Captain Connection

Professional Charter Fishing Booking Service

Local angler writes spy novel

Uses fishing experience to create plot, characters


“The Nautilus Project” is on sale at bookstores.

BY BILL CITARA
Staff Writer

“It was another beautiful day in paradise. Jim Riley was sitting on his deck overlooking Florida Bay. Jim finished his third cup of coffee and put down his morning paper. Like most, he had his daily ritual, and Jim’s morning routine started with the sports section and ended with the front page.”

It took Capt. David Yglesias five years to write the story of Jim Riley, a former Navy SEAL retired to the Keys, later talked into taking part in a secret mission to Cuba to destroy a nuclear missile production facility.
Though he now lives in Miami, where his family owns a large car dealership, Yglesias has spent many of his 42 years vacationing, fishing and captaining boats out of the Keys.
He’s been a fixture in the local community almost as long, having written the fishing column for this newspaper for three years in the late 1990s and co-hosted “The Friday Night Radio Show” on SUN 103 for another six.
Yglesias has taken that wealth of experience, plus the Keys own ambiance and unique cast of characters, added a vivid imagination and a long-held passion for writing, and turned them into his first novel, “The Nautilus Project.”
Despite a dozen years as a licensed captain and owner of the Captain Connection charter fishing boat company, he said the effort of landing a big fish pales before that of writing a novel.
“Oh, God, it’s a lot of work,” he exclaims.
Still, it’s the realization of a dream nurtured when the young graduate of Florida State University worked writing computer code for a Texas firm.
“That’s when I really got the passion for books and reading.”
With tongue only partially in cheek, he adds, “I sat in airports, went through books on airplanes and realized it was cheaper to write books than to buy them.”

“With the reef well behind him, Jim set the autopilot on a course for the ‘Hump.’ The ‘Hump,’ as local fishermen called it, was a 300-foot deep-sea mount, elevating from a surrounding depth of 600 feet. As the swift moving body of water in the Gulf Stream hit this mount on the ocean bottom, a large upwelling occurred. Huge schools of tuna, amberjack and sharks would gather there, feeding on the nutrient-rich soup teeming with smaller baitfish. Fishermen were people of habit, and heading for the ‘Hump’ on the way out to deeper water had been Jim’s habit for a very long time.”

The model for Jim Riley is one of the Keys most recognizable figures and one of Yglesias’ best friends, Islamorada Capt. Rob Dixon.
Of course, much of Riley is Yglesias himself, especially, he says, “staring at the mirror, looking at the crow’s feet around the eyes.”
Another Keys resident and former Navy SEAL, who shall remain nameless, provided details of that elite force’s procedures, while the book’s editor and Vietnam war veteran, Ken Keidel, contributed information on military tactics and jargon.
Despite “at least six rewrites” and innumerable suggestions about plot, characters and pacing that Yglesias feared would water down his story, he’s pleased with the final result and the response it’s generated in the community.
“I didn’t expect it to do as well as it’s doing,” he says.
“The Nautilus Project” is available locally at Hooked on Books in Islamorada, Cover to Cover in Tavernier Towne Shopping Center, the Book Nook in Key Largo and other bookstores from Key Largo to Key West.
Yglesias is now at work on a sequel, one that he hopes won’t take another five years to complete.
As for his first effort, he says, “If you have a little salt water in your blood, you’ll like this book.”
Bill Citara can be reached at 852-3216 or by e-mail at bcitara@keysreporter.com