You will be met with deadly force.
By Tony.
Has anybody ever threatened to shoot you? Well welcome to America!
Having survived the total loss of steering event, we were approaching our destination Norfolk Virginia. Norfolk is one of the most militarised areas in the world and home to Americas biggest naval base. As we motored up the St James River we heard something on the radio about an obstacle and keeping five hundred yards clear. We didn’t take much notice, on the east coast of the US there are numerous often computerised messages from The US coast guard, weather stations etc and they’re often quite hard to hear. I was on the helm, Jane was making tea when in the distance a mile or so behind us I saw something! I called to Jane “come and look at this”. Slowly catching us up was an enormous nuclear submarine. Five minutes later we were hailed on the VHF. “Sailing boat in St James river approaching the Norfolk tunnel , this US naval escort boat 210 ,come in.” I responded and to make a long story short they said words to the effect of “get out of the bloody way”. We slowed and moved further out of the shipping channel.
A few minutes later came “SECUITE” “SECUITE” “SECUITE”, that’s French “ for listen up now”. “There is a US navy submarine in the St James river, all vessel are required to observe a five hundred yard exclusion zone, failure to do so may be met with deadly force.” A heavily armed US gunboat was racing towards us. I turned to Jane and said “I think they are going to shoot us.” For the second time in twenty four hours we said goodbye to each other. Seconds later US navy gunboat 210 was a few yards off our port bow. This is it!
US 210 was a 30 foot high speed rib with three fully manned heavy machine guns and a crew of seven. It was one of four escorting the sub. The escort alone was bigger than most Caribbean countries navy. It had positioned itself between us and the sub which was now passing us about 500 yards away.
The reality of our encounter with US210 could not have been further from the impression given by the scary computer lady and her threat to shoot us.
US210 was now along side five yards off our bow. My strategy in such situations is well summarise in the words “You talk to then Jane”. She did and was greeted by the captain of the gun boat with the words “How are you today Ma’am”. Then the words “We are here just for your protection whilst the sub passes by”. How reassuring that they didn’t actually intend to shoot us. They asked “where are you folks from?” They obvious don’t do flags of other countries in US navy training. That could be a real problem if you think about it. Jane in very best Mary Poplins accent answered “We are English”. Like a pod of friendly dolphins they were with us for a few minutes by which time Jane had started a conversation which culminated in asking then if she could take some photos. To my surprise he said “no problem Ma’am” and they all proceeded to pose. A few minutes more and she would have had their mothers recipe for crab cakes. The submarine passed and they shot off.
We survived to sail another day!!