Life in paradise for JC McCoin is about drug smuggling, marijuana growing, scuba diving the Great Barrier Reef and a small box of diamonds lost with a commercial aircraft shot down during WWII. Plus a saltwater crocodile.

JC McCoin enjoys his life - for a number of years he's been delivering boats, mostly sailboats, along the west coast of the US. A recent delivery was every sailor's dream; sail a boat to Hawaii. It couldn't get better than that, he thought, only to get an even better offer. To sail the perfect sailboat, a 14-meter motor-sailing catamaran, from Fiji south to Australia. From paradise to paradise.

For McCoin, that's where things start to go wrong. Arriving in Brisbane, McCoin finds the Australian Federal Police are waiting. Nearly four hundred pounds of cocaine had been hidden in the yacht. It's hard to remain innocent when that much cocaine is floating around. Finding himself a stranger in a strange land, McCoin is at everybody's mercy. Then there are the diamonds. And the saltwater croc.