Wreckers' Key Read Online Free PDF Page B

say about the boating community: when someone was in a jam, they came together. It was kind of like the old days, really. The scene playing out was more reminiscent of the onetime wreckers than their namesake race had been.
    I was considering lifting the anchor and heading out on Gorda when I spotted a white-hulled center-console run-about coming at me from the other side—out of the north. The operator was waving at me. I waved back, and when he turned to approach my boat, I saw the name t/t Power Play in blue paint on the bow. It was the tender to the big Sunseeker, and I now recognized the man standing at the helm. As he drew close, Ted Berger shouted, “I could use another set of eyes. Want to come?”
    “Sure,” I shouted back. In less than a minute, I’d grabbed my rain jacket off the hook inside the wheelhouse, slipped the strap for my binoculars over my head, closed up Gorda , and jumped aboard Berger’s boat. Abaco whined, pleading to come along, but I told her to stay. Somehow I didn’t think Berger would appreciate dog hair all over his immaculate tender.
    Ted pushed the throttle forward and the big two-hundred-horse four-stroke Honda engine pushed the boat up onto an easy plane. We probably wouldn’t be able to hold that speed once we hit the open ocean outside, but for now he was eating up the water in a way my little tug would never manage.
    “I was on my way back from fishing Bluefish Channel when I heard,” he shouted. As we came out from behind Sunset Key, Berger whistled. “Damn. Look at all the boats.”
    He was right. There must have been at least thirty boats all steaming out toward Sand Key.
    On the center console of Berger’s boat, he pointed to the large-screen color GPS chart plotter, which displayed a chart of the Key West entrance channel out to Sand Key Light.
    “I’m not going to head out toward Eastern Dry Rocks. Looks like all the others are already working that area. Let’s start from the midpoint channel markers and work a search pattern east from there,” Ted hollered over the roar of the outboard. “You keep watch on the starboard side, I’ll watch the port.”
    “Sounds good to me.”
    I alternated searching with the naked eye and peering through the glasses. The breeze was dying down a bit, but the wind waves were still confused and choppy. Patchy gray clouds had blown in from the west and now covered the sun and half the horizon. The sea reflected the colorless sky; it was difficult enough to make out the channel markers, much less spot a small sail floating on the surface of the water.
    My watch told me the sun had just set, but the clouds had hidden the event. We had been searching for what seemed like hours and were now due south of Key West, over a mile offshore from Smathers Beach. The radio had been depressingly quiet except for the Coast Guard operator, who was continuing to seek information from the young man on the beach. He worked at the rental shack at the Casa Marina Resort and when his client, who’d rented the windsurfer for two hours, hadn’t returned by three pm, the kid went out in his Boston Whaler to search for the man. He’d had no luck. When he realized darkness was fast approaching, he decided to get on the radio and call for help.
    My eyes kept playing tricks on me. I would think I saw something, then when I blinked or tried to steady the binoculars, I’d look back and it would be gone. In fact, it was never there in the first place. That was why I didn’t believe it the first time I saw the flash of yellow in the water. When I squeezed my eyes shut that time, I thought it had disappeared, but then the patch of yellow rose again on a choppy swell.
    “Over there,” I shouted, pointing with my right arm while I held the glasses in one hand, keeping my eyes fastened on that spot of color. “I saw something in the water.” I shifted my position, swinging my arm around as Berger turned the boat. I couldn’t take my eyes off that spot.
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