White Coral: A Chase Gordon Tropical Thriller (Chase Gordon Tropical Thrillers Book 6) by Douglas Pratt

Author:Douglas Pratt [Pratt, Douglas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2022-03-09T16:00:00+00:00

17

Boca Grande was a little less than a two-hour drive south. A dark cloud moved across the water to the west, preparing to drop a mid-day rainstorm on the area. It would come in with a deluge, but pass within a few hours.

Oxenwise kept his boat at the Boca Harbor Marina. As I pulled up to the marina, I studied the six rows of docks. Like most, the management segregated the sailboats to a different finger. Easy to eliminate those. The smaller boats lined the southern edge. The marina’s designers may figure they could handle the southwest wind pushing them around more than some of the bigger vessels.

Unlike the marina in Tampa, Boca Harbor appeared to be almost all pleasure craft. The few liveaboard vessels were obvious–they wore a lived-in appearance with packed decks. Most weekend boaters stow their gear before jetting off home. Those of us that are permanent residents do like everyone in a house does. We procrastinate.

Of course, I say “we” only because I am a liveaboard. I’m also a stickler for keeping Carina’s decks clear. I carry a few water toys like a kayak, but they remain secured in place. However, there’s a reason so many look down on the liveaboard lifestyle. It can get messy.

Once I eliminated the sailboats and the smaller vessels, I had four fingers jutting out into the harbor. I picked the one on the southern side.

Rob didn’t give me the name of the boat, so it relegated me to identifying the Chris Craft on sight. It wasn’t an uncommon vessel on the water, but most of the ones I’d seen were older, like Oxenwise’s.

There are several common divides among boat-people. It starts with cruisers and day-sailors. Weekenders and liveaboards. Sailboats and powerboats. Outboards and inboards. The biggest divide was the gotta-have-a-new-boat and the old-boats-last-forever group. It’s an unspoken rivalry in which both sides stare at the other, wondering how they manage it.

I fall in the old-boats category. Not that Carina is as old as some yachts are. She’s an ‘86 model which makes her over 30 years old and just a couple of years younger than Oxenwise’s yacht. However, those fiberglass models can last forever with proper care. Carina’s previous owner completely refitted the interior, so she’s like brand new.

A lot of the new-boat crew think all older boats are derelicts, just waiting to sink. Since I, as well as the prior captain, perform constant maintenance, my baby still sails better than any off-the-factory-floor model.

The marina ran about half and half of old versus new. They were mixed in fairly evenly, so I trudged along the dock, studying each one.

The Chris Craft is a fly bridge model with a small aft deck. Most of the space was in the cabin, so it didn’t have the deck space some of the newer models had.

When I spotted her across the marina, I saw someone addressed the lack of deck area by adding a sizable swim platform to her stern. Blue letters scrawled across the back in a bubble font that read, Going Down.

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