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Two Quebec men face charges in the Caribbean after a drug-laden yacht in which they had been sailing burst into flames while being escorted by law enforcement.

During the night of Thursday, July 19, French border agents patrolling the waters off of the French Antilles in the Caribbean Sea intercepted a sailboat with a small blue fleur-de-lys emblazoned on its side.

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The sleek, white yacht pitched and rolled on the open sea in what Jean-Damien Moustier, the head of the French government’s Caribbean anti-drug trafficking unit, called difficult conditions.

“There were large waves,” he said. “It was complicated and the coast guard wasn’t able to quickly control the boat.”

Unable to board, agents began escorting the sailboat, called the Livie, to the nearby port of St-Martin.

The ships sailed through the night until, at 10 a.m., the Livie burst into flames. The two Quebecers bobbed nearby in a life raft. Moustier alleges they set the vessel on fire in an attempt to sink it before authorities could seize its cargo.