Preserved intercepted and abandoned at St. Flip is the climactic sea pursuit in which Doc and Sauncho follow the schooner into a legendary break as the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Coast Guard approach. When the people aboard abandon ship, the Coast Guard moves to secure it in dangerous conditions. Sauncho recognizes that their presence matters: without an independent witness, the government could control the story of the old vessel and its fate.

From pursuit to witness

By the time Doc and Sauncho round Palos Verdes Point, Preserved is visible offshore from San Pedro, carrying all her staysails and jibs. To Sauncho, the sight has the force of unrequited love. Doc has seen her under full sail only once before, during an acid trip with Vehi Fairfield and Sortilège; now, without that drug-induced frame, the schooner brings to mind the ship in The Sea Wolf. His involuntary recollection makes the vessel seem at once real and entangled with the stories and visions through which he has encountered it.

They fall in astern and follow. Greenish radar blips draw closer with each sweep, and Sauncho radios the approaching vessels. Doc recognizes the government’s presence; Sauncho identifies the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Coast Guard. The schooner has seen them too. She switches to diesel power, a practical change that leaves Doc and Sauncho with little choice but to continue observing from behind.

Death’s Doorsill

The route brings them to a danger that charts cannot explain. Doc and Sauncho see enormous waves rising in open ocean, with no visible rocks or shore to account for them. The sets roll in from the northwest, perhaps thirty or thirty-five feet from crest to trough, curling and breaking in repeated explosions. Sauncho rules out Cortes Bank: they have not travelled far enough, and nothing else should be there.

They recognize the place as St. Flip of Lawndale’s mythical break, also called Death’s Doorsill. Preserved heads straight for it. Sauncho traces the schooner’s course with a yellow grease pencil on the radar screen and wonders whether the people aboard are committing suicide or barratry. The uncertain explanation sharpens the scene’s central danger: the vessel is making a course that appears fatal, while Doc and Sauncho can only watch and ask where the federal pursuers are.

Abandonment and salvage

Three dark, narrow shapes detach from Preserved and race away across the water. Sauncho identifies them as cigarette boats, their engines briefly louder than the surf. The departing craft evade any hot pursuit in conditions that make engagement implausible. The schooner, fading in and out of spray, now looks older and more battered to Doc, resembling the ship in his dream of Coy’s escape with his family to safety. Sauncho concludes that the people aboard have abandoned her.

The abandonment does not immediately resolve the vessel’s fate. Sauncho is relieved that the engines have been stopped, but worries that Preserved may strand on whatever lies beneath the waves. He explains the maritime rule that, if the ship can be brought into safe receivership and its owners fail to claim it within a year and a day, it becomes officially abandoned; the transfer of ownership then becomes a question of marine law. The schooner’s uncertain ownership is thus tied to a precise threshold, while the immediate practical question is whether she can be kept afloat and brought in safely.

The Coast Guard and the competing account

The Coast Guard sends a boarding party onto Preserved. Its crew shortens sail, lays out trip lines and storm anchors to keep the schooner’s head to the wind, and rigs range and towing lights. Radio traffic reports that an oceangoing tug is on its way. These measures turn the encounter from pursuit into an effort to control and preserve a vessel exposed to extraordinary conditions.

Sauncho says it is good that they came out. Doc answers that they did little, but Sauncho points to the consequence of their presence: without them, there would be only the government’s account, and the old boat might be lost. Their role is not to seize Preserved or take command of the recovery; it is to provide an independent witness to an operation otherwise legible only through official radio traffic and the authorities’ version of events. Afterward, Sauncho handles paperwork at the Coast Guard base on Terminal Island and arranges overnight moorage for their inboard-outboard. The encounter ends without resolving who will ultimately own the schooner, but the vessel has not simply vanished into an unrecorded government story.