The wooden boat began to fill with water. The waves were hitting us from all angles and the engine stopped working. 
The food, the drinking water, our utensils and mini-cooler, everything that wasn’t tied down, went quickly awash.
The waves were attacking fiercely, and the wooden boards seemed to want to burst from its seams into pieces.
Everyone on board was scared and I gave the order to the mates to take their shirts, shorts, underwear, whatever they had on and patch it between the boards. The bails of cocaine were floating on board, swaying back and forth as we tried desperately to fend the onslaught of water.
The mechanic gave up fixing the engine.
“Mr. Tony, we’re going to have to throw the merchandise into the water, otherwise, we’re going to die,” one of the mates said.
“If you do that, you better follow it because that’s who’s going to die when we get back to Colombia…the merchandise stays! Save whatever you can and start getting the fucken’ water out”.
I had to tell him the truth—give him a dose of reality. There was no way in hell the “capos” were going to accept, much less believe, the story about their “kilos” disappearing in the middle of the ocean.
The waves were so huge that I thought it would swallow us whole, snatching us from earth.
Once again the boat kept moving along with the water current, being forced on top of the wave crest like a roller coaster and coming down sideways at high speed.
The storm finally passed after almost an hour and everything became calm again.
Our poor little boat looked like a filthy swimming pool full of debris with bails of cocaine floating everywhere, in the aftermath.
We looked at each other, our facial expression full of agony and distress, our bodies tired from the brutal battle. No one spoke a word for a moment, trying to regain consciousness from the ordeal that stifled us, dead on our spot.
Even though we made it out alive, the problem was making it back to Colombia without a functioning engine.
After a few hours we got every inch of water out of the boat. Undeterred, and mentally and spiritually un-weakened, the mechanic began to work on the engine.
He took some parts off the carburetor to let it dry under the sun that now covered us like a warm blanket.
Around 4:00 p.m., the engine started and the mood lifted.
We proceeded to meet the ship that would take the cargo into the U.S., hoping that it was still waiting for us after we drifted more than 60 miles off course.
TONY ROCA THE AUTHOR 