Twelve Mile Limit

C-130?

“Turns out, the guy’s having an affair with his wife’s sister, and they’re shacked up on Siesta Key. He’s got the boat hidden in a friend’s canal.” Dalton has a husky, beer-drinker’s laugh.

“That’s just one example. For seventeen years, I’ve been in this business. We see it all, Doc. Unbelievable stuff.”

“Not my friend, Janet, Dalt. She’s one of the good ones. If we haven’t heard from her, there’s a reason. I think she’s in trouble.”

Dorsey told me they already had a H-60 chopper working the search, plus a C-130 flying a grid, along with their eighty-two-foot cutter Point Swift, and a forty-one-foot utility cruiser. Then he added, “But if you want, I’ll talk to my boss and see if we can get Miami to let us send the second helo.”

I told him any extra help would be appreciated, and added, “Another thing, Dalt. If you don’t mind, let your skippers know that some of Janet’s friends are headed down there with boats to join in the search. We’ll stay out of the way, cooperate however we can, but I’d like to maintain radio contact with your people, if that’s okay.”

We talked for a while longer before Dalton Dorsey ended the conversation, saying, “Believe me, if your lady friend is out there somewhere in a boat, we will find her.”

The next morning, Sunday, just before 10 A.M., as I was idling my skiff away from a Marco Island boat ramp, out Collier’s Bay toward Big Marco Pass, a petty officer aboard the cutter Point Swift contacted us via VHF radio. He asked me to switch from channel 16 to channel 22-Alpha.

It was then we learned that, two hours earlier, one of the Seminole Wind ’s passengers had been found alive, standing atop a huge light tower, fifty-two nautical miles offshore.

Idling abreast of me, in big Felix Lane’s twenty-four-foot Parker, was Jeth Nicholes, listening to our radio conversation. I could see his face clearly. I watched his expression change from expectation, to delight, and, finally, anguish, when we learned that, according to the woman they’d rescued, the Seminole Wind had sunk early Friday evening, and she had not seen her fellow passengers since.

Unless someone had picked Janet up without notifying the Coast Guard, she had now been in water for more than forty hours.