

The best birders see things most people miss.

They spend hours watching and waiting, anticipating that magic moment when they glimpse something that all too often is there -- and then gone.

So after Jeff Gilligan, 61, of Portland, spent more than 30 minutes on March 10 staring through a high-powered scope on a cruise ship off Costa Rica at something red and brown and waving, he knew what he was seeing: a small, powerless fishing vessel, adrift on the Pacific Ocean, some 130 miles offshore.

Along with fellow birders Judy Meredith of Bend and Jim Dowdall of Dublin, Ireland, he could see the boat's fishing nets were out of the water and a man was waving what appeared to be a red flag.

"Could this be anything other than a boat in distress?" he wondered.

Why was a 26-foot boat floating aimlessly so far from its Panama waters? Did the captain of their cruise ship, the

, see the vessel and the man's signal of distress?

In the end, it would take the photographs Gilligan snapped, Meredith's patient persistence and the investigative efforts of an American ex-pat blogger in Panama to find some answers to those questions.

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The good news was the boat was not sinking.

But Gilligan, Meredith and Dowdall sensed urgency in the waving man so they told two uniformed crewmembers what they saw: first, a Future Cruise Sales Manager, and later, a Junior Officer.

Something needed to be done, Gilligan said. Soon.

For nearly an hour, as the ship headed north toward

, the little fiberglass "

" floated starboard and the man kept up his waving.

"With a naked eye, you could barely see this little boat," Gilligan said. But with 30-power binoculars, "you could almost see facial expressions and it was clear that it was a person on a boat."

Gilligan helped the sales manager use the scope. The man agreed. It looked like trouble. He radioed the bridge and passed along the details.

"We kept thinking maybe they saw from the bridge what we described and they contacted the boat by radio or Panamanian Coast Guard and somebody else was en route to rescue them," Gilligan said.

After all, maritime law calls for the master of a ship to render aid when spotting another vessel in distress.

But just in case, Meredith returned to her cabin and noted the ship's GPS coordinates, which broadcast regularly on an on-board television channel: 06° 12' 25" N, 083° 29' 08" W.

Then she tapped out an email to the U.S. Coast Guard, explaining what they'd seen and where: "We have no doubt whatsoever that we saw a man appearing to be in distress and want to be sure that someone who is able to communicate such information knows about it.

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There was no reply. The cruise ship carried on. The small boat eventually disappeared in the distance. The trio continued their birding amid crowds of high-spirited passengers who played bingo and drank late into the night.

But they kept wondering about what they'd seen and when their uneasy journey ended as the Star Princess arrived in San Francisco on March 19, the friends scoured the Internet for news of a stranded vessel in the waters off Central America.

Several days later, Gilligan found a BBC report on a rescue off the Galapagos Islands, 500 miles from where he'd seen the fishing boat.

An 18-year-old fisherman, Adrian "Santi" Vasquez, lost at sea with two friends since Feb. 23, was the lone survivor.

Gilligan was horrified: He recognized the man he’d seen waving.

"Two people died of thirst and another drifted for two more weeks? It's just terrible," he said.

He tried to reach reporters from the BBC, CNN, and USA Today. Meredith contacted the Panamanian Embassy in Washington.

Dead ends, all.

"I was ready to drop it; Judy was not willing to let it go," Gilligan said.

Meredith reached out to Don Winner, a retired Air Force intelligence analyst who writes a news blog from his home in Panama. He was skeptical of her story, at first.

"The route she described is not the usual route cruise ships take," Winner said.

But using the coordinates she provided and records of the ship's path, it seemed possible that she'd seen the Fifty Cents hours before 24-year-old fisherman Oropeces Betancourt died of dehydration. Sixteen-year-old Fernando Osario died five days later.

Winner

and posted it on his blog,

. Vasquez said he remembered a big white ship that passed on the horizon.

"For a minute it looked like they were going to turn to come for us," Winner translated, " but then they just went on their way."

Meredith contacted Princess Cruise Line, which responded by saying it was conducting an internal investigation, checking the ship's logs of

on the day in question. There was reportedly an entry about contacting a fishing boat and deviating to the west to avoid its nets. The fishermen "had supposedly 'signaled their thanks' for having avoided the nets," Winner wrote.

The Fifty Cents, an open vessel with no cabin, no galley and no head, also had no radio.

On Tuesday, a spokeswoman for the cruise line declined to discuss particulars of the case.

"We're aware of the allegations that Star Princess supposedly passed by a boat in distress that was carrying three Panamanian fishermen on March 10, 2012," Karen Candy, manager of medial relations, said in an email. "At this time we cannot verify the facts as reported, and we are currently conducting an internal investigation on the matter."

Winner said he fears the crew, inured to cruisers who claim to see rare wildlife and other oddities off the ship, ignored the birdwatchers.

"But those three people were not your typical cruise ship vacationers. They are trained, highly skilled observers," he said.