Boats

As owners of one of the oldest ferry services in America, Tom and Judy Bixler steer their craft across the narrow Tred Avon River dozens of times each summer day to link two sleepy Chesapeake Bay towns known for crabs, not jihadists. "The ferry goes pretty slowly," Judy Bixler said of the seasonal service, which dates back to 1683. "It's not like someone could commandeer it and go anywhere." But under a little-known domestic security program, the Bixlers and about 1.

It's a spring-like morning at Lake Casitas and bass anglers sense that any day now the quarry they're so passionate about will begin to rise and aggressively feed. But anticipation of a new season is tempered because these anglers may soon be informed they can no longer launch their fancy boats at this spacious Ventura County reservoir. And the thought all of those fish going unhooked is so distressing that some would do almost anything to prevent this from happening.

Something was wrong with Sally Ann. ? For months, she sputtered and choked, and Barry Treahy's remedies weren't working. He kept changing her fuel filters. Then he rebuilt her carburetor. Finally, he cut into her gas tank, cleaned out the mysterious caramel-colored gunk and patched her up -- twice.? Disaster struck on a summer day in San Diego, when Treahy's beloved 20-foot fishing boat was parked street side with the outer hull plug open to drain any residual water.

Honduran and U.S. authorities seized at least 4.6 tons of cocaine on a boat in the Caribbean Sea and arrested six of the vessel's crew members. Honduran Navy Cmdr. Juan Pablo Rodriguez said Saturday that the cocaine was found on the Honduran-flagged Eclipse about 100 miles off the Honduran coast, in a joint operation with the U.S. Coast Guard. The area is near the Nicaraguan border. Rodriguez said the officials were still searching the boat.

A noisy fight over user fees has erupted on Idaho's scenic lakes and world-famous river rapids. It pits white-water river rafters, kayakers and canoeists against powerboaters. At issue is who pays for services such as docks, launching pads, parking lots, restrooms and search-and-rescue efforts. Motorboaters pay registration fees and gas taxes; others don't. Powerboaters complained to state officials that others were not paying their fair share of user fees.

Archaeologists will excavate hundreds of fragments of an ancient wooden boat entombed in an underground chamber next to Giza's Great Pyramid and try to reassemble the craft, Egyptologists announced Saturday. The 4,500-year-old vessel is the sister ship of a similar boat removed in pieces from another pit in 1954 and painstakingly reconstructed. Experts believe the boats were meant to ferry in the afterlife the pharaoh who built the Great Pyramid.

To the world it might be called a robot boat, but its proper name is the Unmanned Surface Vehicle, and the U.S. Navy expects it to be a major tool in countering what officials believe is a growing threat posed by quiet diesel-powered submarines owned by rogue nations. In advance of the official roll-out today, reporters were allowed to see the boat on Thursday at Naval Base Point Loma before it took a trial run on San Diego Bay.

Zac Sunderland is alone on a sailboat off Indonesia, five months into a journey around the world, when he senses the worst kind of danger. Pirates! A large wooden vessel in the distance, rising and falling over the swells, is clearly on intercept course. It does not show on the radar. It flies no flags. Its crew doesn't respond to radio calls. Zac alters course, the pursuers do likewise. What's a 16-year-old to do? Zac isn't sure, so, with his heart racing, he dials home on the satellite phone.

More than 300 illegal immigrants from Bangladesh and Myanmar were missing and feared dead off India's eastern coast after they jumped from a rickety boat that had been adrift 13 days and tried to swim to shore, an official said Monday. Authorities rescued 102 others on the boat. Officials were searching for the missing in the waters near the Andaman Islands, said Vijay Singh, an Indian coast guard spokesman.

A boat carrying Haitian migrants caught fire off the coast of the Dominican Republic, leaving at least eight passengers dead and 44 missing, a U.S. Coast Guard spokesman said. The boat was traveling from the northern Haitian town of Cap-Haitien to the Turks and Caicos islands when it caught fire about 25 miles north of the Dominican Republic, spokesman Petty Officer Barry Bena said. Two migrants were pulled from the water Wednesday and taken to a hospital in Montecristi.