60-foot sloop 'Dances With Waves', detained off the coast of Ireland last Friday

The 60-foot sloop 'Dances With Waves', detained off the coast of Ireland last Friday with over 1,800kg of cocaine on board, was apparently doomed to arrest from almost the minute it left the Caribbean.Suspicions over 'Dances With Waves' mounted when she was detected in waters off Trinidad & Tobago. Just 17 months ago, the catamaran 'Lucky Day', whose 1,554kg cocaine shipment was seized in Dunlough Bay in west Cork, began her transatlantic journey from precisely these same waters.
As the sloop battled gales and mountainous seas to cross the Atlantic with her cargo of 1,875kg of cocaine, her every movement was watched by the US Drug Enforcement Agency, the Portugal-based Maritime Analysis and Operations Centre; the UK's elite Serious Organised Crime Agency and Ireland's Joint Drugs Taskforce.Experts suggest that the yacht was tracked on radar in the Caribbean by a long range P-3 Orion surveillance aircraft, before being tracked by US satellites and 'black', or virtually undetectable radar, before its position was relayed ashore by Irish aircraft.