My mom was a voracious reader who often passed along her tattered paperbacks to me. That’s how I came to know and love the works of John D. MacDonald, and the rough-and-tumble protagonist in nearly two dozen of his novels, a “salvage consultant” called Travis McGee who moonlights as a private eye. McGee lives on a houseboat called Busted Flush,which he won in a card game, and he even makes an appearance in the Jimmy Buffett tune “Incommunicado”: “Travis McGee’s still in Cedar Key/That’s what old John MacDonald said.”
MacDonald actually lived on Siesta Key, near Sarasota, Florida, a place I now know well; for the past two years, I’ve spent winters aboard my Pearson 365, August West, just a few miles north on another barrier island called Longboat Key. In October, Siesta Key was in the news when Hurricane Milton steamrolled directly over it, leaving a wide swath of destruction. I know this too because my marina was slammed as well, and August West took a big wallop to the kisser. I was not surprised in the least.
Long before Carl Hiaasen took aim at the foibles and madness of Florida living, MacDonald had the Sunshine State in his sights. Like Hiaasen, he was an environmentalist and a bit of a seer, as this passage from his 1953 novel, Dead Low Tide, attests: “You pray, every night, that the big one doesn’t come this year. A big one stomped and churned around Cedar Key a couple of years back…One year it is going to show up, walking out of the Gulf and up the coast, like a big red top walking across the schoolyard…It’s going to be like taking a good kick at an anthill, and then the local segment of that peculiar aberration called the human race is going to pick itself up, whistle for the dredges and start it all over again.”
Which is precisely what happened to Siesta Key this past fall.
From the outset, I understood that keeping a boat on the Gulf Coast was like playing a game of Russian roulette. The steamy cauldron of water known as the Gulf of Mexico has never been hotter than it was this past summer, and it’s become almost an incubator for tropical disturbances. Longboat’s had a couple of near misses the past few years: Hurricane Ian hooked an early right and skipped past to the south in 2022, and Helene wreaked some major damage this past fall as well. But I always knew that it was only a matter of time before Longboat drew the loaded chamber. Now it has.
In the grand scheme of things, unlike many of my marina neighbors, I was lucky. August West got tangled up with the houseboat next door and won that matchup handily (those old, massive Pearsons were built like the proverbial brick shithouses, thank heavens). When the spray had settled, August West had lost a few forward stanchions, the bow pulpit, the genoa furler, and the bow platform for the ground tackle. All repairable. Most important, the bilges stayed as dry as dust.
Just a few slips away, at least five boats sank; another was dismasted; a long dock was irreparably damaged; and a major portion of the seawall crumbled. It’s pretty obvious that it all requires a major rebuild, and at this moment, it’s unclear how much the condo association that owns and runs the marina will be willing to invest, if anything at all.
It has also led to some soul-searching on my behalf. The hidden little cove on Sarasota Bay where I kept my boat was a magical place, full of dolphins, manatees and seabirds. At heart, I’m a New Englander, and I always did have some misgivings about a commitment to crazy Florida. But I had my own sweet slice of heaven, which is probably forever changed. The notion of moving to a municipal slip in a busier place elsewhere holds little appeal. I have some hard decisions to make.
It’s funny…a few of my more sarcastic friends, during the past couple of years, have taken to calling me “Travis.” I have to admit, there are some unsettling similarities. Now, however, I reckon I’ve got more in common with McGee than ever. I may have just been dealt my busted flush.
Herb McCormick is a CW editor-at-large.
