TACOMA, Wash. — It was supposed to be a short evening cruise — an hour, maybe two. Seven young people, most of them college students, slipped away from a Tacoma marina sometime after nine o’clock on the night of April 14, 1971, aboard a 22-foot Catalina sailboat. A light breeze was blowing. The water was calm. They never came back.
No wreckage was ever recovered. No life jackets. No coolers, no debris, no oil slick on the water. The Puget Sound swallowed them whole, and for half a century, it has offered nothing in return — not closure, not answers, not even the comfort of a final resting place.
What remains are memories: of a gentle giant who towered over his fraternity brothers; a borderline genius who aced exams he never attended; a young woman with short blonde hair, quick to laugh; a 24-year-old captain who called his parents before every sail to make sure it was all right to take the boat out. And the question that has shadowed everyone who knew them — what happened out there in the dark?…