Gone Sailboat Gone
Five days before Christmas, I booked my ticket home. It was evening, at the end a long day in my marine repair shop, BoatRx. After being in Miami a month, it was already starting to feel like home. I reviewed my to-do lists, grateful to be returning to a steady routine as I drove back to the marina where Eclipse, my Tayana 42 and my home, had been moored since I’d arrived from Boston.
The wind was blowing hard when I got there. I went for a run to ease my mind and donned my foulweather jacket before taking off into the darkness. In no time, I was getting soaked by the spray blowing off the tops of the waves with the northeast gale. Luckily, the trip to the boat was both short and a fairly straightforward one—straight out the channel, then left at the red marker toward mooring #91, where I’d see the blue hull of Eclipse.
As soon as I made the left, I knew something was wrong. Mooring #91 was right where it should be, but there was no boat. I raced to the ball and grabbed the plastic thimble. It was intact, but there was no sign of the two lines I’d run through it earlier. Adrenaline shot through my veins as a
