It was through the Crazy Mike’s Travel Agency that I met Tomas and Tim. These guys were two divorced X-Doctor businessmen from Ohio and had moved to Hawaii and started a chemical company in Honolulu. They were fairly rich, owning a 40 foot Allburn Catch and always wide open for new adventures.
One bright morning while we were conducting a tour with several very nice looking ladies and a couple of kids from the east coast we were snorkeling in a beautiful bay along the Maui coast. While diving among the reefs a sailboat entered the bay and set anchor a little ways from us. The guys aboard waved to us and we thought we’d swim over and check out this really nice boat. They invited us aboard and soon were goggling over our female clients and the day wore on. By afternoon they asked us if we would like to sail back to Lahaina with them and this was fine with us and our guests. We would return later for the car and gear and so we sailed off.
This was the beginning of a long and most interesting relationship with these boat owners. In time I would become a crew member aboard their boat “The Serendipity” and partake in several inner isled yacht races. I would also end up living as caretaker aboard their Catch in the Wikakee yacht harbor and as time went on they would invite me on a future world wide cruise that they were planning.
Then one day while I was back working on Maui I received a phone call from Tomas letting me know that they were leaving in a month and if I still wanted to go I had to meet them in a place called Hanalei Bay on the Island of Kauai. This bay was the very place that the film South Pacific was filmed (Lumahai Beach) and Hanalei was made famous in the Peter, Paul and Mary song Puff The Magic Dragon. I didn’t fully grasp the significance of this absolutely beautiful place until I was once living there in the bay aboard the serendipity.
I have at least 30 stories to tell on my adventures just getting to that bay in paradise but this is suppose to be a story, not a novel. I sold my share in the travel agency, sold my motorcycle (yes, blind people ride motorcycles too) gave up my house on the beach, gave away my art work, my furniture and said goodbye to all my friends and flew back to Honolulu. There I conducted some final business and then flew to Kauai and hitch hiked across the island to Hanalei Bay. It’s true, one tends to meet some interesting people while traveling and so it has been for me but the first ride I got was from a middle aged man out of New York City. He was an opera singer working on Broadway in some musical and wanted to see where South Pacific was filmed. As usual, I showed up at the destination with a very strange guest and we found the life boat tied to a small dock and paddled out to the only boat in the bay The Serendipity.
Now this Hanalei Bay area was not yet developed as a major hotel site as of yet and it was one of the most beautiful places I’d ever seen. From the boat you could look up at the lush green mountains and after a good rain you could sometimes count 50 waterfalls, ten rainbows and a blue sky all at once. We were welcomed by Tomas, Tim and three other of their hand picked crew members, a gruff archeology teacher named Patrusha, a geographical scientist named Mrs. Rockface and Toms fiancé Carolyn. Later I would learn that these two new additions to the crew had been invited along for a special reason which I’ll get to later.
My hitch hiker, Vokolo Painstine was the hit of the week, for he really was an opera singer and both Tom and Tim, being a little older loved this type of music and it was a crazy time. Imagine this, all of us sitting there in the middle of this incredible bay and this operatic singer jumping and climbing all over the boat, bellowing out these rumbling and quivering shrills all seemed a little odd to me at the time, but I accepted it as experience. This episode would go far in securing my reputation in always finding strange and entertaining guests and this became a part of my services.
Here in Hanalei we spent a month of serious training in sailing, outfitting and stocking the boat while enjoying the peace and quiet of this lovely place. I also ventured forth and made several acquaintances with missionaries, escaped convicts, famous poets, run away families, secret communes and more but those are chapters for my novel.
Then one Sunday afternoon, we set sail from a tiny bay called Nawiliwili. I remember this moment with great clarity. For it was a stormy rainy afternoon and just as we pushed off from the dock and opened sail, a great brilliant rainbow appeared and we sailed right through this heavenly ark of color and the real adventure then began.
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I cannot tell all here but this experience became a serious part of the process of my maturing and without a doubt, I learned a lot about myself and about the power of nature. None of us had ever been out of sight of land while sailing but now we disappeared into the worlds single largest ocean. The Pacific Ocean is huge. From the west coast of North America, one can travel outward for 9,000 miles across the water without seeing land until one reaches Asia. Alternatively, one can sail from the North Pole to the South Pole for 8,000 miles and that also would be in the Pacific Ocean. The sheer size of the Pacific Ocean is hard to grasp for it covers almost one-third of the world's surface and contains almost one-half of its water; it is wide and deep enough for all the continents to be immersed under its waves and there we went!
Stormy weather soon honed our skills at sailing and the vastness of sky and water brought about a new type of team work among us six crew members. Tomas explained his plan to test our navigation skills by trying to find a tiny atoll named Palmyra Island about 1000 miles southeast of Hawaii. Remember now, at that time there was no such thing as GPS or LORAN and we were completely dependent upon Tom and Tim’s ability to find just the right spot? On top of all this we were totally without means of communications; no two-way radio or anything else that might be used to contact someone, no less help.
One of my first out to sea experiences came when a monster storm hit us. Now I love large waves and its wonderful to watch them from the shore, but hey, when your 700 miles from land and you got 40 foot walls of water rolling at you from all directions and there are 50 foot trenches between each roller, now that ain’t fun! The storm that hit us lasted for two days and once the winds died down to about 50 miles an hour we tried taking a fix. Now a fix is an attempt to locate ones self on the face of the ocean by using trigonometry by measuring the distance of the sun from the horizon and recording seconds and minutes and all that good stuff. However, when there ain’t no sun because of dark gloomy skies and there is no horizon to see because of 40 foot waves, well now, you got a real problem. This would not have been to bad in and of itself but we so happened to be in an area known for shallow submerged reefs! Also, it was said that the French had made an atomic dump in this reef area and we were very near to it. But without a fix, you couldn’t tell where you were nor could you tell where the reefs were waiting for your boat?
Let me tell you something here, when the sun goes down at night in the ocean, don’t think that the 40 foot waves also lay down and go to sleep, no way, they just keep rolling on. Each watch was for four hours and two people were on deck at all times. One kept the boat on a fixed coarse by compass and the other stood at the bow listening and watching for crashing waves, smoking waters which indicated reefs and listening to the sound of the ocean. For you might not be able to see a reef but you certainly could hear it a few hundred feet before you ran into it. Now one dark and stormy night I stood watch on the bow in mid night terror. Suddenly I had a very strong feeling, a feeling that I had never experienced. I walked back to Tom who was handling the boat at that time, for it was extremely dangerous waters and told him. “Hey Tom, just letting you know that everything is going to be just fine, don’t worry, we're going to be ok!”
Tom immediately asked me, “Sure Mike, who told you this?”
I didn’t know what to say about this over whelming feeling that had so strongly come to me and so said, “God told me!”
“Get the hell back up on the bow and listen, keep watching and stop talking to strangers,” Tom shouted to me.
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Morning came and we were still ok, by afternoon Tom got a fix and our island was suppose to be right near but we couldn’t see anything. All day we looked, searched and took fixes. Now this was extremely important, for their navigation skills had to be right on or we’d never find our way across that vast ocean so we searched all day and into the night for our island. Palmyra island’s coordinates are 5 degrees, 52 minutes North, 162 degrees, 6 minutes West, placing it in near the very center of the Pacific ocean and there we were but where the heck was our island? Palmyra is geographically perhaps one of the remotest places on earth and one of the last few truly uninhabited islands and we had to start our lessons with this one? That night, I got to admit, strange things began to happen, we saw lights that shouldn’t exist, almost like someone trying to contact us and a few other odd phenomena with noises and such. It was really a stressful night and we decided to just drift instead of sailing blind and by the late watch everyone was exhausted and sprawled out on the deck asleep.
At the crack of dawn a fish saved our lives. I always had fishing lines running off the back of the boat and my ears were attuned to the snap of the lines whenever a fish struck. Suddenly I was awakened by a snap of line and got up to check it out. Oh my gosh I cried out, we were near grounding on a reef near to the island! Huge rollers were lifting our boat and sweeping us right into the surf breaking on a reef, like right there! Everyone came alive and immediately panicked. Just as a roller began to carry us into the surf, I could actually see bottom a few feet below, Tom managed to turn the boat into the rolling wave and only by a miracle did an off shore breeze catch our flopping sail and pull us out of the surf. This was certainly a close call and later on Tom told me that it was perfectly ok from now on to talk to strangers, and to also listen to snapping fish line!
Note: (Found this out later) tale of the discovery of Palmyra is one of a psychic nature in that Captain Fanning, alone in his cabin at night, was disturbed from sleep three times by such a weird premonition of danger (whether through the sixth sense that has kept many a seafaring man alive or something that can be directly attributed to Palmyra itself) that he finally went out onto the deck and shouted for the helmsman to heave to in the darkness. Dawn the next day revealed a dangerous reef lying dead ahead of the Betsy that would have ripped the entire bottom of the ship out and sent her to the bottom. As it turned out, this was the northern edge of the coral reef that surrounds Palmyra Island (Exactly where we were).
This near fatal shipwreck really brought the reality of this journey home to us. For we could have so easily crashed onto any one of the many island reefs last night, we were inches away from death and we were extremely thankful for our awakening by that fish, maybe? However, this incident would cause further anxiety among us as we read more about the islands strange history.
The effort to attain a safe moorage inside the islands only notched inlet was really something else. For massive pillars of coral rose up hundreds of feet from the bottom and we had to navigate between them. We ended up hitting several and got stuck on more. To free the boat off the pillars of coral we would all rock the boat, run to the back and then to the front while Tom revved the tiny inboard motor and we would break free. This was very bad for our fiberglass hull and with the tide change we were caught among the reefs but finally passed deep within the inlet near to the main island. Once we found an open area my job was to dive overboard and check out the damage to the hull. Now I’ve dove in tropical waters in Hawaii before, but this single experience of real tropical snorkeling was beyond all that I had known. As soon as I hit the water, an explosion of colors like never before burst into my sight. Brilliant blues, purples, greens, yellows, reds, lavenders, oranges and bright golds of every shade greeted me. Thousands of colorful shaped objects rested, hung and perched everywhere around me, it seemed like a miniature city on a distant planet, oh wow is my memory at this moment.
Tropical fish of every shape and size swam up to me to take a look and I was so awed at this vision that the crew became a little frightened that I did not immediately come up reporting. But soon I came up gasping in excitement for this majesty and wonder and began telling everyone to get into the water. But practical Tom told me to get my rear end under the boat and look for damage. Ok, so I got a little carried away with this underwater rapture but finally went looking for our hull troubles. Yes, The hull had a few deep gouges and some dents where we had been stuck but nothing really bad as far as a blind man can tell.
My awe suddenly ended when several large shadows passed very near to me, yes, they were sharks! You think I stayed down there any longer, no way, in an instant I swam around the opposite side staying close to the hull but there they were still. As soon as they passed, more long shadows came a searching for good old Mikie, hey no way, in a swift kick of the fins I leaped up the ladder and bravely told my story! This was my first experience with seeing sharks so close and it took the fun out of further swims for all of us.
Note: (Found this out later) The coral reef and lagoons at Palmyra are also a breeding ground for gray and blacktip reef sharks whose aggressiveness is well known throughout the Pacific and has been noted by every person who has ever ventured to the island, some with fatal consequences. Many visitors to the island found that swimming and even wading in the island’s lagoons was completely out of the question because of the large shark population and their aggressive nature. (WGR). And although an abundance of fish live on the reefs and in the lagoons, many of them are inedible and poisonous because of Ciguatera, a type of algae that grows on coral and which the fish contain in their flesh. Tom our doctor and Tim our chemist told us this when I wanted to spear some of the fish.
The exploration of Palmyra Island became one of those experiences fit for a full novel, thus this story is limited in the full telling of this part of my adventure. Well now, another surprise soon presented itself when Tomas and Timothy began to reveal why they had made this island their target for more than practicing their navigation skills. Now read the following account…
In 1816, the Esperanza, a Spanish pirate ship loaded with gold and silver plunder from the Inca temples in Peru, came under attack from another vessel and a fierce battle ensued. Several crew members who managed to survive the fight sailed off with the treasure only to wreck on a nearby reef. As the ship was sinking, they managed to transfer the treasure to an island located beyond the reef whose name was Palmyra. Stranded there for a year, they supposedly buried the Inca gold under a tree on Palmyra and then sailed off in rafts they had built. One raft was later rescued by an American whaling ship with only a single survivor left onboard who soon succumbed from exposure and pneumonia. The other raft was never heard from again.
After the Serendipity was secured safe in its cozy anchorage Tom set us down and over a fast lunch he began his story. “My father was stationed here during the war as a engineer. His job was to clear and prepare the island for military planes flying out of Hawaii headed east to the Pacific war zone. He was here for over 2 years and built the air strip and pretty well ran the place. My father had read everything there was to read about all the islands and found that the Spanish treasure story was the one thing that kept him from going mad with boredom. He gave full attention to finding it and with orders to protect the island from Japanese shelling he had his men dig tunnels and bunkers and trenches. These works were done with the idea of possibly locating the treasure but no one knew his intent. It wasn’t until the Navy began using a few of the small isles for bombing practice near the island that he made his first discovery.”
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By now I was seriously intrigued with this tale and Tom continued, “After one good bombing run, it was reported that several bombs had not gone off and he was told to go find them and investigate why? It was his responsibility and would not take anyone else with him, not wanting to endanger their lives so went on his own in a small boat to get across the shark infested waters. After several hours of probing he found the unexploded bomb but with it he also noticed that it was stuck deep into what seemed a collection of odd shaped pieces of coral. He carefully dug around the live bomb and there he found what must have been the old Spanish treasure. The only trouble was that it was guarded now by this very large unexploded bomb!”
With this Tom pulled a chain from around his neck and showed us a silver colored amulet about the size of a good walnut. I got to hold it and there were several obvious jewels and numerous shiny stones inset into odd patterns and it sure looked like something from out of the past. He said that this had been given to him by his father and it was only one of the several pieces he had brought home with him. The tale went that after discovering that the treasure was real and buried on the bombing target a whole new plot had to now be devised. Apparently over the years from when the treasure was originally buried many storms had torn away the trees leaving the coral island bare, making it a perfect target for a future bomb site and thus it had remained unexplored. The scraping of bombs and bullets from the Navy practice runs must have torn open the treasures hiding place and he didn’t know what to do.
Tim had now opened up a drawn map and laid it on the table for us to look at while Tom went on, “If he allowed the practice runs to continue using that isle, surely the treasure would be blasted to smithereens. So he had his men build a few upright targets onto one of the other isles and sent word for the Navy and Marine planes to hit that one instead. In the meanwhile he had to disarm the bomb or at least secure it. If he disarmed it, then the isle would be open for visit and so gave orders for no one to touch that isle until a bomb expert came out and disarmed it. Meanwhile he covered the bomb and the exposed treasure. No one knew of his find until he returned home with the eventual plans to return. But sadly my father died never able to retrieve what he thought to be the treasure.”
We all sat quiet while Tom put the finishing touches to the big tale an I asked, “You mean that we have come here to try and find that treasure?” Tom looked over at Tim and let his eyes nod across the faces of the ladies and said, “Yes, this is our main intent. We’re pretty sure we can find it and if we do, you’ll get a cut of whatever we find.” “You mean we’re not going to go on any further, this is it for our worldwide trip,” I inquired with some hesitation. Tom padded me on the shoulder and said, “Listen here Mike, if we do find anything then you’ll be able to buy your own boat, hire a crew and sail anywhere you would so like, how's that sound, Mr. Treasure Hunter?” At this I first thought that hey, I’ve been kidnapped and am soon to become a slave but answered, “This is all beyond my comprehension and why did you pick me to come along, I’m sure there were more qualified people to bring along?”
Tim spoke up at this moment and just said, “You were the only one that loved crazy adventures and when we met you on Maui and you had that Crazy Travel Agency, we wanted to meet someone as crazy as us, and so now, we’re all sitting here a 1000 miles from nowhere and there is a Spanish treasure just a little ways from us.” “Dang, I knew that the Crazy Travel Agency would eventually get me into trouble,” I proclaimed loudly and everyone burst into laughter, except for me. Then it dawned on me, the two rather odd lady members of our crew were both affiliated with archeology and geology, which might assist in finding this so called treasure. This explained them being part of the crew, while so ignorant of sailing and deathly afraid of the sea.
This was incredible, from a beach bum surfer Dude messing around with a silly Travel Agency on Maui to a sailing venture into the Pacific and now a treasure hunt, wow, that was all too much for me to grasp. But instantly I stood up, looked at each of my new partners in treasure hunting and dove overboard and regardless of sharks swam for shore!
The next few days were filled with getting orientated with the island an searching out all its past. The island measures approximately a mile and a half in length by a half mile wide. Local fauna consists of mosquitoes and other insects, lizards, land and coconut crabs, a huge bird population, palm and coconut trees and mangrove bushes. The interior is thick jungle. It sits six degrees above the equator and consists of about fifty islets covered with dense vegetation, coconut trees, and balsa-like trees up to 30 meters tall. Palmyra became a base of operations for air attacks against Japan from 1942 to 1945. As a result, military relics can be found in abundance there such as old gun emplacements, ammunition and fuel dumps, abandoned war equipment, machine-gun bunkers, underground tunnels and buildings, as well as what is left of the old landing strip, lending a timeless and ghostly feeling to the place. As far as we knew, the last people that visited this place were scientists who set up testing antennas in the early 50’s to test the fallout when America and French A-Bombs were set off in the Pacific.
Those strange lights and unexplained noises of that frightening night were still in my mind and I looked for anything that might have caused strange lights to blink or show but found nothing. We were made weary and took all precautions when finding scattered mortar shells and unfired machine gun bullets, who knew what might blow up?
Over the next few days Tom and Tim would paddle to the surrounding isles which seemed to match Toms fathers description and searched there. The other four of us were to set up a good camp, collect coconuts and search out the island for anything eatable and to keep an eye out for strange things. I will say that there always persisted an odd underlying feeling and no one would wonder off on their own and never would we crawl into any of the many tunnels and we chose not to sleep on the island.
Each night we would gather aboard and report our findings and on the third day Tim opened a gunny sack and pulled out at least ten chunks of coral. He lifted them up to show that there were objects and things encrusted into the coral. Tom took a tiny hammer and began cleaning away the coral. Within a few minutes some kind of a blue stone broke loose and then pieces of dark wood, followed up with small gold coins. I couldn’t believe it, this was treasure!
“You mean you found it,” I blurted out excitedly. “Yep, and there’s a lot yet to be found, Tom answered in a most satisfied manner. Tim held up a good sized chunk and while examining it said, “This stuff is packed into the bomb pit, just waiting for us to dig it out.” Then Tim told us that all of our efforts would now be concentrated on retrieving the rest. “Hey, what about the bomb,” I interrupted. “No big deal,” Tom replied, “I think that after 20 years its got to be dead by now.” Tim went on, “The girls will set up a working area on the island and we’ll bring the coral chunks over and they’ll begin picking out the treasure,” and we all agreed to start first thing in the morning.
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Our work station was set up in an old concrete building nearest to the offshore islet. Around noon Tom paddled back to the island and we unloaded several gunny sacks full of coral. I then went back with him and for the first time found myself staring down into a pit where Tim stood digging. But right in the center was perched this very large 500 pound bomb. They had dug around it as they dug down and they didn’t seem to be worried about it exploding, after all it was dead…RIGHT!
I was soon using a large crow bar to pry loose chunks of coral out of the wall and fill up waiting gunny sacks. We worked all day and nearly into the late evening when the winds began to pick up and we had to get back to the island before it got to bad. That night the winds really started to blow and the waves started crashing into the little inlet we were anchored in. This was a major worry because a heavy surge could easily smash the Serendipity into the coral bluffs. Tom thought it best to collect the coral chunks we already had at the station and get them on board in case we had to pull out and this was done just in time for dark was soon to be.
Now once again there arose strange noises from the island, Tom said it was the wind howling through the piles of military junk, but all together we weren’t to sure. The storm increased to the point that Tom decided that we had to get out of the little inlet and even though this was extremely dangerous, it had to be done. A large light was rigged on the mast to shine down into the churning waters but things got bad when one of our anchors got lodged into some coral about 30 feet away. Of course good old Michael had to earn his keep and so with the overhead light shining down into the water I slipped overboard and followed the anchor rope.
Now if you ever thought swimming in shark infested waters during the day when one could see might be frightening, well my dear reader, try near pitch black depths with unseen things bumping you. I held onto that anchor rope for dear life, it was my only protection and in a few moments I came to where the anchor was fowled into the coral. I pulled, not wanting to put my hands onto the reef, for there is poisonous coral and lots of ugly eels that love to bite. I had no more breath and so had to ascend for some air. The light from the boat blinded me worse but dove back down but now I was really blind until I found the rope and got hold of the anchor and put my fins against the reef and pushed back. It broke loose and fell onto my foot. I pulled the rope to alert those aboard to pull it in and I went with it. I will say that the sea at night is no place for a blind man to be, no way and never again, not even for treasure! If I die before my time, you’ll know that those lost years were left behind on that coral reef that very night!
The winds increased and it looked like it was going to be a fairly strong blow. Tom nervously started the little inboard engine and began to work the Serendipity towards the outer reef. There was no escaping collisions with those huge rising pillars and several times we found ourselves fixed solid but with our on board jumping antics and running to and fro we managed to break loose. After several hours of cautious struggles we were in deep waters off the island. Tom took the boat round to where the little ilet of treasure was but huge waves were now rolling over the isles and pounding the beach up as far as our work station. This storm was no ordinary storm and once again great waves began to lift us and drop us and this was no time to be near an island surrounded by sunken reefs. As we moved through the lightening flashes to the east we looked back at the strange and stormy Island of Palmyra and once again saw several strange lights flickering. Then a bolt of lightening hit near to the island and there was some kind of a thud and suddenly a huge boom! We saw a great flash blast outwards and off to the side where the treasure isle had been, there was flung a mass of coral and debris into the wind and I yelled, “Holy molly, So you said the bomb was dead huh, well it is dead now for sure!”
I heard Tom cry out, “Oh no, please no, I hope that was not our bomb?” “Well if it was, there ain’t gonna be an isle left, no less a treasure,” Tim sadly mumbled. The two lady professors sat down in shock and cried out something about their work being destroyed but their tears were soon lost in the heavy on coming surges.
The storm blew us around for three days and at one point we had to lock ourselves down into the boat to keep from being washed over board. This was a near death experience; actually like being locked into a coffin in utter blackness with hell pounding all around us. After 20 hours of being bruised and knowing that at any moment the hull was going to be crushed in by one of the bashing waves I finally had enough. I opened the hatch at the protest of everyone but said that I would make sure my safety line was attached and crawled on deck. It was dawn alright, but nearly every gunny sack we had secured to the cleats around the deck were gone! I managed to claim one or two sacks that were jammed into the fowled nets and tossed them down into the galley. Tim finally crawled up and saw the loss and cried out in what seemed to be a great pain!
After the winds had died down everyone came on deck to assess the damage. First we saw that our inflatable life raft which had been strapped on the top of the cabin was no longer there, oh wow, this was against the law I thought. Then the two large canvas gas tanks that had to weigh about 300 pounds each and had been lashed down tight were gone! Every gunny sack except for two others found hanging by my fish line on the port side of the boat was missing. This meant that our treasure had been redeemed back to the sea except for the pieces stored down below.
Once Tom was able to take a fix we found that we had been blown half way back to Hawaii. Both the professors Patrusha and Rockface had serious coral infections, while my foot was now swollen from coral poisoning; these combined circumstances with a food supply that didn’t exist caused Tom and Tim to reconsider direction and so headed back to Hawaii to re-supply and try again.
The sail trip back took 21 days and during this time we went without food, except for one episode of stealing bait off of long drifter lines and some famous toilet paper soup I made with carrot juice. Even though everyone was rather bummed out about the loss and the food supply this long sail back became one of my greatest moments of self realization. I for some reason felt my life changing during this vast stretch of solitude. I volunteer to sail two watches and absolutely loved handling the ship through and over high rolling seas.
I especially remember one bright blue day; from morning to night there came at us an unbroken sequence of near perfect waves about 15 feet high being constant, as though being pushed out of a machine and I steered the Serendipity down into the troughs and up their faces and then over the backs of each on coming wave and this went on and on and never did we get hit broadside.
Tom and Tim saw my willingness to learn and began to trust me with some authority and later hired me as the boats full time caretaker.
Upon our entry back into Nawiliwili Bay we discovered that our craft had been reported missing and it was assumed that we had been lost at sea in those hurricanes. This was on the news and we became celebrities. Ok now, for my share of the treasure, only got a few odd pieces of engraved jade images with three gold coins stamped with some Spanish Kings face thereon.
These were eventually traded for a Chinese Junk which was then traded for a piece of land on Maui and this was sold for near nothing in a time of desperation and funds were spent on more adventures.
Epilogue: The story about Palmyra continues on. In 1974, the grisly double murder of a sailing couple that became the subject of And the Sea Will Tell took place on Palmyra. The evidence at the subsequent trial for murder showed that Mac and Muff Graham of San Diego, who had ventured to Palmyra for an extended stay of up to a year, hoping to find a lost Spanish treasure were probably killed for their expensive sailboat, the Sea Wind and the food stores it contained by an ex-convict who had also taken up residence on the island and had been searching for the priceless Inca artifacts of gold and silver, part of the pirate plunder of the Esperanza, which was reported to have been buried there under a tree.
By Michael M. Tickenoff ©
insightart@juno.net
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