EDITORIAL – Remembering the Great Faith

There has lately been a lot of fuss about Cebu being the hotbed of car smuggling in the south. True or not, the fact that cars can easily disappear into the swirling urban maelstrom of men and machines does not make car smuggling that nettlesome to consider.

What is difficult to consider, even to this day, is what happened one Christmas Eve not too many years ago, when a huge cargo ship laden with 200,000 bags of smuggled rice simply vanished into thin air from one of the busiest domestic shipping lanes in the country.

To make matters worse, the ship, ironically named the " Great Faith, " was not at sea when it disappeared. It had already been intercepted by the authorities and was moored at a wharf in Mandaue City under heavy guard.

But here is the story. A different law enforcement unit took over the guarding duties. And then on Christmas Eve, everybody suddenly felt homesick and needed to be home with friends and family for the traditional noche buena feast.

The ship suddenly found itself alone and unguarded. Dutifully, it slipped its moorings and vanished into the night, never to be seen or heard of again despite a supposed massive sea and air search launched after daybreak.

Okay, consider this. Even if the Great Faith had a five-hour headstart, computing from Christmas Eve to sunrise, there is no way a huge cargo ship laden with 200,000 sacks of rice could avoid detection by a " massive " sea and air search in the busy sealanes around Cebu.

The farthest it could go at, say 20 knots, would be the approaches of Leyte in the east and Bohol in the south. There was no way it could make these islands in that span of time. If it had to be discovered, it had to be discovered at sea still off Cebu island.

But no. After three days, the " massive " sea and air search was called off with nothing to show for it. If Cebu has to be notorious for smuggling, let it not be for something chicken feed like cars but for that one great accomplished feat of all time.