We first met David and Karen two years ago when staying with the RMHYC at Boat Harbour. It was a 2nd marriage for both of them. They had met on-line shortly before Christmas and were married just after New Years Day. Talk about a whirl-wind romance! David was a cruiser and despite having a newly acquired wife, his boat was the real “love of his life.” But Karen, up for adventure, left her job, gave up everything and sailed away to the Bahamas with David.
At Boat Harbour David was reclusive, spending much of his time alone below decks, often with a bottle in hand while Karen got involved with everything. She looked after new memberships for the club and was heavily involved with all manner of arts and crafts. And soon their boat was virtually bursting with lovely things she had painted and created. But their marriage was not a happy one. Often there was shouting late into the night with arguments escalating into physical confrontations. And eventually, inevitably, Karen got hurt. One morning, early in April, I encountered her marching down our dock with her “good” arm loaded up with artwork she was transferring to a friends boat, and a “bad” arm sporting a cast and sling. Apparently David had thrown her against a wall (he says she fell) and her arm was broken. This was the last straw. She was leaving, going back to the US and suing for divorce. We were sad to see Karen go. We had all so enjoyed having her as a member of our club. But we accepted her decision and assumed that we would hear nothing about her again. This unfortunately, was not to be.
The divorce was a messy one. And for some reason Karen--not David--got his precious boat in the settlement. He couldn’t accept this and threatened to fight to the very end to get the boat back. He tampered with the steering mechanism while Karen was off the boat which resulted in her narrowly escaping a serious “accident” which would’ve claimed her life. Alarmed and frightened at what David was capable of doing, she convinced a friend to move aboard with her. But once again David was seen by others alone on the boat and the next day, while Karen and her friend with still aboard, the vessel inexplicably blew up into a ball of fire. Two charred bodies were found on board.
When the police arrived at David’s apartment to talk to him about this incident, he came out with a gun and shot at them. They returned fired and he too was killed. You read about things like this all the time in newspapers. But you never think it’s going to happen to people you actually know! We lived a peaceful uneventful existence in Canada for 60 years--rarely encountering death or accidents. And when it was close to home it was caused by old age and disease. During these past 6 years however, it’s been a different reality entirely. And anyone who has been following this blog from the beginning knows how very close we’ve been on a regular basis to people and situations involving life-threatening scenarios. This is simply another one.
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