The government and anti-drugs agencies are ecstatic over the successful capture of a 60 foot yacht, Dances with Waves, and its cargo of up to 4,070 pounds of cocaine worth an estimated €550 million to €750 million, depending on its purity.

Although the haul was still undergoing laboratory analysis this week, Gardai (police) reckoned it was at least 80 percent.

It was the biggest haul of drugs ever captured in Ireland and was described by gangbusters as one of the most devastating blows inflicted on European criminals.

Crack members of three Irish agencies, the Garda, the Navy and the Customs Service, were involved in the capture after the yacht was tracked by satellite on its way from Trinidad to Europe.

Dances with Waves was boarded 170 miles off the West Cork coast on Wednesday night of last week by a raiding party on the Navy vessel, LE Niamh. Three British men, one with an address in Spain, were arrested on board.

The haul of 74 sacks, each containing up to 55 pounds of cocaine, far exceeded in quantity and value the €440 million of cocaine recovered last year, bobbing about in Dunlough Bay when a rigid inflatable boat (RIB) carrying it ashore from a mother ship got into difficulties and sank near Mizen Head in west Cork.

"Operation Seabight," which resulted in the capture of Dances With Waves, was set up more than a month earlier when the yacht left the Caribbean.

According to The Irish Times it was tracked every yard of its journey across the Atlantic by international agencies using sophisticated satellite technology.

The drugs were not thought to have been intended for the Irish market and were more likely to have been destined for the U.K.

Drug traffickers smuggling cocaine from Colombia and Venezuela typically bring the drugs across the Atlantic in a mother ship which meets up with a local boat off the Irish or U.K. coast, and the drugs are transferred to a local vessel in a bid to avoid attention.

The three Britons were arrested when they were brought ashore at the pier in Castletownbere where up to 40 Gardai from the National Drugs Unit, backed up by armed local officers from the West Cork division, were waiting for them.

A hunt continued this week for any colleagues who might have been waiting on shore for the illicit cache.