MY OWN EXPERIENCE with pirates on this coast came a week or two after I'd arrived, when I left Puerto Madero in desperation on my broken engine. I knew it was stupid, but my friend Julie had come down as crew, and she'd be leaving if I didn't try. We made it 50 miles, going slowly along a beautiful and abandoned coastline, before we saw two pangas coming at us from the Puerto Madero direction.

"Great," I said. "Visitors."

Julie looked nervous. "I'm going below," she said. "If anyone asks, I'm not here."

"Ha," I said. "Can you look around in the cabinets above the chart table and find the two flare pistols, please?"

"Are you kidding?"

"No, I'm not kidding. Please get them quickly. And cartridges."

The pangas came right for us. Julie found the flare guns just in time to slide them to me and disappear again below. I put the pistols on deck, loaded, down low where the guys in the pangas wouldn't see them.

They came up fast, one on each side, 75-horse outboards roaring. They crossed behind my stern, circled back, and throttled down to my speed, which was no speed at all.

"Coca," one of the men shouted, pushing a finger into a nostril, tilting his head back. He had no fish on board, no fishing gear. Just gasoline and cervezas. The man was drunk and possibly on drugs, weaving a bit as he stood braced against the throttle arm of the outboard.

On my other side, the driver of the second panga was making the same gesture, poking his finger into his nose.

"No tengo," I said. "Lo siento." I was trying to sound polite. I glanced down the companionway at Julie, who had one hand to her mouth and was hiding behind the stairs. She looked terrified. I felt the enormity of how stupid I'd been. I know it sounds crazy, but despite my experiences in Puerto Madero, I hadn't even thought about piracy.

"Cerveza," the man on the starboard side said. He made a gesture of drinking. He was wearing a bandanna, his face beat up. I knew without a doubt that if he climbed onto my deck, I was going to shoot him.

I wanted to just toss him a beer, but I didn't have any beer, or cocaine. "No tengo," I said. I tried to gaze ahead, hoping they'd leave us alone.

The guy on my right zoomed off a few hundred feet and circled around to come up fast behind me. He rammed into the stern, which luckily was rounded, so that his bow glanced off. The other driver saw this and circled around to do the same thing. Like sharks bumping.

"Get on the VHF," I told Julie. "Try calling the coast guard."

Julie opened the cabinets and grabbed the mike. She held it up and started gesturing wildly. She had no idea how to use a VHF radio.

The guy on my port side came up close. "Coca!" he yelled. I put my hand on the pistol on that side. He was climbing partway out of his boat to hook an arm on my rail.

I heard the other man behind me, so I turned around to look, and then I realized my back was to the first man, and they were going to get me.

But they didn't take the opportunity. In a high falsetto, pretending to be a woman, the leader sang out to me, "En la noche. I come back for you. Con armas," which meant with guns. Then as quickly as they had arrived, they were gone, and Julie and I motored straight out to sea, sails down and lights off, and hid all night.