laid the book down and started for the hatch to unlock it.

I stepped outside and carefully and slowly moved towards the corner where the sound had come from. There it was in a pool of blood, dead. It was clear that it had been chased my something further up the food chain from itself and seeing my boat jumped in to take refuge. The name of the boat is Dolce Vita. Sweet Life in english. Not a very fitting ending for the creature that you can now view below.