Summary

In the summer of 1987 Taylor Barnes visits the Miami office of Psychiatrist Nathan Fisher, seeking help in understanding and coping with a sequence of events that took place in the summer of 1985.  Was it all just coincidence or was some long gone pirate using him to finish a project cut short by his death one hundred seventy-five years before? 

Barnes confides in Doctor Fisher that he and his three friends had found a hoard of gold weighing over three tons, after which they were plagued by one problem after another.  Fisher bids him tell the whole story and perhaps they can sort it out together.  

Tay’s story begins in February of 1985 at a time soon after the death of Gina, his wife of twenty-five years.  His feelings of guilt, remorse, and loneliness, more than he can handle in a state of utter sobriety, lead him into a Fort Lauderdale bar where he meets sweet young thing, Julie Minelli, a former cocaine addict coming off a bad marriage.  Barnes gets sloppy drunk and wakes up next morning with a world-class hangover in Julie's apartment. 

Forty-eight year old Tay Barnes and twenty-eight year old Julie Minelli hit it off well.  She seems to need a strong, wise, Daddy figure and he needs a friend, so they agree to a father daughter relationship; to be there for each other, no matter what. 

Their friendship is soon tested when Julie’s sister, Kim, appears on the scene with a wild story of intrigue, drugs, and gangsters, which leads the three of them, along with crew member Beek McGill, on a wild ride through the Bahamas and Caicos Islands aboard a fishing yacht, as they search for a fortune in buried gold while being chased relentlessly by a drug lord and his accomplices. 

The excitement of their adventure grows, as do Julie’s romantic feelings towards Tay, and Tay’s guilt feelings towards his dead wife, and it soon becomes evident that he has some dark secret, which threatens to destroy him. The chasm between their generations widens as he begins to see himself in a time warp where he doesn't belong, but to which he must adapt if he is to survive. 

Follow the crew of the Betsy Kay, who start out as four trusting friends in search of adventure, but are quickly engulfed in trials, both physical and moral in nature, that threaten not only the destruction of their friendship, but their very lives, as well.