Mireille Day

And so, you know, just having a little bit of a safe anchorage was great.

We could see land on the horizon and we could make out enough, it was like a thin grey pencil stroke of land, but there were a couple of thatched huts that we could make out in the distance too.

Anyway, that was all right.

We slept the first night.

And the next morning we had visitors and it was probably five canoes, ten men in each.

who just came in front of the boat.

Now we had the sandbank behind us, these canoes in front.

If we needed to escape, where could we go?

There was no escape at that point.

But we didn't know what they wanted.

They could have been friendly.

They could have been just seeing, you know, if we needed help.

But that isn't how it panned out.

They were quite unfriendly.

We had a barking dog on our boat, which I think kept them at bay.

And this kind of went on for hours.

The female crew members were downstairs.

Jean had told us to go downstairs.

So there was only the other male crew member and the dog and Jean on board.

But it seemed to be hours and hours of this face-off and no progress being made.