In decades, captain ‘never faced anything’ like this
Shipwrecked on the beach near Boca Raton and forced to abandon boat
In his decades of sailing, Captain Mitch had never dealt with such a disaster.
Shipwrecked on the beach near Boca Raton, he saw the tide coming in and the 20 mph winds rocking his boat violently. He jumped back on his boat, put his terrified cat, Boo Boo, in a carrier and worried that the sea soon would consume his vessel.
James Mitchell Trice then made the difficult choice: He parted ways Monday with Written in the Wind, his 41-foot sailboat that he has called home for three years. He figured it was too dangerous to stay on, with the waves still crashing over the boat.
What started as an effort to get the boat back in the water turned into a spectacle Monday with the rough weather: He grabbed what he could from the vessel before disembarking. The cat hid as Trice tried to put her into a carrying case. After a half-hour effort to save the cat and essentials like ID, cellphone and tablet computer, Trice emerged and got off the boat for, what he now suspects, was the last time.
Originally from Montgomery, Alabama, Trice has been boating since he was 16 years old, he said. Trice, who wears his blonde hair long in a ponytail, said he used to do engineer work in telecommunications industry until his medical problems in 2012. He dons a scar across his chest from open heart surgery and a pacemaker. It made him decide to shape his life around sea travel.
Now he does volunteer work for ocean conservation, planting corals, counting fish, among other
things, he said. The boat’s name, Written in the Wind, represents all “the new chapters of my life” that are left to be written.
Trice had set sail Tuesday morning last week from Fort Lauderdale with the goal of going south through the Florida Keys around to Fort Myers, he said. But by that evening, winds and currents had blown his boat north to southern Palm Beach County. He said he was battling the strongest surface currents he has seen in a long time. He began drifting north until the winds took him west and onto the shore.
“A direct hit, man,” he said. “I’ve never faced anything like this.”
After the shipwreck, Trice, 59, says locals who live nearby have been “awesome,” bringing him food, water, ice, health drinks and coconut water. “Just very concerned and friendly people,” he said. “They’ve gone way above. It reminds me of my hometown, like I’ve lived here my whole life.”
One man jogging on the beach gave his phone number to Trice and volunteered to help him if needed. Residents and staff from the condominium building in front of the boat brought plastic bins to help him take his belongings out of the boat. Others offered to let him stay with them.
One passer-by, Dale Pohly, was at the beach with a friend Sunday when he saw the boat almost as soon as he got on the sand.
He walked toward it to check it out and snap a picture of it on his phone.
“We saw the boat from a distance close to the entrance of Spanish River Beach and walked over to get a closer look,” Pohly, 28, of Boca Raton, said. “It looked like there were other beachgoers that were curious as well, walking over and investigating.”
Since the captain ran aground, Highland Beach Police officers have checked in on Trice, he said, and have tried to help him figure out how to get the boat back in the water. “Even the chief came by on Day Three to see what the plan was and I’m so impressed by them all,” Trice said.
A spokesman for the Highland Beach Police Department couldn’t be reached for comment. A code enforcement officer said they couldn’t do anything about the boat. But past lunchtime Monday, a Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission officer warned Trice he faced being cited for having a derelict boat, a civil infraction.
With his original plan to sail to Fort Myers, he now intends to rent a car and drive there to meet up with a friend and try to buy a new boat. Trice said he intends to fight the civil citation, while figuring out what to do with his former home, still stuck in the sand.