Finding a Viper on Anchor Watch
Finding adventure is one reason people go cruising; it’s the surprises that keep it all interesting. James Lane and Dena Hankins had an adventurous morning when they found a five-foot viper had spent the night curled around the bowsprit of their Baba 30 Cetacea while anchored in Puerto Real, Boricua, Puerto Rico. One good rule for sailing is “one hand for you and one hand for the boat,” but this viper looked quite secure with no hands at all. Most cruising wildlife encounters emerge from the depths rather than land or air, but occasionally unusual creatures invite themselves aboard.
In the recent RORC Round Britain and Ireland Race, the crew of the British Army Sailing Association’s Sun Fast 3600 Fujitsu British Soldier was 70 miles off Great Britain when an exhausted barn owl thought that the boat looked like a great place for a rest. After a couple of attempts, it finally landed aboard, and the crew was able to provide it with food, water and rest. They called animal rescue ashore, who were able to send out a rescue boat to bring the barn owl back to land.
More common than these offshore wildlife encounters are the wildlife encounters ashore at places like Squid Roe in Cabo — but those are different stories.
James and Dena were eventually able to encourage the viper to go back where it came from. With the help of a boat hook, they were able to help it unravel itself and swim off while they stood watch until it was well out of sight. James noted it was actually a pretty good swimmer. It was one of the more unusual encounters of their more than 20 years of cruising.
Wow! How unusual this is.
It certainly doesn’t look like a viper to me. I think vipers are venomous. The AI Claude/Sonnetthinks its a “diamond-backed watersnake (Nerodia rhombifer) — a heavy-bodied, nonvenomous natricine snake native to the central/south-central US (Texas, Oklahoma, and neighboring states, west into parts of the Southwest). A few things point that way:
– The dark brown blotches connected by lighter reticulation form the net-like, chain-diamond pattern that gives the species its name — visible along the coils here.
– Thick body and dull olive/tan-brown base color are typical of this species.
– Behaviorally, it’s a classic match: these snakes are notorious for basking on docks, pilings, mooring lines, and boat rails right over the water, exactly like this one draped on the bowsprit.
When I gave the location it changed its opinion: “That location changes my answer. Puerto Real is a barrio of Cabo Rojo, right next to Mayagüez — and Mayagüez is the specific spot where an invasive population of boa constrictors (Boa constrictor, likely the Central American subspecies B. c. imperator) has been established since accidental releases in the early 1990s. That population has since spread along the southwest coast, so a boa turning up coiled on a boat rail in Puerto Real fits the documented range well. The dark, rounded saddle-blotches on a tan-gray body in your photo match boa constrictor patterning better than I initially gave credit for — I’d read the markings as a US watersnake chain pattern, but they read just as well as boa constrictor saddles once you factor in where this was taken.””
Wow! Thanks for sharing that.
My lord, when will the movie “Snakes on a Sailboat” come out? The sequel to “Snakes on a Plane”.
Tag line: “Nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide”
Looks like a boa.