Tortuga is GONE--

--and poor Grendel's had an accident!--
(he ran out of ketchup and mustard at the picnic)
--so mayo all.

But never mind Grendel. It's his mom to watch out for anyway. But never mind her either.

Tortuga's gone, and Google did it.

I'm not making this up. Go here
http://maps.google.com/
and zoom in on the north coast of Haiti, just north of Port de Paix.
(...shheeeeessshhh, "Port of Peace", who are they kidding...)
There's no Tortuga.
No more haven for the Brotherhood of the Coast...
(scØrpnØte: In case anyone from, like, Mars is reading this, that means Pirates)
...no more deliciously lawless location to pick up gigs or to spend six months' pay in under a fortnight, one glorious, riotous fortnight...

The Golden Rule of Google was supposed to be:
"First, Do No Harm."
...yeh well so much for THAT.

"Poor Google's had an accident"...? I think NOT. This was intentional. You can tell by going from Map view to Satellite view. It's still there in Satellite view, which means we caught them red-handed, mid-job. They just haven't finished the heinous deed yet. (Orbitting satellites may have a much higher resistance to hein than .GIF images, and you know, that only makes sense. Just because you shake the Etch-A-Sketch doesn't mean-- but wait!)

Or... is it, truly, heinous...

...could it be that, as everyone who needs to know already knows where Tortuga is, there is an unheinous yet inscrutable (or at least thusly far inscruted) reason and motive for hiding it from unschooled landlubbers...? the mind wanders.

After all, it's still "there"... was last I checked... which has been WAY too long...

Everyone, keep your eyes peeled for news on this. Or unpeeled, if they already are. There's no sense switching your eyes between "peeled" and "unpeeled", as doing either can be painful and they actually mean the same dang thing, which fact I find to be unconscionable on several levels.