Vagabond Cove

Tritt has owned the bait shop (a funky place crammed with everything from fishing lures to plastic dolls, famous for scenes in Miami Vice) for fifteen years. He says homeless people have been regulars at his store that long, "even before bumming was popular." He isn't impressed with the latest homeless population surge on the island. They come and go with the weather and natural disasters like Andrew, he says, but in the end there's little variation.

"It's really funny," echoes Barbara Kiers, who works at Tritt's shop. "They always come back, like a magnetic field. There's a tremendous appeal in that vagabond lifestyle."

"What's new," Tritt puts in, "is they really shouldn't permit them to put up those shacks."

Back at the encampment, Wilson Chichester is carting back a few bags to his raft/house with the striped parachute roof. Chichester describes himself as a signpainter and a musician -- and a distant relative of the legendary Sir Francis Chichester, who in 1966 singlehandedly sailed the yacht Gipsy Moth IV around the world. In the same tradition, this Chichester is excited about the prospect of launching his own vessel, though a bit vague about the research project he has in mind. He trudges through the sand and soil dressed in cutoff camouflage pants and a camouflage shirt with the sleeves ripped out. His woolly black and white beard is long and wild. "I feel like Robinson Crusoe," he pronounces solemnly. "It's a dream I've had all my life. I got the idea from Huck Finn.