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VIKING FUNERAL - BURIED AT SEA



Spooky things sometimes happen at sea.  You are sailing along peacefully minding your own business, and you sail into a situation that gives you the heebee jeebees.

 

While sailing south of the Balearic Islands in the western Mediterranean Sea, a situation evolved that gave us plenty to think about.  Off to starboard we saw a peculiar package drifting in the sea.  We had never seen a object like this in the past, and we wondered if we should pick it up, open it, and check out its contents.  After all, it could be a seagoing Pandora's box.  We motored up to the package and debated the merits of satisfying our curiosity. We knew that drug smugglers sometimes set packages adrift and pass the GPS coordinates on to others who come out to pick it up.  In this day of terrorism, it's easy to imagine anarchists leaving packets of explosives and other dastardly components for collaborators to pick up after they drop it off. 




We spent the next five minutes motoring around the package examining it from all sides.  It had a coconut palm frond attached to it acting like a sail to push the package in the wind.  That was a clever touch.  We motored around the package in ever smaller circles tightening the noose around the parcel, and possibly around our necks if the package was trouble.  Polypropylene lines trailed in the water beside it, and we were careful to not get the lines tangled in our props.

 

After ten minutes of debate among the crew, we decided in favor of risk and adventure, and all voted to retrieve the package and open it.  David went down on the sugar scoop on the stern, and I carefully backed up to the floating parcel.  David used a boat hook to pull the package up to our stern.  Nothing bad happened.  So far, so good.

 
 

The package was wrapped in dark plastic held together by a network of polypropylene lines.  I gave David a knife to cut the lines and slice through the plastic covering.  He did the dastardly deed, and again nothing bad happened.

 


 

There was a rough wooden plaque fixed to the top of the package with a boat's name written on it.  It also had a time and date written beneath the name - another unsolved mystery.  The boat name and date really stimulated our curiosity.  Who was Tenassa I, and what happened at 3pm on January 6, 2000?  It was now the summer of 2005.  Had this package been floating out there for more than four years?  We wondered if the package contained a message from a boat that sunk, or if there was a message from someone stranded on a deserted island.  There aren't any deserted islands in the Mediterranean, and so that theory seemed unlikely.  We were now committed to opening the package, do or die. 

 

We peeked inside to discover if there was a message calling for help, or drugs, or other type of contraband.  To our surprise, we found the remnants of a cut up surfboard.  Someone had sawn it into equal size chunks of foam and fiberglass, stacked the pieces in an orderly fashion, wrapped them in plastic, attached a sprouting coconut frond, tied everything together with rope, and set the package adrift.

 

There were no drugs, weapons, or contraband.  We suspect that a yachtie had damaged his surfboard beyond repair, and so he wrapped it up and gave it a burial at sea.  Still, that's a lot of trouble to go through to create a mystery package that you release on the high seas.  Who was the mystery yacht?  Had the package been floating in the Med for all those years?  Was a yacht lost at sea?  Was this some type of weird surfing ritual - a Viking funeral for a favorite surfboard damaged beyond repair.  Alas, we will never know.  But one thing we know.  We looked fear in the eye, satisfied our curiosity, and now we have an excellent mystery to share with the world.



 


Log 1 Peter Pan Around the World
Log 2 Weapons of Mackerel Destruction
Log 3 Pirates of the Malacca Straits
Log 4 Kissing Cobras
Log 5 Debriosaurus Rex
Log 6 Go Ahead - Live Your Dreams

Log 7 The Man Who Built His House on a Rock
Log 8 Ambivalent Eagles
Log 9 One-Shovel Full at a Time
Log 10 Hitchhiker's Guide to Planet Earth

Log 11 Keeshond

Log 12 The Red Sea Blues

Log 13 Feel the Freedom

Log 14 The Danger Zone

Log 15 Lucky Man
Log 16 Dream Machines - Land Rover Defenders

Log 17 Trade Wind Dreams
Log 18 Logs With Fins
Log 19 Everywhere, Everything
Log 20 Shark Slayer Is History

Log 21 Viking Funeral - Burial at Sea
Log 22 Improbable and Impossible

Log 23 Keep on Trucking
Log 24 Dream Machines II
Log 25 Bodysurfing Whales
Log 26 Hitting the Wall
Log 27 Surviving the Savage Seas

Log 28 The Next Step
Log 29 Welcome to Barbados
Log 30 Atlantic Rally for Cruisers
Log 31 The Man with the Unplan
Log 32 Dali Dolphins
Log 33 Flying Like a Turtle
Log 34 The Foolish Man Built His House on a Pitch Lake
Log 35 Go West Young Man
Log 36 Crossing the Atlantic in a Row Boat
Log 37 The Unsinkable HMS Diamond Rock
Log 38 Catamaran Capsize in 170 mph Winds
Log 39 When Are You Coming Home?

Log 40 Master and Commander of Anegada - Frigate Birds
Log 41 Baths of Virgin Gorda - Batholiths of Central Arabia

Log 42 Free at Last
Log 43 Stalking the Wild Manatee

Log 44 Spreaderman
Log 45 Attack of the Flesh Eating Bees
Log 46 Sharks and Coconuts
Log 47 Stingray Picnic
Log 48 Boo Boo Hill
Log 49 Whale Slayers
Log 50 Noddies (Not Naughty)

 

Log 51 Exumas Land and Sea Park
Log 52 David and Goliath
Log 53 Turquoise Clouds of Paradise

Log 54 Momma Nightjar
Log 55 Maximillian The Great
Log 56 Chiton Kingdom
Log 57 Flying and Holding On
Log 58 Far Horizons
Log 59 Clouds Are a Sailor's Friend
Log 60 Getting Connected
Log 61 Fear
Log 62 Grand Schemes and Other Important Things
Log 63 If Jellyfish Had a Brain
Log 64 Cousins That Don't Kiss
Log 65 Swimming With Sharks
Log 66 Perfect the Way You Are
Log 67 Space Travelers
Log 68 Aliens
Log 69 Monsters of the Mind
Log 70 My Butterfly Collection
Log 71 Somewhere Other Than Here Societies
Log 72 Five-Hundred Pound Spiders
Log 73 Red Sea Sunsets
Log 74 Gibraltar Sunrise
Log 75 Big Sea - Small Ship
Log 76 Just Cruising
Log 77 Castle Mania
Log 78 You Must Know the Sea
Log 79 Flying Like a Goat
Log 80 The Joy of Photography
Log 81 Universal Camouflage
Log 82 My Rainbow Collection
Log 83 Indian Ocean Reward
Log 84 Fiber W
Log 85 Turkish Reflections
Log 86 Mirrors and Mirages
Log 87 Lycean Tombs Rock
Log 88 Rigging Emergency
Log 89 Pamukkale
Log 90 Volcano Land
Log 91 Sniffing the Air
Log 92 Why I Don't Kite Surf
Log 93 Resurrecting Exit Only in Turkey
Log 94 Greased Pole Competition
Log 95 Tsunami Damage
Log 96 Afraid of Living
Log 97 Living on the Edge
Log 98 Borneo Adventure
Log 99 Uligamu Tree Tender with Full Benefits
Log 100 God's Fireworks Display

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