The ocean is an unbelievably vast wilderness. Pinpointing a vessel, even when its approximate position is known, is literally more difficult than finding a needle in a haystack. Even if my position could be approximated within a hundred miles, a circular area two hundred miles across, covering over thirty thousand square miles, would have to be searched in order to locate me. What the Coast Guard does not tell my family is that if I am more than a week overdue, I am most likely dead. It happens all the time. Three hundred seventy-four sailors died in U.S. waters between 1972 and 1977 in
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