Off Watch

Living aboard in Florida, now more than ever, I’m drawing some unsettling similarities to Travis McGee, the rugged protagonist of many a John D. MacDonald novel.

HERB McCORMICK

Busted FLUSH 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…

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Cruising World (Digital) - 1 Issue, January/February 2025

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