0118-greenleaf_proof

3men on the boat: Captain Red, second-mate
Clark, & Timmy McBride. They
traveled with 2 or 3 other vessels. It’s a 51-
foot stone crab fishing vessel, mostly deck.
They didn’t pull traps that day, just waited
10 to 12 miles offshore unseen until 2 to 3
hours before sundown. That’s when they
would run to make the call sign
that they’re approaching to unload the boats
with the last bit of daylight. Since we’re
talking no less than 20 tons of product—
sometimes 30, 40, 50 tons—the boys were
waiting for that telltale stink of burlap and
pot on the sea breeze.
This was the Ten Thousand Islands, a 40 year-old
island operation, passed down from fathers and uncles
into 3 generations of hauling. The bounty would be unloaded
into a totally gutted house, to be stocked back
to front—kitchen, bathrooms, living rooms, wall-towall
completely FULL—and then into the house next
door if necessary.
Making way toward a vessel as it came into sight, this
seemed like an ordinary job they’d done countless
times—until Red handed Timmy the binoculars saying,
“You gotta check this out, man.”
It was a cattle boat. They were all on the top of the ship
behind a rail. Then through the binoculars, Timmy
boat, I thought to myself, Holy shit! Is this really happening?”
Alongside another crabbing boat, they pulled up to
basically ask the captain of the vessel, “What the HELL
are you doing?”
The captain looked down at them from 10 or so feet
above and said, “Well we can’t get all this shit out
below deck with all these damn cattle on the boat!”
These guys made about a million a trip, transporting
cattle from South America to the States—seemingly,
the perfect cover for marijuana piracy. After a couple
weeks, this same ship came back. Here they go again.
They approached it, same things happened. This time,
pigs, chickens, sheep and goats came along with the
Cowboy
boy Won the Wild, Wild War on Drugs
Chokoloskee Island
cattle. Not to mention spider
monkeys. It was not uncommonfor
monkeys to get on these
boats. There would be military
and navy vessels to look out for,
so sometimes these boats would
wait 3 or more days onshore
waiting for a clear coast. And
saw the stern gate open—and the cows being prodded
off the back of the boat. “It was like a bovine waterfall,”
he says, “They just all began falling—splash, splash,
splash, splash! Hooves bangin’ against the hull of the
the monkeys would drop aboard from the trees.
The monkeys loved the shake and the seeds of the
pot, so they would eat them up. Imagine being a
super stoned spider monkey and waking up 40 miles
J23