Heave To: A Novel: Volume 1 (Vince Lubar) - Tapa blanda

A clever group of white collar criminals has built a clandestine communications center in a basement of the Notional Monument Fort Sumter near Charleston South Carolina. From here they are listening in on all of the Coast Guard patrol communications. This information is in turn sent out to the crews operating boats and ships smuggling marijuana and cocaine to America. The Coast Guard Cutter ESCAPE was given to the service by the Navy in the early eighties. She was already forty years old. The captain and crew love the old gal and work out the kinks to make her successful. The addition of ESCAPE to the fleet was necessary to beef up capabilities after the Cuban Mariel Boatlift left many cutters and crews exhausted. ESCAPE's second in command Lieutenant Commander Vince Lubar, a well trained investigator spots suspicious activity in the background of a photograph taken at Fort Sumter and the mystery is on. Ride along in Cutters, fishing boats and large and small American and French freighters in a cat and mouse game of intrigue. Explore Jamaica, Charleston, Bermuda, West Palm Beach, Chesapeake Bay and many other spots along the shores of the Atlantic, Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico. Follow the money through a scheme of manipulation by the managers of a major private retirement fund for the purpose of financing boat purchases and smuggling operations. Learn details about the operation of a Coast Guard Cutter as the crew explores the tropics. Follow along as romances develop and a bond between two brothers becomes acrid. Welcome aboard and enjoy the journey. Heave To!

Pete DeBoer has led an interesting life. In 1964 he signed up for a four year hitch in the Coast Guard. Nearly twenty-three years later he retired when a second bureaucratic tour in Washington DC failed to offer the adventure he had enjoyed at sea. He enjoyed operational missions around the world. He served on two overseas Loran stations in Spain and Germany. In Germany, he was the Commanding Officer of an island Loran station in the North Sea. Pete enjoyed serving on three different cutters ranging from buoy tenders to high endurance ships deploying for months at a time in the Pacific, Atlantic, Bearing Sea and the Caribbean. As a district training officer in Seattle, he visited and deployed on several dozen more cutters for brief training events. His tour onboard the Cutter ESCAPE in Charleston South Carolina is the inspiration for this story. Pete's fascination with the Caribbean, Gulf of Mexico and the south east Atlantic coastal waters provide the backdrop for this saga. ESCAPE deployed on drug interdiction patrols thirty times while DeBoer served as Operations Officer and occasionally as Executive Officer. His extensive travel in the western hemisphere includes every state in the union, every Western European country as far east as Poland and Central and South America. Since leaving the service Pete built his own house from top to bottom then took up Real Estate for half a dozen years. He created a small business providing office solutions to local businesses and served two terms as an elected Port Commissioner in the Port of Kingston Washington where he wrote monthly editorials for the local citizens. A collection of his favorite "Down at the Port" stories will soon be released as a free Kindle Book. He is a licensed maritime captain and occasionally enjoys employment taking anglers fishing for salmon and halibut in Southeast Alaska. Heave To has been a labor of love for nearly a dozen years. DeBoer lives in Kingston Washington just north and west of Seattle. He is very involved in his community and enjoys playing guitar and singing in the local pubs. His boat Jolly Mon a forty-five-year old classic thirty-one foot yacht is always waiting in the marina to carry him to his next adventure.