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The yacht design profession can involve all kinds of strange and interesting sidelines, oftentimes leading one into the marine investigatory field. Although at one time I sported a great Zorba moustache and owned a Ferrari, these were not the results of television P.I. envy. The moustache was an old family tradition, and being a sports car guy, I could reach no higher than a Ferrari.

The Case of The Runaway Chick
A few years ago we were designing a custom motoryacht for a client from the Northeast. He had a daughter who had bailed and apparently was living with some guy in Florida. As I lived in Florida, my client asked if I could track her down. He offered to pay my hourly design rate for the time I spent, plus expenses. It sounded like fun, so I accepted. He sent me a picture of his daughter--a good-looking babe about 18 years old--who he thought was living somewhere around the west coast.

I soon found that being a successful P.I. involved not much more than common sense and dogged determination. My mission was to verify that the girl was living in Florida, and so I found myself in Homosassa Springs. After some snooping around, I located the house where I'd been told she was living. I had to stake it out, and even I knew that you don't do a stakeout in a red Ferrari, so I rented myself a nondescript bilious green Chevy Impala and parked across the street from the designated house. Although I hate coffee, I knew from watching television that any successful stakeout involves lots of coffee, so I had a few cups, which I sipped occasionally, in the car. As the day wore on, I realized that a stakeout was not very glamorous and, in fact, was extremely boring. To pass the time, I started dictating specifications for a new design we were working on. After about three hours, the door opened and out came the girl. Mission accomplished! After my successful stakeout, I rewarded myself with a steak out.

But my investigatory work history consists of a lot more than such frivolous cases. Over time I found the field of marine forensic investigation interesting, fun, and profitable.

The Case of the Boat on the Bottom
When I lived in Connecticut, I was doing a lot of marine survey work--mostly for insurance companies. Obviously, my busy season was spring and summer, but one case arose in the dead of winter. In fact, it was January. I was sitting at my desk with my feet up, reading a boating magazine and dreaming of warmer times down south, when the phone rang. "Fexas, P.I." I answered. (Well, I didn't really say that, but for the sake of the story it sounds better.) On the other end of the line was a lady from one of the bigger insurance companies in Hartford, good clients of mine. She said they had insured a 40-footer that had sunk at a boatyard near Clinton, Connecticut. My job: Find out why.

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