Fellow sailors,
I've resisted making more posts lately, trying to stay out of the fray of blaming and shaming, but I guess it might help to shed a bit more light on a few things that have been mentioned.
As for social media, no idea how that is germane, but here is me, just so everyone knows I'm real and an avid sailor:
[links redacted]
In terms of the house on Little Darby, I washed ashore with no
food and no
water, it took me over 90 minutes of very difficult scrambling and bushwacking to get to the house, and the sun was touching the horizon when I ultimately found it. I was parched, I was in shock, it is tough to describe the situation to anyone who has not been in a similar spot. The house was open, I walked around for 10 minutes calling out Hello, Anyone there? but the caretaker (who lives downstairs) never heard me. From the
deck I saw the
VHF in its
charger and it literally represented life, allowing me to contact the other
boat owner I had been texting on 16 to let him know I was still alive. I have been in touch with the managers of the property (they mailed me the sun hoodie that got left behind) and I do not believe they harbor any ill will to the fact that I entered their house in the dire straights I was in, not even knowing where I was for sure. Their
VHF was my lifeline, plain and simple.
To try to address the actions (or inactions) of the Bahamian authorities, that is still completely baffling to me. The Tourism folks assured me they took this very seriously, they told me that I should be thankful to be alive, and that what mattered that day was getting me safely home. Now, other than one
email that let me know they had detained Nick, I have not heard from anyone in authority from the
Bahamas - no detective, no prosecutor, no nobody. My gut says that they wanted the victim gone, then they did little to no real investigating, but now that I am 3500 miles away, limited by only
phone calls and emails, there really isn't much I can do about that but try to move on and hope they ask the hard questions, whether to me or to Nick.
As for the 'scuffle', it wasn't a fight, no punches were thrown on either side. Nick bum rushed me down the
cockpit stairs, toward the drawer where the knives were, and I blocked him with my body, hands up in the air, at that point truly scared that was where he was headed. I get it, you folks were not there but it lasted literally 5 seconds as he wrestled me to the
cabin sole, and when I backed off trying to reason that we should just wait for the authorities to come and sort everything out, that was when he went to his
cabin and grabbed the gun, cocked it and pointed it at me.
Finally, about filming the situation, and those
events, I did go down and pack my bags as ordered, but I also at the same time grabbed the GoPro to have some
record of what I figured was going to happen - him dumping me at some random island. There was no gun in the picture at that time, and it was not even in my mind that is where things were headed. Keep in mind that by then my
iPhone had already been thrown
overboard (to stop my texting the other
boat owner), and then when he found out I was still texting on my cellular
iPad, that went into the ocean as well. Jammer has seen the text thread and posted his analyis of what he read earlier in the thread. The GoPro did have a yellow floatie on it, so I pray some day it is found, whoever finds it might make a tidy sum selling that frightful footage, but whether it ever is found I cannot predict.
I get it, some are just going to want to believe I contributed to the situation, that I am partly to blame. What can I say to that other than to keep saying I did try to de-escalate, to ask him to just wait for the authorities to show up or to just let us make it to
Georgetown where I would pony up for the ticket change fee. Once the gun was out, I was just begging for my life, a degrading and humiliating experience, and perhaps I should somehow feel 'lucky' that he motored into the cut and made me jump off the boat, shoes and hat in one hand, to swim to shore around 100 yards away, with nothing but my fanny pack that had my passport and wallet.
So, anyone who has questions for me, I will repeat that you can PM me and I will try my best to clarify anything that seems unclear from my account. I tried not to write a lengthy account, to write just the basic facts, but clearly that has just made some folks create assumptions about the
events, about my motives, about my actions and Nick's actions. Again, not really much I can do about that, human nature being what it is.
To you all, thank you again for reading my account and hearing me out, I wish everyone fair winds, calm seas, beautiful sunsets and
dinghy motors that never conk out!
Ben Cahan
Re: Forced at gunpoint to jump off a sailboat in the Exumas
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