While we were at Bahia Mar, and at other stops along the southern waterways, we heard a number of frightening stories, which I believe were true, about cabin cruisers and their owner-crews that had disappeared without trace, or the boats found wrecked and the crews missing or found murdered. It was believed that the boats had been hijacked by dope smuggles, who used them for one or two runs offshore, then got rid of them. Our own boats were not the fast long-range cruisers that the smugglers wanted, so we were in no danger; but it is easy to see that such crimes could readily be committed with little or no danger to the criminals. In fact, the hijacking and murder might never be known, because the wandering boatmen are often independent people who might not be missed.

Could CAREFREE LADY have been lucky for us after all? (See p. 51 ff.)

Smuggling is common on the west coast of Florida, which is riddled with a maze of intersecting winding shallow channels that only the local boatmen can follow. Some of my friends, fishing in one of the side tidal rivers connected to the Homosassa, witnessd a gun battle on an island.

I was reading a book at a picnic spot near where a side channel of Crystal River enters the Gulf, when a boat came in from the ocean at high speed and landed. At the same time, two pickup trucks arrived. Four large green cans, twice the size of and oil drum, were quickly transferred from the boat to one of the trucks. The boat was loaded onto the other truck, but was too large and heavy for the men to push it all the way on; so the driver backed truck and boat into a palm tree, smashing the back end of the boat; and all took off at high speed. What did I do, you may ask. I tried to be invisible!