Following the seizure of a US-registered catamaran off the Spanish coast gardaí now believe that they will be able to identify the time and the spot where about 1.525 tonnes of cocaine was loaded from a larger vessel on to a seven-metre inflatable boat off the west Cork coast earlier this week.
Gardaí believe the larger vessel had a rendezvous with the rigid inflatable boat (rib) early on Monday morning in an operation which went wrong for the drug traffickers because of severe sea conditions.
The Garda are confident that they will be able to make a case linking suspects in custody with the discovery of more than €100 million worth of cocaine washed up on the west Cork coast.
They believe the drugs were shipped here on a vessel currently detained in La Coruña in Spain, Lucky Day.
Officers believe that they have secured vital evidence which will enable them to link at least one of the suspects with the drugs, and then link other suspects to him as they set about putting together a case against four men arrested this week.
It is understood that crucial information has been gleaned from satellite communication and navigational equipment and mobile phone records which has allowed gardaí track the path of the rigid inflatable boat used by the drug smugglers to try to collect the cocaine off the Cork coast.
Detectives believe that they will be able to identify the time and place where the boat rendezvoused with a larger vessel, believed by gardaí to be the catamaran Lucky Day, outside Irish territorial waters in the early hours of Monday morning last when 1.5 tonnes of cocaine were loaded on to the seven-metre boat.
Gardaí and Customs officers have been working on the case with their counterparts in the UK and elsewhere.
They believe that the catamaran, which is sailing under a US flag but crewed by two men with Lithuanian passports, left the Caribbean some time in June with its consignment of cocaine.
According to a Garda source, it is suspected that the catamaran was delayed crossing the Atlantic because of bad weather, forcing the gang in west Cork to prolong their stay on the Mizen Peninsula by more than two weeks as they had expected to collect the drugs in mid-June.
Gardaí believe that the gang had grown impatient in west Cork over the delay and they suspect it was that impatience which prompted them to risk linking up with the "mother ship" carrying the drugs on Monday morning despite the weather being very stormy.
A Spanish police spokesman said that they believed that Lucky Day had been acting as the "mother ship" to deliver the drugs to the smaller boat. The vessel is currently being searched by anti-drug squad officers but no cocaine has been found so far.
The two Lithuanians, who are aged 40 and 50, are being held in La Coruña jail pending further inquiries, but to date no request has been received from the Irish authorities for their extradition, the Spanish police spokesman told The Irish Times.
Meanwhile. it emerged at a special sitting of Clonakilty District Court that the Garda can link one of the Englishmen arrested in Schull on Wednesday morning with the man rescued from amid the cargo of cocaine in Dunlough Bay on Monday morning.
Chief Supt Kevin Ludlow told the court while making an application to extend the man's period of detention by 72 hours that the Garda had evidence which linked him "with the prisoner taken from the water surrounded by bales of cocaine".
It is understood the Garda have secured a large amount of CCTV footage from petrol stations and other premises in west Cork which they believe will connect various members of the gang with the man plucked from sea. During the application by gardaí to extend the period of detention of the two English men arrested near Schull on Wednesday, gardaí also gave evidence of how both men were seen acting suspiciously near Dunlough Bay on the morning of the rescue.
