Word: maracaibo
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Halfway through a routine nine-day crossing of the Atlantic, below a scalding sun on a lazy late afternoon, a deck hand aboard the Venezuelan cargo ship Maracaibo suddenly spotted a ship drifting aimlessly in the hazy distance. Captain Humberto León Dorante steamed toward the mysterious vessel and tried to establish radio contact with it. When he received no response, he slowly circled the ship three times to look for signs of life or danger. Then he dispatched an armed three-man expedition to board it. Shortly thereafter, León radioed Venezuelan navigation headquarters with his findings...
...Several Maracaibo crew members who boarded the 2,383-ton, Cyprus-registered Cloud concluded that it had been abandoned in haste, as if the difference between life and death lay in a few seconds. Shoes, apparently thrown off as the crew jumped into lifeboats, littered the deck. In the mess, food that had been left during an evening meal lay rotting on the tables. The ship's radio was still tuned to the emergency band. Moving deeper into the engine room, the explorers from the Maracaibo got their first clue as to why the Cloud had been abandoned...
...Maracaibo began to tow the Cloud to Turiamo Naval Base, nine Venezuelan infantes, or marines, parachuted onto the deck of the mystery ship. They learned from the engine-room log that the Cloud had picked up its hot cargo in Yugoslavia in March. The last stop, probably only a few hours before the fire, had been Las Palmas in the Canary Islands, 155 miles off the northwest coast of Africa. Venezuelan Defense Ministry officials believe that the Cloud's three British and nine Ghanaian sailors were picked up by a Panamanian liner and taken to Senegal. The Cloud then...
...Falklands took its toll too: the Maracaibo Symphony from Venezuela, a country that was angry at U.S. support of Britain, abruptly withdrew...
...holding back production. Farther down in South America, efforts are now being concentrated offshore, with Exxon and Shell preparing to drill around Tierra Del Fuego, where Charles Darwin once sailed on the H.M.S. Beagle, and the Falkland Islands. A promising area offshore of the heavy oil deposits of Lake Maracaibo is not being tapped because both Venezuela and Colombia claim the region. Politics also hinders Brazil's explorations. The government has invited the oil majors in, but it has still restricted foreign exploration within 155 miles of its borders (including areas lying next to Venezuela, Colombia, Peru and Bolivia...