CHAPTER THREE
My home is Longboat Key, Florida. More specifically, Longbeach Village, long called simply the “Village,” that takes up the north end of the island. My cottage backs up to the bay, giving me a view that brings real estate sales people to their knees. Tropical flowers are abundant in the yard, and I pay a guy more than I should to keep them blooming or whatever they’re supposed to do during any given season.
Longboat Key itself is small, about ten miles long and less than a half-mile wide in most places. It lies off the coast of Southwest Florida, south of Tampa Bay and about half way down the peninsula. Once you leave the south end of the key you cross some bridges, another island and end up in downtown Sarasota. On the north end you’ll cross the Longboat Pass Bridge, part of Anna Maria Island, then Cortez Bridge, and find yourself in the city of Bradenton.
The island is my slice of paradise. I’m not old enough for retirement, but I’d been to war as a young man, then college and law school. I’d practiced as a trial lawyer in Orlando for a number of years and despaired of the business that the profession was turning into. I began to drink too much and take myself way too seriously, plowing into the law practice with a single-minded devotion that left little time for the only woman I’d ever loved, my wife, Laura. She finally gave notice that our marriage was over. She moved to Atlanta, remarried and died a few years later.
I gave up, sold everything, and moved to Longboat Key. If I was careful, I had enough to live on for the rest of my life. I’d pretty much achieved my goal of becoming a beach bum, living in a small community with lots of friends and time for fishing, walking the beach, drinking in the salubrious bars that dotted our island. I’m not sure how healthy all that drinking was, but the lifestyle gave me a peace that I’d not been able to achieve in all the years before Longboat.
I stayed in shape, worked out with a martial arts instructor a couple of times a week, ran daily on the beach, and always found time for a round of exercises that kept me young. Or at least younger than if I’d become one of those people whose only daily exercise consists of moving from the TV to the beach, then to a bar and back to the TV.
I’m six feet tall and maintain the same one-hundred-eighty pounds I weighed when I was a soldier. Gray has not yet crept into my hair, and I have what I describe as a ruggedly handsome face. Most folks just laugh at me when I say that. They say that I’m, well, pleasant looking. Soldiers do not think of themselves as pleasant. Tough, rugged, even mean as hell, but never pleasant. Oh well, I am what I am, and I’m reasonably satisfied with that.
Logan and I sat in the cockpit of my boat, fishing lines out over the transom. We were off the main channel a few yards north of the tip end of the Sister Keys that separates part of Sarasota Bay from the north end of Long-boat Key. The twin two-hundred-fifty-horsepower Yamaha outboards purred quietly, idling in neutral. My anchor light was on and some illumination slipped from the small cabin. We were easily visible to any boat coming up the channel.
We were drifting slightly in the current as it ran toward Longboat Pass and the Gulf of Mexico. The tide was going out, but in our area of Florida the tidal range is not great and the outgoing tides are gentle. The engines were running in case I had to move quickly to dodge a sandbar or another boat.
It was nearing ten o’clock in the evening. An onshore breeze brought the scent of the Gulf’s brine, a pleasant tinge redolent with the hint of the beauty of the ever-changing water that lapped gently on our beaches. The lights of Dulcimer, a dinner cruise boat owned by a local restaurant reflected off the dark surface of the bay as she made her way slowly north toward home, full of satisfied diners who’d taken the evening dinner cruise. Dulcimer was one hundred-ten-feet-long and twenty-eight feet on the beam. She was big and slow and stately and looked like an old Mississippi River steamboat. She was powered by diesel engines and the paddle wheel at her stern was just for show. She was about two hundred yards south of us, running the narrow channel to the west of the Sister Keys, chugging along at ten knots or so. As she neared, strains of music floated across the water, a pleasant counterpoint to an almost perfect evening.
The channel that runs north and south along the western edge of the Sister Keys doglegs around a sandbar that has pushed out from the lagoon that separates Longboat Key from Jewfish Key. The captain on a northerly course must turn about thirty degrees to the east and then back to the west. We watched as Dulcimer made the turn to the east. She kept coming. No turn back to the west. She was on a collision course with my boat.
I jumped to the helm and pushed the throttles forward, moving swiftly across the bow of the oncoming vessel. I knew there was a sandbar lurking just behind where we’d been fishing, and if the captain didn’t get back on course in the next few seconds, he’d be piling up on the bar.
I turned to my left, paralleling the course of the larger boat. The pilot house was dark, but the decks were lighted. I could see people sitting at the tables, walking around with drinks in hand, leaning against the railings of the open upper deck. The music was still playing, an old rendition of “La Vie En Rose.” I wasn’t sure if it was Edith Piaf singing, but it sounded like her.
As I passed amidships of Dulcimer, she went dark. The lights and the sound quit at the same instant. No lights on the decks, no running lights. Nothing. A ghost ship was slipping by my port side, dark and foreboding. The sounds of surprised guests getting louder as panic set in.
The boat came to a shuddering halt. It had found the sandbar. I heard tables and glassware shifting and breaking. Screams of panic and pain drifted over the water. I’d been reaching for my radio microphone when the lights went out. “Mayday! Mayday! Coast Guard Cortez, Coast Guard Cortez, this is Recess.”
The radio jumped to life, a calm female voice at the other end of the ether. “Recess, this is United States Coast Guard Cortez. What is your emergency?”
“This is Recess. I’m at the northern tip of the Sister Keys. The Dulcimer dinner boat just ran hard aground. I can hear screams coming from the passengers. It looks as if several are in the water. I’ll try to pick them up.”
“I’m sending boats, Recess. Stand by on channel sixteen.”
“Recess, standing by sixteen.”
I was shining my spotlight on three heads bobbing in the water. I eased Recess toward them, put the engines in idle, and drifted. Logan was at the stern, the transom door open, the ladder down, a boat pole in his hand. He helped bring the waterlogged people aboard, told them to sit down on the cockpit floor. Logan dug into the bag of towels in the cabin and gave one to each of our passengers.
I kept the spotlight moving, but didn’t see any more heads. Some of the passengers had apparently gone overboard from the open deck when the boat ran aground. Several of them were standing near the bow, the water up to their knees.
“The Coast Guard is coming,” I called to them. “Stay where you are.”
Less than ten minutes after my radio call to the Coast Guard, I heard sirens whooping in the distance. I looked to the north and saw two boats, blue lights flashing, racing toward us. The Coast Guard station was only a couple of miles north of our position.
I picked up my microphone. “Coast Guard Cortez, this is Recess.”
“Recess, this is United States Coast Guard Cortez.”
“Coast Guard, this is Recess. I have three people aboard, no casualties. I’m standing by near the stern of Dulcimer. I see your boats approaching.”
“Standby, Recess.
“Roger, Coast Guard.”
I turned to the people we’d brought aboard. “What happened?”
“I don’t know,” said a middle-aged lady, shivering in a towel-draped sundress. “We were on the top deck when the lights went out and the next thing I knew, we were in the water.”
The other woman and the man with them murmured agreement.
I watched as the Coast Guard boats pulled alongside Dulcimer. Men in blue uniforms boarded carrying flashlights. I waited, playing with the throttles, keeping Recess in the middle of the channel, awaiting orders.
After a few minutes I heard a motor turn over, the sound coming from Dulcimer. Then the lights came on and music again played over the water. One of the Coasties had gotten the generator working. The music stopped. The gay evening was over. Time for the work to begin; to find out what happened.
I heard a siren and saw a boat coming from the south, blue lights announcing another law enforcement vessel. It was the Longboat Key Police boat. The cop at the helm recognized my boat and pulled alongside.
“What the hell happened, Matt?”
I told him what I’d seen and that I’d picked up the three passengers from the water.
“I’ve been listening on the radio,” he said. “I’ve got ambulances coming to Moore’s. We can offload any injured at the docks there.”
“You’ve got some people in the water up by the bow,” I said. “They’re going to start getting cold.”
“I’ll go get them. Why don’t you get these folks names and take them to Moore’s so the paramedics can take a look.”
He went around me and moved slowly into the shallows to pick up the people on the sandbar. I crossed the channel running almost due west, past the southern tip of Jewfish Key and across the lagoon to Moore’s Stone Crab Restaurant. I saw a sea of flashing blue lights in the parking lot. I maneuvered into the dock and cut the engines. Logan and I helped our passengers off the boat and turned them over to the paramedics.
“You ready for a drink?” I asked Logan.
“Damn right.”
I picked up the microphone. “Coast Guard Cortez, this is Recess.”
“This is United States Coast Guard Cortez.”
“This is Recess. I’ve dropped my three passengers off at Moore’s with the paramedics. I’ll be inside in case your people need to talk to me.”
“Recess, did you get their names?
I gave them to her, told her my cell phone number, signed off, and headed for the bar.