Thinking Sideways: Disappearance of Jim Gray

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some love to some animals that need some love or whatever. Yea, hey there, welcome to another episode of Thinking Sideways on Joe, joined as always by and Steve and again Well I'm surprise, surprise, we got a mystery to talk about this week. We're gonna talk about the disappearance of Jim Gray, who you haul heard of. I'm sure very famous. He actually has had an impact, even if I have not heard of him. Very well known in the tech world, though he disappeared

almost ten years ago. But first of all, I want to thank Shimmy who suggested this like a couple of years ago. Um. But back to Jim Gray. He was a big pioneer in the modern tech industry. He worked at Bell Labs, IBM, Deck, Microsoft, God knows how many companies he worked for. Very well known guy, highly regarded, and he played a big part in developing technologies that we all used today. Believe it or not, he did. Yeah, right,

not directly. I mean I'm probably somewhere somehow, you know, you could connect him to it, but probably seven degrees of Jim Gray pretty much. Yeah. Jim was a sailor, had a forty ft sailboat. He boarded his sailboat the morning of January two thousand and seven, which was a Sunday, sailed out alone to the Golden Gates in San Francisco into the ocean. It was supposed to be a day trip to the far A Long Islands, which are twenty

seven miles west of San Francisco. It was a nice day call conditions, Sonny, but still Jim never made it back. He vanished without a trace, which is kind of odd. He didn't send it a stress signal. No wreckage or flots some from his boat was ever found, Like I said, he vanished without He totally did San Francisco Triangle. Yeah. Probably, I'd say it's kind of creepy, but Halloween mouth is over, so creepy's out. Strange is in. So that's what it is.

Strange strange November. Yeah, kind of head scratching November okay, but oh is that what it is? That or that's eighties? Yeah? I thought it was puzzling and now it's just scabies. Yeah, stay too fast, I know, always straight to the bottom. Uh. But when word got out that Jim Gray had disappeared, a lot of people in the tech world took notice. A lot of big names that you probably heard of, like Bill Gates, Sergey Brinn from Google, Larry Allison from Oracle,

and Bliss goes on what's his name from Amazon. Yeah. Anyway, they all wanted to help in anyway they could, and they all did. Search for Jim Gray was about as comprehensive as any search ever done for anybody. I think you guys read all that stuff that I said. It was big time search. Thousands of people were involving this in the end. Yeah, but still they didn't find him or a trace of them. So what happened? Did you skip out and everything sale to en Sonatas start a

new life. Did the illuminati get him? Did the crack and get him? Yes? Yeah, the crack can usually leaves wreckage. Yeah, yeah, so it wasn't the cracking, Probably not the acinnati. Maybe naughty kracken Uh, yeah, it's kind of repetitious. And yeah, okay, so what's I mean, what's the deal here? I mean, let's well, let's go back to square one. Um, so just just a little bi bio stuff on Jim, and I'm not going to go back to the day he was born. He was sixty three when he disappeared. On

his second marriage, his second wife was Donna. They had about twenty years of experienced sailing their their boat and together together and separately, and because Jim went a single hand occasionally, and they sorry you may not know this off the top of your head, how they it was a longer marriage. They you know, it was his second wife. But they were married for Yeah, they were married for

quite a while. I don't remember exactly, think they met. Yeah, and then they married just a couple of No, they got married really quick because you proposed on their third date. I remember because they were both you know, at this point they were God, they would have both been a fifty at that point, so there's no reason to muck about. But they were married for about ten years. It wasn't

as though two years in suddenly he disappears. It's like it's like, you know, they got married and they wanted their honey, even in Australia, and next thing, you know what I'm is dead. Yeah. Yeah, it's not like that at all. They were they alre together for a while. I don't know, it doesn't probably matter. I just wonder, but I don't think it does. Oh yeah, they're both their boat. You probably want to know. This was a C and C forty, which is a forty ft sloop

but manufactured in Canada. Sloop slop. Sloop is a single man of the most common way that you see it's a single mast is sailing sailboat. Yeah, and then it's it's the mast is stepped kind of forward. And then actually there's might have been a cutter because the cutter the stat it looks just like a sloop with the mast is stepped a little further back, and it's it's got two head sails instead of one. Okay, so I don't know, but it's just like when you think, like

when a kid draws a sailboat, this is what they're drawing. Yeah, one mast. Sorry, we don't all know body terms like you do. That's a good point. Okay, Yeah, I'm sorry about that. As I mentioned, Jim Gray was in the tech business at the time he disappeared. He was working for Microsoft. He lived in a house on Telegraph Hill in San Francisco. Really tough life. Yeah, I know, poor guy. By the way, they definitely the sort of thing you'd want to run away from. Yeah, exactly. They weren't renting,

by the way, they owned. I'm sure they did. Yeah, they did, which if you know San Francisco neighborhoods, that's a spending little name, even in or two. Definitely. Yeah, No, I did. Just for fun, I went out and Zillo looked listings of Telegraph Hills and I found it. I found that make you feel. I found I found one vacant lot. It was about fifteen hundred square feet for

only two hundred thousand bucks. But it was a vacant lot. Well, it was a vacant lot, but they had some pictures of it, and it was on the hillside about literally this steep fortified in other words. Yeah, and so that was the cheapest thinggraph hill. It's crazy. Yeah. Well, I mean, I guess if you have people literally Bill Gates being concerned personally for your well being, you're probably probably probably

influential and they're gonna pay some good money. Yeah. Uh. And they had, as I said, a forty foot sale boat now again tough life, which they kept board in a marina and what's called Gashouse Cove in San Francisco Bay. It's kind of just west several blocks of Gardelli Square. And I'm sure it costs you a boatload of bucks to keep your boat there. It's pretty clever name tenacious. Yeah. Yeah, I'm sure. I'm sure there was a little wordplay involved

in there too. Yeah. Like Jim Gray's mother had died a few months before, that was October two thousand and six, and on Sunday, January seven, he was planning to sail to the fair Long Islands to scatter her ashes. Apparently that was her wishes, was to have her ashes scattered there. Kind of ironic, and he disappears carrying out her last wishes. You know, it's kind of she probably wouldn't would have wished for something different if she had known, but you know,

hindsight and all that stuff. Right. Um, So he spent the previous night on the boat so we can get an early start. Seven am. He was ready to go. He called Donna at seven oh one am, and she was in with Wisconsin at that time, vacationally with some friends. It was like an annual. Yeah, she has some somebodies and they always took off Wisconsin, Wisconsin, Wisconsin, ski and ice fish and drink beer and I don't know, tip cows or whatever you do. Yeah, yeah, yeah, eat cheese.

But told her that he was going to go out scatter mom's ashes and that he was not going to disappear and turn up in Baja and her new name now not at all. Uh. So you cast us sometime between then and about seven fifteen and headed out from the arena. It's about two and a half miles west to the Golden Gate Bridge and then from there it's about two and a half more until you get to the open ocean, you know, and it seems like it's like the oceans right there. But actually now it's it's

not at all. It's it's a little ways away because it's a big river. Yeah, it's it's a big end like yeah, river, harbor, whatever you call it. But yeah, from there, like I said, about another twenty five miles maybe to to southeast Farrellin Island, which is the largest of the chain. There's several of the chain and southeast is the big one and it's the only one that has people on it, and those people are basically government employees who run sort of. But it's big enough for

people to live on. Yeah, but it's not like there's an economy. It's just their scientists who are basically gathering wildlife information and stuff like that. But it's not just like, you know, a rock, like you know, it's not like the islands we have in the middle of our river. No, right, No, it's bigger than that. Yeah, it's big enough to build, big enough to you could build a lighthouse on it and have your like your bigger than a breads appear. Yeah,

it wouldn't fit in a bread box. No, it's it's big. Actually, I think actually I think it does have a lighthouse on it. I didn't think of it. Yeah, but anyway, that's southeast fair Long Island. Um. So Jim calls Donna again about ten thirty, and the callers relates to a singular cell tower in Daily City, which is south of San Francisco, and singular as in like a T and

T singular. It's not like singlar. Yeah, is that singular? Singular? Singular? Okay, that would have been due east of his position, therefore the closest one because he was a way out to sea and Dalli's dally Cities, Daily City, Daily City. Sorry, yeah, that's it's on mainland. Yes, it's just south and on the west side of the peninsula kind of west station. Not not real west, but you know, yeah, yeah, and he's he was almost out of cell range and he just called to say the usual, you know, which he

scattering Mom's ashes. Uh. And by the way, if I don't come back, it's because I've been Davy Jones locker, not in a brothel. And it's not a no, no, not at all. And I and actual, by the way, I'm just kidding. He called just say the weather was really good, and probably just to check in. You say, like this is my progress. Everything's going well. Yeah, yeah, he said, I'm basically out kind of passed the last

the last bootie marker for the channel. Uh. There's a little ambiguity there because apparently it's a fairly complicated situation. There's three channels that come together from the ocean, north, south, and west all come together into one like nine mile channel that goes all the way to the Golden Gate Bridge, and so all the all the big incoming ships have

to follow that ship that incoming channel. So there's a lot kinds of booty markers out there, and so there's a little ambiguity about exactly which booe marker he was talking about. But I can see that. Yeah, there were people that went back and tried to reassemble it that really really intense timeline that like you know, noted all of his movements, and they could never totally resolve exactly

where he was. But between him saying that and and between the cell phone pinging that tower in Daily City, it does appear that he really was on the boat. It's not like he said he was getting on the boat and then just nipped out and jumped on a bus and left town and they scuttled, scuttled the boat in the middle of San Francisco Bay, swam and swam

ashore and then just like left town. Not not no, I mean, I guess I can see bull ways why it's worth discussing this second call, because he just called her at seven to basically say, Hey, it's looking like a nice day. This is what I'm going to do, you know, love you whatever. And I don't know their relationships, so I don't know if they were the kind of people.

I have some friends who are on the phone with their husbands like every three hours, you know, they just like they call at lunch, they call at their break, they talk on their phone all the time, which seems excessive to me, but that but I mean, that's how some people are. So if they were that kind of couple, it does make sense that he would call her again and saying like, hey, I'm leaving cell phone range. Yeah. I don't know that they were totally that kind of couple,

but I think they were. I think they were in great terms. I think they really care for each other, and so not at all surprising. And by the way, he was on a sailboilt in the Millinoral out in the ocean with not a whole lot to do. So it's like, hey, why don't I make some phone calls? You know I can't. I mean, I see that too.

I guess what I would say is like, if it were I know my fiance well enough to know that if this were us, he would have called me at seven and said, Okay, I'm going to do this today, so I'm gonna be out of cellphone range the entire day and would have expected me to just wait until he called me when he got back to land at the end of the day and just assume everything is fine, right,

And so there are people like that too. So but on the other hand, I can also see how I don't think people might think, well, this is like the last time he ever called his wife, he was trying to say goodbye to her. It wasn't the last phone call he made. Not the important point. It's not, but it is also, you know, I can I guess I can see why it's worth discussing either way. Yeah, no,

I mean it could be read that way. Although he didn't say anything that really stood out in her mind later, I didn't say anything like honey, you know I love you. So much. I mean, maybe he did, but especially it was just like, hey, weather's great, you know. And and then she says, you're wearing her harness because you know, in your single hand and you're supposed to wear a harness that you don't fall off, so don't fall overboard,

and he said he was wearing his harness. One other thing that man may not be relevant at all is she said she didn't hear any engine noises, so he was just under stale, not running the diesel they have, they have a diesel motor on these things. Uh. But that's about it for that phone call. And then he also called his daughter at ten thirty eight. That was the last phone call. She had recently had a son that would be Jim's grandson. Yeah, and maybe that's why

she didn't pick up the phone. But he did leave her a voicemail saying kind of the same thing. You know, whether it's good, it's gonna go scattered grandma's ashes. There's dolphins all around me. It's beautiful. Everything's the worst beautiful out here, and uh and on and on and on and by the way, goodbye forever, I love you now, just kidding. He didn't sit so you could read that that way. He's saying goodbye to the most important people's life.

He's calling them on the phone. He's gonna go kill himself. Yeah, maybe I don't, Or you could again, like you said, you could read it as he was bored in the middle of the ocean. Yeah, I thought, what the hell you know, I'm about to run pick a couple of phone calls. Yeah, why not? Again? You know, it comes down to get I guess those different personality types where I would definitely be that kind of person who would just be like I am bored with Heck, I gotta

call some people. I gotta talk some people. I do not like being alone, and I just like make all these phone calls and talk to all these people. To turn off my cell phone. An, I mean you would have because I know you well enough to know you would have, like you would have placed that last call and turned it off and been like, this is amazing, this ocean is beautiful. I love this. It's the best. So I guess, you know, part of it comes down to personality types pretty much. So it's hard to read

into this without knowing him. Yeah, it is hard to say if that means anything. I don't think it does, but you know, we'll we'll say, we'll talk about that in theories generally, I mean, obviously, and when people disappear, suicide is always considered to be a possibility, of course. Yeah, suicide is considered like almost in almost any case. Yeah really, Yeah, Well, anyway, so we'll talk about that more of the series. Sorry, I'm just trying to set the framework. No, that's totally cool.

So back to Jim in his little sailing adventure. Apparently the last contact with the cell terra was am Jim's about cruised out of cell phone range and he was on his own, and that's expected, right, that's about the expected timeline. Yeah, and yeah, that's that's not unusual at all. Um, Presumably there was shipping traffic because, as I said, three sea lanes coming together, a lot of big poor a lot of traffic. So there were ships out there. I

had no doubt about it. I'm sure they weren't whirling around like snowflakes or anything like that, but there were there were something. Oh yeah, he totally he sailed. He's sailed out there many times. But that's the that's as far as Jim's course. After that, it's pretty much unknown.

It's assumed that he made it actually out to the island because a biologist named Brett Hardel was living working on Southeast Farrellin Island at the time and he reported this was after his disappearance hit the news and and afterwards he thought about it, said, you know, I think I saw his boat. Yeah, he said, he's seen a boat that might have been Jim. So he said he's seen either it was either a red or a brown hale. It was hard to tell because it was like over

a mile away, so it was really hard. Jim Greece boat was had a red hole, had a red hall with kind of a white race, yeah kind of thing. And depending on the photos sun photos, it looks kind of like really bright red. Other photos it looks kind of more ketchup e colored, but you look like getting certain photos to just depends on the photo. Hard to say. But but so it either had a rhet or a

brown hole. Uh. It was between southeast Froline Island and the middle fair Allone Island, which is two miles northwest. He also said he wasn't sure what direction it was going in. It was you know, again he didn't have any reason to think anything unusual. Was he was another boat on the water exactly, and so he glanced saw this boat out there, So he wasn't sure what direction it was going, and he he was thinking maybe it

was going west or maybe north. He didn't have binoculars, he didn't actually spend a lot of time looking at it, and so and he also, by the way, it wasn't wearing a watch. Didn't know was the time. He said, it could have anywhere been anywhere between noon and three pm, So he didn't know, uh, And after he thought about it, and again this could be his memory playing tricks too, because I know my memory messes would be sometimes thought about it hard and that the boat mainsail was up

and the jib was furled. The jib is the sail in the front, so that's the mainsail, the one in the back, and then the jib is a small triangular one up in the front. When they say furled, that means just you know, rolled up, folded up, whatever. And what is that? What does that mean? That means it's not up it's not no, I'm sorry, but like if

like why would you have the jim furled? One reason I could think of is if you have if you're getting enough wind anyway, and you're single handedly and excuse me,

you're single handed handing the single handing the boat. You tried to say, it is a little it is less work because you, yeah, when you got it, when you when you got attack, and say you're heading forty five degrees off the wind, when you got attack, you bring it, bring it around, and all you gotta do is just remember the duck when the main boom kind of swinging back across you, and then it will and that's it.

Whereas if if you have a jib up, then what that means what you gotta do is when you attack, you gotta get up there, let the rope loose. And actually probably could do all this from the cock because I think this boat was set up for single handed sailing.

I would assume, yeah, you have to let the one race. Yeah, so you gotta let the one rope loose on the one side, and then when the jim comes around on the other side, you gotta take it back in and wind it up on the winch and tighten into everything. So if you're feeling a little lazy, then with the mainsail again, all you gotta do is just let that boom go boom outside and over to the other and

that's it. And so you would do that if you were, like, if it were leisure and you were getting enough wind and you weren't in a hurry, and yeah, exactly, and if you didn't have any hands, and of course, you know, if you're out there with some people and you're all kind of bored, and actually that kind of stuff can be kind of fun occupied. But apparently he wasn't really

into it that day. But that's okay. He wasn't a hug if that was even him, which we don't really know, do Yeah, But anyway, so Brett remembered he thought at least that the mainsail was up and the jib was furled. Therefore, he decided then he must have seen the boats starboard side, and that means that the boat must have been moving north and he saw it. So therefore, okay, it maybe it rounded southeast Firline Island was heading between the two and headed north. But again, you know, I'm not sure

I trust. It's not saying I don't trust Brett, but memory is a funny thing. It also could have totally been a different boat. It could have been a different boat, and it was over a mile away, so all these all these factors make me question this one just a little bit. But it sounds like it probably was his boat. But he's not the only person who came forward saying he thought he might have seen the boat. And there were other boats seeing that day. By the way that

this is just on the Redway. There was another they found a sailor that was on a whale watching boat in the areas. So three sail boats that day, two white ones and one red, so that're a red one might have been Jim, but also might not would have put it in a different place. Uh huh, But it's not a how to present certain. But anyway, um, but that probably it was probably where the last sightings of it.

Donna reported Jim missing to the coast Guard that night about eight thirty or so when he didn't come back again. She's in Wisconsin, but she was expecting him to call, so she calls the marina the Harbormasters of Birth. The sailboat ain't back, so she calls the coast guard and reports and missing. They started their search. Within a few hours.

They had a couple of boats out. Eventually a helicopter and to see one thirty plane took off around midnight one am and they started scouring the area between the Farrell Long Islands at the Golden Gate. And of course they had like you know, radar and stuff like that in infra red, so you know, there really wasn't a purpose to going out and in the dark. You use things beside your eyeballs, Yeah, you kind of have to. Yeah, But they were out there looking and of course they

didn't find anything. They kept adding resources to the search. They searched for about five days and yeah, and they kept adding more resources to it. Eventually they scoured the California coast from the Oregon border south to about Santa Barbara, which is quite a long stretch. Yeah, and voters were alerted to look for wreckage and they did. There see one thirty planes flew grid patterns like further and further

out from shore. And I've got I've got a map here some of the some of the grids that they did, you guys want to see in this one and these are some of the grids. It's just that they did. Yeah, so you guys can see that now you can't see it out there. But but you can hear it, but you can hear it, you can totally hear it. But they flew a lot of great patterns, uh, and they pretty comprehensively, you know, covered the area. Didn't find anything,

which I mean that seems unusual to anything. Yeah, exactly, because at the boat sank. Yeah, there's floats exactly. Everything on the boat is designed to float. Yeah, I know, I know. That's what they call flots of me yea hopefully, which is saying sailories for floaty bits. And there should have been at least a couple of boat Christians or something. And when they were out there, they spotted other wreckage

that was from other boats or the ships. They found other stuff, just nothing from his boat, which is nothing at all. So they were able to find small objects floating in the in the ocean, but nothing from his boat at all, which was a little weird. I think they covered something like forty square miles of ocean. Yeah, quite a bit. But meantime, Jim Gray's high tech friends have heard about all this. They're starting to getting involved and I'm gonna really shorten this down quite a bit.

Microsoft provided pretty much unlimited funding from the private searches that they did, and they did a lot of stuff including flying over with airplanes and helicopters and stuff, and eventually I think his wife hired a ship that had site scanning sonar and all kinds of resources like that to scan the entire ocean bottom and everything in the air where they could. Yeah, there is a continental shelf out there. Yeah. Where was James Cameron? Yeah, I he

must have been awesomewhere making a movie. Yeah, Microsoft and Google, though they worked together, they get their hands on as much satellite imagery as they could. The Canadian Space Agency diverted satellite equipped with radar to fly over the search area to private satellites from Digital Globe and g OI were also repositioned. That's crazy. Yeah, I know, that's a lot of resources. NASA sent an e R two plane, which I guess is a kind of like a commercial

spy plane. It's a trainer that they use and yeah, and it's a quickly that's like a lot of resources. I hope you guys know that. When I mean, if my thing that I expect at least this kind of reaction totally totally when they want to be Ye Devon from thicking sideways is missing. Oh my god, called Google, called Amazon. Call, Yeah, he's down at the Yeah, noil mobile art will totally get it to people. I placed twenty five cents for the search start a kick Starter. Yeah.

But of course at this point though, they have a huge amount of satellite imagery to look for, to look through, I should say, uh so, some of the mucky MUCKs at Amazon decided to because of course they were involved in this too, they decided to use this Amazon service called Mechanical Turk, which is my favorite mechanical Yeah. When I was when I first moved back to Portland and was like super underemployed, I did Mechanical Turking for many Yeah. I just like the history of the name. I love

the history of the name too. But yeah, I was, like I was, it's a pretty good service overall, but definitely for something like this where you can just get a ton of volunteers to just our stuff. Yeah, exactly,

And that's kind of what this is for. Is like, you know, it's like when you have something to do that it requires a lot of repetition, but you don't want to sit down and actually build machines to do it or write a fantastic amount of computer software well, and it would take way longer than it would to just exactly to the public. It also turns out that machines are only so good. They will do what you tell them, but they won't make any leaps. Have you?

Did you hear this stuff about all of this imagery from space that they were having some software applications scan looking for new planets and stuff like that, or or the looking for changes in the intensity of stars, because then they could tell us something had passed in front of it, like a planet or or whatever. So the software is returning nothing, basically nothing, and they're like, well,

this is a little weird. They give it to all these volunteers, and these volunteers start finding thousands of these instances because the computer it was doing what it was told and it wasn't saying, well let me check five you know however much ago, and so it's that. So it's always better sometimes with things like this to actually have a person to do it who does pattern recognition

much better than a machine. Well, this is the sort of thing also that it would have been really nice to have been able like two thousand sevens little too early, but if it happened today, like they would mobilize Reddit and web sleuths. Right, those are two communities where if you just say, hey, we're trying to find this person, here's like literally millions of images. Please you guys go through this and see if you can find any anomalies.

Those two communities together are so amazing. I mean, to a fault, Like oftentimes there's a lot of false stuff that happens out of that. We've talked about this long, but I mean that's the sort of thing that would have been great in this situation as well. But I think the Amazon thinking to use mechanical Turk community for this sort of thing is phenomenal, made a lot of sense. It's crazy. So they dimmied up all these thousands and

thousands of images and just parceled out. They put out a call for volunteers and they got like twelve volunteers, which is pretty good. It spent a weekend looking to you about thirty thousand square miles of water. Then they came up with a few possible settings. Uh, and then of course they had you know, again, this is where it's it's good to have high tech buddies involved because the problem is it's the pictures were taken like well it's Monday morning. The pictures were taken last Friday or

Thursday or whatever. So so they got to use these digital wizards come in and say, okay, well, you know, we're gonna like write this software in a real huge her rate to chart the ocean currents and the winds and everything else, you know, and figure out where those things would be now. But alas, even without that, when they got out to check out the few possibilities they

found in the photographs, there was nothing there. Um, And I'm really kind of understating the complexity of the search and all the technical expertise it was brought to bear. It's a really good article and Wired I sent you guys a link to it. I don't know if you guys read it. I love Wired articles on things like this really, I mean, like, oh yeah, but they're really well written all the time, and they go into such incredible detail. But I also still feel like they totally

understand everything they're saying. You know, it's rare to find a Wired article on something that we're covering, but like when we do. Anytime any of you links to Wired it, I'm just like, yes, that is the one. If I like, if I only have to read one, it's going to be that one. What is the other one that that does a really good job that I like? Is it

is Motherboard under Vice? Now? Is that motherboard is a website and they have all these long form and I think they're on I think they're part of Vice now. But I always like there's because it's the same thing. It's just like laid out so much detail. There. There was the Lizan Chris Kramer's one. I think that was. I think it was. I think it might have even

been wired. It's really a lot, but anyway, I just yeah, I think definitely if you guys are interested in this article, now, that's a good article and it's it's got lots and less of detail about the search and all the various people that were involved. But the point is for me in our story here is that when the Coastguard devotes the resources that they did, and they devoted a lot of resources to look for Jim's boat for a single person. By the way, the coast Guard, they're they're good at

what they do. Yeah, like it's their jobs. It's like they have one job exactly. I mean, those guys are really the coast. Yeah, yeah, there, and I guess that's two jobs. Yeah, but then they're also joined by what Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Oracle, NASA, you know, and it granted we're talking about the two thousand seven versions of these things, not the two thousand and seventeen versions of these things, but still into two thousand and seven, they are giants. They are, Oh yeah,

they were giant back then. And even with all of that, they just didn't find literally a single that didn't find squat. Yeah, they didn't, not even like an arm floaty, not even an arm floaty, not even not even a beer cozy. Yeah it seems crazy, Yeah, not a thing. Doesn't that seem crazy to you? Steve? Well, yeah, it's a little puzzling. Doesn't it seem crazy to you? Joel? It does seem a little crazy? Yeah, a little bit. So what the

hell happened? What happened to Jim Graha? That's tenacious? Really? How could they have vanished without a trace? Because I gotta admit that's a little spooky. I know it ain't Halloween, but it's still a little spooky. Aliens I like it. Yeah, Okay, they're done, not done properly today for that for that statement, true, Okay, let's talk about some theories. Um, I'm gonna put these out of no particular order, really them not from bad

to good or good to bad. But starting from the front, let's talk about suicide very briefly, because I don't think this is a good theory. I agree, Um, yeah, I just don't think so. There was everybody knew him, said now, it didn't seem to fit his personality, the type of guy that he was, Yeah, not at all. And he showed no signs of depression. Actually actually was you know, very active and had very with it and YadA, YadA, YadA. So uh yeah, no, I don't, I don't. I think

we could just ignore this one. Another one that's been put forward by some of some of Jim's follow sailors. This actually did appear in a few articles was Orca's. They thought that perhaps some Orca's killer whales, Yeah, killer whales. Uh, the stook the tenacious for a dolphin. But actually yeah, one of their fellow voters did just say he had

a near miss with an orca at one time. But I think probably it might have been the orc It was just playing chicken with him because I don't think yeah, yeah, they can be Okay, did either of you? God I did. This was a movie from like the seventies or eighties, and it may well have just been called Orca. But there was a killer whale movie where an orca chased a boat and eventually sank it to take revenge inge out on it. And I think these people saw that movie.

There's there's only as far as a wonderable movie. By the way, Yeah, I only know one documented incident of an orca attacking a whale and sinking it, which is in ninety seventy two near the Galapagos Islands. And but but otherwise attacked by wild killer whales on humans, I mean the ones that the ones that are in captivity, that's a whole different ball of wax. Well, yeah, sometimes they kill their trainers, yeah exactly, But the actual wild ones, uh,

you know, it's extremely rare, I mean really really rare. Well, their prey is like half the size if that of a boat, Like whales, aren't that, yeah, you know, one to two percent the size? Yeah, they're not that Yeah, yeah, I mean I think actually, I think a boat of forty boat is probably almost about the size of I don't know. I'm sorry, We're gonna get like a million emails. I don't know how big orcas are, but I would say it's closer to the size of an orca than

it is something that an orca would kill. Yeah, exactly. You want to say, if you want to sing that thing as an orca, you can't pick up an orca tire iron and it just hammer on it with your head, your forehead on it. Yeah, pretty good teeth. But yeah, I think that's it's silly. Yeah, I think it's absurd. I don't think you're silly. Theories Yeah, most right here Momobie Dick, the musical Mobe Dick. It's a whale of a tail. I never heard good singing, but yeah, good singing,

but no good singing, but no contract. Another theory that's out there. Or rogue wave you got you've heard of these things that the waves do go rogue. Um we talked about that in a lighthouse thing once, right, Yeah, many many Joe's stories, because Joe's stories always take place at sea. Oh yeah, just about yeah, yeah, so roague. Well, you know, whatever happened bad childhood, it goes rogue. But at the same time, nobody else reported any you know, there was a lot of traffic in the area. Nobody

else reported a rogue wave out there. But well, the thing is about roal hook waves is that they're unexpected and they don't have to be extremely long lived. I mean, if it's something that's coming in off of the out off of the continental shelf, is looking for that word, and it's his boat, and then before it goes to another gets spotted by another boat, that's entirely possible which point his boat if it was under sail or under motor.

Under it's a diesel engine, Yeah, yeah, suddenly, god, I really, But if it was under motor, it would have just under power. It would have just kept going, yeah, which would explain a lot of things. Yeah, And actually it was a it's a ballast to sail boats, so you know, it's even if it had actually turned turtle, which is sailories were just turning all the way over, it's gonna come back up. Yeah, it's got a four time keel

on the bottom of it. This kind of boat is meant to be really hard to what is it when they call when you thank you leans way over Yeah, it's it's actually really hard to do their boat for that kind of thing. And so yeah, I'm not really buying the roadway. I mean, the roadwave could have swept Jim overboard, but I think the boat probably would have survived it. But he was wearing a harness. He was wearing her harness. He said that to his wife. I have I have told my wife I was using a

lot of safety equipment. Yes, honey, I am wearing my safety glasses. That's right now. You asked for pictures. Yeah, this stuff just sort of took a detour around my safety glasses and better stuff of my It went through him. Yeah, the road wave, I'm not buying it. Another another serious out there that his fellow boaters again put out once some reporters will buying and asked them what they thought had happened. Was that, Yeah, maybe he just checked out,

decided to start a new life. They thought they thought he was probably down in Bajau just drinking Margaret read is and you know, reading the papers about himself and having a good laugh about the whole thing. And maybe he repeinted his boat, uh painted black white whatever, and just changed his name and he's you know, even living, even living today and somewhere in Mexico. I kind of like this theory. I tend to like theories like this

because it's like the least painful for everyone. Yeah. Actually, I'm gonna wait till Joe gets to the end. I have some thoughts on this. I actually like this one. He liked to say. Okay, well, yeah, I mean and he's certainly he's Jim is or was a clever guy, depending on whether he's alive or dead, and a very smart guy. If anybody could have snucked away, pooled everybody and changed his name and been in hiding forever, you know, it probably would have been him. And there is some

support on on Reddit believe it or not. In maywelve, which was three months after Jim Gray was declared legally dead because it's a five year five year waiting period in California, apparently, Yeah, and I used by the name of quote Tom Gold unquote posted the message saying that he quote made it appear to my family that I died on boat trip in the Pacific unquote. And he also said that he was quote dead dead in the United States unquote, and that he was living in Kenya

under a false name. This guy could have just pulled the Rebecca Cormian. Yeah. I will say Jim does not seem like the kind of guy who have referred to his expensive sailboat as a boating trip a boat trip. Yeah. Yeah, it seems like he would have said, like I faked a death on my sailing. Maybe maybe if if Tom Gold was indeed claimed, wasn't he trying to pretend to be Jim Gray Although he didn't actually literally claim to be Jim Gray. He maybe it may have been channeling

a different narrative boys, so that that would explain that. Okay, But there was a there was a rhetor eye that it rehetoria hddordye whatever. Yeah, this guy actually did a little research. Again, he didn't say it was Jim Gray. Tom Gold did not say that, but he compared his statements to the circumstances around various voting disappearances and came up with, guess what, Jim Gray. It matched that case, and no other one really matched as well. So it was Tom Gold actually Jim Gray and the Tom the

account that used the name Tom Gold. They referred to it as a throw. It was created and then disappeared. I love you guys so much. Not everybody is a Reddit aficionado, DEVI like, will you tell me the booty churms? But everybody knews ridded. No, I just like that. You're like, I think they referred to it as a throwaway account. I can't remember what the article say. No, I know. It's just the number of accounts on riddit that are like throwaway one to twelve is like astonishing because everybody

has a throwaway account. See, I know That's why I love you guys. You got to throw away account? Yeah? Is that kind of like a throwaway piece at the cops carry Yeah? Yeah, same thing. Can't could be ditched, It can't be traced you Yeah, actually is? Yeah? Yeah, I like it. I gotta get any one of them. Yeah, back to our friends. Yeah. As far as I know, he never posted again, at least not under that name. The thing about it is is, like, you know, you

guys might disagree. I think that Jim Gray, excuse me, had nothing to gain by starting over again in a foreign country with nothing, although maybe he would have thought of it as a huge adventure. I don't know, but you know what he walked away from? What is what he's walking away from is he He had his wife, friends, family, he had his new grandson, he had money, he had he liked his career. He loved his career from everything I've heard, uh, And he had a house on Telegraph Hill. Hello,

I mean do you want I'm just gonna go. And I just all I want to say about this is that, like, no matter how good things look on paper, Yeah, we never know what an individuals experiencing. Yeah, I mean you guys know this. Like I just I quit my job recently, and it was like I was getting paid way more than I should have been getting paid it and like all of these different things. And I quit my job because like on paper, it was perfect, it was awesome,

it was a really sweet deal. But I just hated it. And I would say that that there there's no way to be able to tell as an outsider. Even probably his wife probably as long because he probably wasn't wouldn't express that to her. There's no way for somebody who isn't him to know exactly what was going on in his life and when he was feeling. And maybe it

is I mean, you know, we don't know. He might have had a private account that he had what like a cool million dollars that he took out in cash, and he took with him to Mexico and he's been living large. You know, you go to Thailand a million dollars left last you a lifetime. I mean yeah, I mean really, there are so many places, so we don't

know for sure. I'm not saying this is like a perfect theory that like, but I will say that I agree that on paper his life seems absolutely phenomenal and perfect, but you just never really know, you know, I wouldn't say his life was effect he had boat. I mean, perfect is like a four hundred Okay, on paper, his life is pretty dang good. Yeah, it's pretty good. But you know, I guess it's unless you live his life and you are the exact same human as him, it's

hard to tell. That's why I liked this theory. I also like this theory because it means he's like just still alive somewhere, like having a good time. So Devin, Yeah, I'm really kind of upset. Are you hacking my email? Because I wrote all this out and you just stole the entire thing. You wrote out the story about me quitting my job. But I was actually going down the

same road. But I mean I think I was going to say, and you touched on this briefly, is that if he indeed was fed up with it all, and we've all sat around and said, you know, God, I'm tired of this crap, well he could have very easily have said, you know, in a year, I'm out of here. And every week he went down to the A T M. And he got three hundred bucks in cash, and every

day for a year he did that. And I'm not going to do the bath on that because we got out well for doing that kind of math off the back of my real quick. But the point is he could have a huge wad of cash sitting in the hall of that boat. So when he took off, he paid you know, somebody a hundred gray or had he

would have had a hundred grand. Yeah, he'd had a bunch of money on him, paid him, like you said, to do whatever, and then just took off because a hundred thousand dollars is a whole lot of pacos, And he just goes and does whatever he wants, and it's it's completely it's a lack of stress at that point. I mean, his life may have been unbearably stressful, and you go, you know what, I'm gonna get up when I want to get up. I'm gonna go sleep and I want to sleep. I'm gonna drink as much as

I want or eat as much as I want. Nobody's gonna tell me I don't have anything to hold me back, and just I'm only gonna make it for five more years, but hey, they're gonna be Scott free. Five years could be um. So I just I don't think it's as dismissable as you do because it looks it, but that doesn't mean it is good. Yeah. Yeah. On the other hand, guy Kawasaki, who's this like, he's this guy who goes around and speaks all the time, but he was like

one of the Steve Jobs Apple and innovators. You know. He talks a lot about his time in early Apple and how it was just like this. They flew first class everywhere. It was this free for all. So, I mean, I I don't know that his life. Yeah, I don't know. It's hard. This is one of those theories right where it's I'm just I keep arguing both sides, but yeah, account it counts for a few things, you know, and I probably didn't mention that there was. He had two

radios on the boat. It still did not manage to get a discress a distress call out if he was thinking or anything like that. Didn't manage to deploy his life raft, which I think what he had, it didn't He didn't have the automatic the kind of deploy and automatically to flight. When he hit the water, he had to kind of had to pull it out. And yeah, yeah, I did not know, not even that sick a cord to it and actually like stop it with your foot, you know, use a pump it up now and stuff.

So and then his EPERB didn't go off, which is this thing that goes off when it hits when you rote sinks, it deploys when it hits the water, and little signal. Right, yeah, it sends out a signal that didn't go off, and a good records and so the whole suicide thing would explain all of that, explain to lack of distress called wreckageper signal everything the other life Yeah, but there's an explain that though. But there are other

things that might explain that too. But this is this is the easy one to explain on that because it explains why none of that stuff was triggered. Yeah, that's that's is Yeah, it does. And another one that might explain that is our next theory. So I'm not gonna I'm gonna give this one for me to leave you to start in your life. I'm going to give it a fail, but a soft fail, like a D. Yeah. Yeah, I give it a D minus, like an almost failing

but like still kind of passing. Uh. And it's I think it's possible a two and a half to five stars. That's a thinking sideways. And I mean and it could be too that, you know. I mean, he had so much to live for you as his new grandson, but maybe the new grandson finally came in along and then the kid was just ugly. He just decided, Okay, I'm not cut out to be a grandpa. I'm really But I'm still gonna give it. The next theory is he had some sort of accident or something that incapacitated him,

like a heart attack or a stroke. He fell and smashed his head and then that was like just basically didn't quite kill him, but it knocked him out for a long period of time, long enough, but maybe just fell overboard, you know, I mean, any one of these things. The tenasitions was equipped with an autopilot, and I pretty good that Gray would have probably at some point during the day have gotten bored with steering the boat and

turned the auto pilot on and so. And obviously if he wanted to say, go below and go to the head, maybe make some tea, he would he would have to set the autopilot. And so what if the auto pilot was on and he becomes incapacitated for some reason, like I said, a heart attack, whatever, and the boat was just to say, set to go west and it just keeps on going west. Yeah. Yeah, you know, someday this is we're gonna be talking about this once driverless car

has become a thing. Driving to the Grand Canyon, well, the car was programed to just drive west. Yeah, I know exactly. So yeah, I mean I could just see that the final pull one over and they'll have a mummy beyond the wheel. They found that they actually found the Saale boat. Just last year. They had this German guy who was down in the Yeah below it actually was momified. Yeah did you see that article? Yeah, yeah, it was creepy as hell had dried him out like

a prune. Uh yeah, he was just touched over his chart table and yeah, well I would say, you know, the sort of idea of a heart attack or a stroke or something like that. Again, if if we're talking about somebody who's in the tech sector in the early two thousands, he you know, he's working for Microsoft. He's apparently like super brilliant. It is possible also that it was super super stressful, and he know it's possible he

just you know, keeled over on on accident. Yeah, I mean, or maybe even like I know, his motor wasn't running. I was going to say, like even like a don't know that the engine was running, you can do bolt at the same time. So I mean that's one of the things that I've always been like, Well, he may

not have been up there just using the sale. He may have just said screw it, turned on the engine, maybe turn on the engine and turn on the out of pilot you know, and everything, and just had the whole kid, you know thing going and just said I'm going to take a nap, you know or whatever and have a drink. Yeah. Yeah, and then he has a stroke and bam, next thing you know, well, you know

he's dead in his boat. As a thousand miles away from shore, that would put the boat pretty solidly outside of any kind of search area, right, Well, it depends on when they started searching and how far out they went and the time. It depends on a lot of factors. I was going to talk about that a little bit more later. It just depends on how far out they

flew in searches. But it explains why no trace of the boat was found because well, it didn't sink, so there wouldn't be any flotsam, there wouldn't be any distress signal or anything like that. Eventually there would be flotsam, but by that point, no woudy, you'll be looking for it all by that time too. Assuming the boat goes out of say a thousand or two miles into the Pacific and then sinks, well the plots are making to wind up at the California coast. Most likely not likely

at all. But of course it could be that the boat would just sail across the Pacific without mishap like like, that's kind of unlikely. Uh, These kind of the kind of Autopiloti's got there's two kinds of autopilots that you can get in your sail boat. One is the kind that uses no power. It uses like a vein, like a wind vein, and you know, the kind of talking about yeah, yeah and so somehow yeah and so. What that does is that maintains that maintains your heading relative

to the wind. So if the wind is coming straight from the north and your head in the west, it's ninety degrees and then the wind shifts, say forty five degrees, while your heading is gonna shift forty five degrees, but it's gonna basically keep keeping in the same ankle relative

angle relative to the wind. The other kind is what he had on the Tenacious, was the electrical electronic kind where you can set a compass bearing and then what it will do is it will actually it's connected to the rudder the main mast and everything, and so it will turn the rudder and make sure to keep you going in the right direction. And if the wind shifts, it will actually let out row up or pull rope

in or what or whatever. Yes, very fancy, a little harder on the batteries, I mean, so you know, if he did have the diesel going when he had his accident or whatever it was, his mishap, then obviously the autopilot is going to keep going a lot longer because otherwise the autopilot is going to drain the battery. And I don't know how quickly, you know. Actually I actually called a sailing place here in town and they were busy or promised to call me back, and they didn't.

But yeah, I know, surprised, but there I was gonna ask you that how long would your battery go for? And probably not that long because listen, I've been on houseboats where the refrigerator, dang your drained the batteries overnight. Uh huh, I mean they're they're typically the equivalent of three to six car batteries linked together. Yeah, yeah, and so I and again I don't I don't think that the autopilot would have been nearly as big of a

drain on the batteries of a a refrigerator. But it's still would have a little radio probably, yeah, And apparently a lot of it depends on just conditions. Uh. If if, for example, it's just a steady light wind and everything like that, the autopilot doesn't have to do not to do much, but if on the other hand, of the winds gusting changing all the time, it's it's just working constantly.

It's gonna train your battery quickly. Then again, though, if you turn on your diesel and your diesel is going'm recharging the battery, then hey, you could actually go for a couple of days, maybe several days. Maybe. Yeah, So I gotta get the one maybe like a C plus yeah, C plus B minus something like that. Yeah, uh, maybe even a B. I don't know, So I think I think be you're getting into a much higher than a maybe range there. Yeah, you're getting on a weird curve. Yeah.

I would say a C is like a maybe a b's like a probably a like like two or three quarter stars. Yeah, i'd say this one like a generation why kind of Yeah, reading what I said the two and a half was us very confused. Somebody's gotta like, like publish a table that's got a conversion table for all the different podcasts in their rating systems. Yeah, so

what's next next? This is another theory that the coast Guard had they actually checked this one now, which is that he could have been run over by a freighter, which does happen. I mean yes, but yeah, yeah, well, you know, there's a lot of traffic. Like I said, there's actually there's four major pote ports in San Francisco Bay. There's like San Francisco, and there's the big ones a

couple more, and then there's what else. There's like Sacramento and and there's stock there's a whole boatload of them up and down the coastline. Yeah. But but just in the bay or through the bay, there's six ports there. H So that's a huge amount of ship traffic coming and going and so, and it's not unheard of for a big ship to run a smaller one. Of course, the rule is the smaller ship has to make way. Yeah, yeah,

because you're the more agile of the two. So little ship get out of way, big ship keep going through. That's how it happened. There's a hundred percent of the time these things remind me of that story where it's like the U. S. Navy ship and the what turns out to be a lighthouse. Yeah, we are the U. S. Navy and they're like, okay, we're a lighthouse, so it's your choice. Yeah. That always reminds me of this. I'm

so sorry. Yeah, there's but speaking but yeah, I mean if speaking of the U. S. Navy though, I mean the US NABE just recently had proved it it was having a hard time avoiding itself avoiding collisions too. I mean, you've heard about those two well publicized incidents, yea, extremely well pubblicized. And apparently other people have a hard time avoiding huge ships because there's even a book written about it. I don't know if you guys have heard of that one,

How to Avoid Chots, How to Avoid Huge Ships. It's on Amazon. It's got him four views. Yeah, so it's obviously a very important time Bucks or something silly. I think it's cheap and you get it used for like Bucks, but I think brand new, it's like two fifty something like that. The book version is ten dollars. Yeah. Yeah, the big ships is supposed to have radar on them. Of course they should have been able to see him on radar, but that assumes somebody is actually watching the

radar set. Yeah, I don't feel like, yeah they don't. Yeah. Again, having worked on a cruise ship, I shouldn't probably say this.

I'm gonna say it anyway, Like I said, I've I've said this before I was friends with the first mate, and you sometimes you'd go up to the bridge and you're just getting a conversation with everybody up there, and suddenly you realize the dude who's supposed to be watching the radar sitting there talking to you, like maintaining eye contact, and you're like, well, you're supposed to be looking at that. We gotta run into an iceberger, Like what happening so

that the speakers it'll make a noise. Yeah, I mean well, and also the a lot of a lot of the shipping companies kind of understaffed their boats. I guess sailors cost money, sure, yeah, and so why do that when you can get a mechanical turk to do it exactly? So having it like, you know, having a guy stationed on the bow looking out front, that's not necessarily, yeah,

not necessarily. It's having a guy on the bridge looking at you know, looking at the radars and maybe not but maybe he was in the head or it does seem like it would be hard for Jim to have missed a ship that big. It does seem like it would be hard. We had an accident. I was about to say, unless this runs in tandem with like the last theory. But then, but then it doesn't explain why none of the body floaty bits, the floaty body bits

didn't show up there. He could have. He could have, if it's a combination, least there he could have gone let's say four or five miles out and then got run over. And then all the flots them and the bits and pieces they're gonna spread around, they're not going

to be in search area. Or maybe you know, or maybe it's you know, he gets plowed over, even not even that far out, he gets plowed over, and maybe it wasn't dead of a heart attack or anything, but he was just high on shrewms or something like that. You know, you made that up. You got a beard in San Francisco. Yeah, you have a beard. You live

in Portland's good point? Okay, Um, but yeah, maybe he got he gets plowed over, and all the floaty bits that would have floated get all sliced and diced up in the props and freighter and so they don't float. So maybe that I don't it seems like at least one would, yeah, but yeah, still, it does seem unlikely that neither vessel noticed the other again, it still happens. Like I said that the US freaking Navy big ship has a collision with a big freaking like you know,

container ship. How the hell could that have happened? I mean, I'm still physics. I guess I'm pretty sure some has ruled in that particular situation. Huh. But was all over

that they did? Actually, they checked all the records of every ship that came and left the harbor on that day, and they even some of them and I had left the harbor and they were clear across the ocean back in Japan or wherever, And they actually had local authorities go check their bows just to look for scratches and red paint things like that, and nothing their holes red. Yeah noticed, Yeah, I mean you know it's a ship's crew actually to avoid liability, they might paint overall scratches

in the red paint and stuff like that too. I mean, so it's it's even though I could say this to be kind of unlikely. Yeah, but doesn't it seem like, I mean, you would check like a little below the water level, and it's it seems like it'd be hard to paint unless your ship in dry dock. Well no, no, not necessarily. But you've got to remember that the cargo that is in the ship will dictate where the water line is on it to degree. So it is empty when they painted, and then it gets checked when it

is fully loaded. The scratches they didn't paint are well below the water line and therefore won't be seen. Yeah, you'll see, like on a lot of the modern ones, just about all they had that bulbous bout thing going on.

They're not like a traditional line and so ugly. Yeah it is ugly, but but a lot of those we have when they're empty, that thing is sticking up out of the water noticeably so and yeah, so um, I would have to say I still like this left for a new life better but yeah, but like the next theory, well oh yeah, pirates pirates night around, Yeah and actually ask us to do anything singing. The new job is obviously having an effect on the good one. Obviously, the

good better mood than the usual. Yeah, not grumpy anymore, It's true. Hey, that's good. It might be this can of wine too, who knows, it's a whole new podcast. Yeah uh yeah, but but it's pirates pirates. Yeah, they're not unheard of I mean and actually taking over small boats and and I'm like robbing them, taking their boat and selling that that kind of thing. It's not unheard

of many parts of the world. It's not too common on the west coast of the U. Yeah, but it's a little it's also a little like it's not a cheap boat. Yeah, it's not. It's it's not like a

crazy expensive one though either. Yeah, they're not. Actually the by this point two thousand seven, they were selling for reasonably cheap, oh less than that, Okay, yeah, actually check some listings and actually you can buy one of these nowadays, so I saw as cheap as likes that's hold on the bottom though, well that's probably not one that's like totally accessorized in tip top condition. Yeah, yeah, probably not. But still, I mean, does it I mean maybe, Yeah,

I'm not a pirate, so I don't know. But yeah, it seems like a lot of work to have gone to for kind of a little payoff. Yeah. Well, I mean there's other possibilities, so, I mean, you know, supposing, for example, it's I mean, it's not necessarily a huge amount of work. Like suppose let's say, let's say, for example, you do want to you do want to get a boat. You don't have to have a huge payoff. You just go down to the marina, sneak inside, find some of

somebody with a nice boat who was leaving. Just say hey, hi, nice boat, jump on, jump on a board, pull let your gun, and say hey, let's take it. Let's take a little ride. Yeah, there's some problems. There are some problems that let me let me go to the scenario. Let me go to so, you know, we we go out to see and at a certain point, you know, you've been sharing the guy. Oh you do, you play your cards right, You'll come out of this without getting hurt.

And you just said I was joking, and you shoot him and throw him overboard, thinking about go to some other ports, sell the boat, and you know whatever valuables and stuff, and then you've gotten yourself maybe a free ride to another continent, you know, and also some pocket money, a little walking around money. And so it's entirely conceivable. There's other continent, do you mean country? Another country? Another continent? Technically, if it was loaded properly with supplies, you could take

it all. Yeah, and probably now and far more likely that you would just take it to Mexico or Canada. Yeah, that's where pirates go. Oh yeah, good point. Yeah, we

talked about those Canadian pirates before. Yeah, of course there's a problem with this, And I was gonna talk about there's there's another possibility I considered too, which is and so can I'll talk about this one too, which is it what if he was kidnapped by the North Koreans or somebody like the North Koreans, well, the Russians, the Chinese. I was gonna say, it doesn't have to necessarily be the North Koreans. It just has to be somebody that

recognizes his skills and Google that's who did it. Actually, it was probably a O well in a bid to get back on top. That's that's good. We don't want to be a joke anymore. We used to be. We used to be kiding of the hill. We we created aim, which they they're shutting down by the way December. Yeah. Yeah, but it could have been asked. It could have been Jeeves. Man, it's been my Space seven. They were still like doing it. Well still, it was what was it Tom? It was Tom? No,

it wasn't Tom. There Tom didn't have that kind of organization was Tom from my space. Yeah, he was your first your first friend chilly white T shirt. That's right. I forgot about Tom been on my space. It's a different site now it really was it poorn? Now? No, it's it's music. It doesn't really matter. But yeah, I mean I guess it could have been somebody's like kidnapping him. But also you think he would have been like ransomed,

especially when they saw like NASA repositioning satellites. You think that the people who kidnapped him would have been like, oh yeah, there's a lot of money to be thrown at this guy, like, let's let's ransom him. No you can. I mean at that point you double down. You know you've made a good decision and you have stolen something that obviously has a lot of worth and this person, and you're gonna get your money's worth out of him

when you get him back to your secret hideaway. You're right while you ring as much value as as you can. I mean, if you've actually got a tech project that needs that kind of brain power working on it, you know, there you go where the raspberry pie came from. Yeah, but the raspberry pie, you know what that means? Okay, all right, it's an Android device. Raspberry Pie is the operating system, which it so I guess I do know what it is. Okay, I don't know. I don't think so.

I don't think so. Actually, the phone call it to the phone calls to his wife and his daughter and probably kind kind of kind of sink those series. Yeah, I mean I was kind of liking those series at first, you know, like like the idea of just some criminal who needs to get out of the country. But they're watching all the ports. They're watching the airport, watching the railroad station. Right, I'll just go get a ride on the boat. But again, he probably wouldn't have allowed the

phone calls. Yeah, unlikely. Again, another theory that I was thinking about was murder, which is again the phone call kind of mestes it up. Although I suppose I see here Bill Gates, and you really have a grudge against against Jim Graham, you go hide and you go hide in the in the fore cabin and uh and just race out to meet him in your own speedboat. Yeah, because you're Bill Gates and you could have a four foot speed boat. Yeah, exactly, a four d foot cigarette boag.

I can just picture this giant cigarette bow because like speeding up down, it pulls alongside of this little door in the side of the hall, opens up and it's Bill Gates. Hey there, Jim. Well, anyway, I think, yeah, I'm gonna I'm gonna have the murder. Thing of the abduction thing is actually some people who knew him are still kind of thicking abductive interesting. It doesn't explain stuff,

it explains. It explains everything that the leaving for a new life explains, plus not having to accept that he might have wanted to run away from his own life. Right, It's like if I probably, if I were close to this case, I definitely would be like, yes, he was just abductive. Of course he was, because it explains everything. And also, you know, he didn't do it voluntarily. Versus us on the outside, I'm way more willing to say, yeah,

he was totally willing to just walk in. And most of us just don't like the idea that you know, our friends dire, we die. It's he's just some random chance, dumb occurrence. Yeah, it's hard to accept. Yeah, it's it's like, you know, I mean I want to go, I want to have a slightly more meaningful death than that when I just look for me in a cabin in the wood. Yeah, okay, with with a rag stuffed in the tail pipe of your car. No, no, just hiding in the cabin in

the woods. We're gonna go kick in every door so we find him. See boom boom, move Stevie there. Yeah, because let's talk about another series then. Uh, And this is a little more plausible, which is that he just hit an object and it sank his boat, which is could have been I mean, it could have been a log or a submerged shipping container. Uh, submerged rocks, because the fair Long Islands, especially the south Far the southeast Far Long Island apparently has a lot of shoals around it.

So maybe he screwed up. He hit a you know, hit a submerged rock, and he was sailing what's called the California Current, which is a current that flows down the west coast of North America from Bridge, Columbia to Baja California. And of course, as you know, driftwood is very very common on our coast, the California coast, because trees fall into the river rs from erosion and storms

and things like that. They eventually get swept to see they wind up in the California current and get dragged down and you know, chunked up on our coastline and even points for this one of my biggest complaints about Canada. Yeah craft they're sending us. Yeah, uh so you might have hit a log or maybe a shipping container. These are lost on a really regular basis. I yeah, the found like a yeah, I say, we're okay. They are consistently Yeah. I've heard estimates of a round ten thousand

a year get lost off of the ships. Um, the containers aren't watertight, they won't float, but if what's in them as positively wind well, then they will like rubber duckies, Yeah, exactly. If it's filled with rubber duckies or maybe Nike tennis shoes or god knows what, then they might wind up floating just barely beneath the surface. They are a little bit of a shipping hazard. You're not likely to run into one, but if you do, it could be bad news.

Containers are pretty solid. Yeah. Yeah, they're made out of very stout steel. Somebody did Robert Redford. The movie was that. I don't remember the name anyway, but it turns out to CNC for the Tenacious Didn't we didn't talk? Was that we talked about this before? Is that Robert Redford movie where he didn't say a word through the entire so, oh yeah, And I didn't see that one. I know the one you mean, though I heard about it. It's

um uh yeah, anyway, that's called Robert Redford doesn't talk us. Yeah, I heard it goes the entire thing until the very ended. At the very end, he goes crap. Anyway, so the uh about yeah, yeah. The hull of this boat is made of balso balsa would core with fibrid glass lambent on both sides, which is makes for a very stiff, strong, but light hull. And these were originally built as they're they're sort of a hybrid racer slash kind of pleasure boats.

So they had comfortable accommodations, but they were speedy as well. They were overtaken by technology, of course, and so that's why they got cheaper back. But back in the day they were spending and really fast. But if the fiberglass delaminates or if it gets punctured, well, then the balls of course can suck up water and eventually rots and now you've got a big weak point that can be punched do pretty easily. Why, it's something like a floating log,

and then all is lost. All is lost? Is that good? By the way? Should I see it? Yeah? You enjoy it? Okay, I'll watch that one. Then put it on my next flix, my next what not Netflix? Your next flix? My Netflix. Having issues with those guys, I'll talk about that some of the time now. But there was another problem with the CNC forty, which is the keel. And again, the keel is the fin on the bottom of the boat,

exactly like the surfboard fin, only giant. Yeah, only a lot bigger, and it weighs a lot more because on the sailboat it's got to keep it upright. In the case of the CNC forty, it's a four ton chunk of steel or ladd or what ever that's bolted to the bottom of the boat. But the bottom of the hall on this particular boat is nearly flat. And to maximize headroom in the cabin, because remember this was not

a strictly spartan racing boat. It was supposed to be kind of a nice cruising boat too, they wanted full headroom in there, so the builders are kept shallow. In this particular design, there's very little room for a transverse support, meaning beams that go across that helped to support the keel. And and you know, keep it like you know from yeah and and front and back and everything, keep it, keep it firmly, just attached to the whole of the boat.

And so it's got kind of minimal support on the inside, and so what what would happen? And the keel is a dagger type, which means that it's actually taller than it is long. So if the attachment point is why taller than it is wide? Yeah, well I guess why I wanted thinking along, I'm thinking from four to app Yeah, some people will see that's wide, but is long wider than long? Yeah, tall along whatever anyway, So, uh, the attachment point, it's not tremendously long, so stresses are not

spread out. And so if you haven't to run into sin under water rock on your CNC forty, the front of the keel can be torn off the hall. The trailing edge can actually be levered up and around and into the bottom of the hall. So basically, yeah, it goes yeah, it just it just comes right back up and yeah, and that this has actually happened on CNC forty and that probably what pierced the bottom of the Yeah. And then it's one case that I read about it hit a rock at seven knots, the keel punched right

through the bottom of the boat. And yeah, and Jim Gray was known in salient and area known for its shoals. Right. But of course if he hit a rock and I supposed to taking on water a catastrophic race the rate, then why didn't he run his boat up on the shore. I don't know. Um, maybe he thought he could still save his boat and he didn't want to total his boat. Maybe it was actually too far from the islands. Um, I don't know. But I mean maybe he hit his

shipping container. Yeah, that could have done the shipping lane. Yeah. Or maybe he didn't realize what had happened. Yeah, And so I know one of these things, I mean, his his his hall. I mean the hull could have been punched you by a log or shipping container, or he hits the shipping container with the keel and it punches through his hall. But there's a whole bunch of ways to put a hole in the bottom of his hole in the hall whole story. Oh god, so the Yeah,

so the boat did that some weaknesses. But again we got to ask why didn't he eat purpose that was the emergency something something something, you know, I forget what that's called radio broadcast, but there's there's a lot of pretty simple reasons why that didn't go off. Well what is that? Apparently he kept it below decks. Yeah, because you're supposed to have him out like you know, like

maybe attached to your railing or whatever. But people usually when they had their boats stored in them, they take valuable stuff off and lock it up down below. Seems like, yeah, well, and he could have had it in something like this Pelican case that happens to be in the room that we're recording in, which are typically made to be watertight,

so it wouldn't nothing would have activated it to go off. Yeah, But if it was stored in that manner, Yeah, Well, actually I think they had it stored in like a cloth bag. They would take it off at the end of the day of sailing and put the cloth bag and store below decks. And it might it might be that Gym felt like he didn't feel like deploying it because he's going on just a little day trip, but he's not actually going out very far into the ocean.

Nice weather and everything like that, he probably didn't bother an employing it. Well. The other thing is, though, is you know he might have tried, but it may not have been maintained properly because they require batteries, and if you don't check your batteries, they discharge themselves over time, and that would completely, you know, make the thing useless.

I mean, I think I'm kind of with Joe on this and that when you're these kind of shorter day trips, you're not like, I mean, you are out in the middle of the ocean, but you're not out in the middle of the ocean. Especially if you've been if you've done this run a number of times, you think, well, it's a nice day, I'm not going to crash, and if I do, I can swim to shore. And that was awesome myself. He's got the radio, he's not far

from the coast Guard. There's other boats around, you know, even if they're not right next to you, there's other boats. Can somebody will come off. Blair said, I get off a radio signal. Whatever he did probably just just didn't see it as as a situation this huge could have had it could have had one that just had a bad set of batteries and they leaked and and you know, or something like that. Well, yeah, I mean you apparently, from what I'm under have come to understand you have

to do a little bit of maintenance. And they're like your remote control. After a year or so, you got to change the batteries for sure, though they don't get heavy use. Yeah, and so as so the aprop not deploying to me is not that mysterious given the circumstances. But again that he's still got to wonder, well, why why was there no radio to stress call? That doesn't

really surprise me that much. Well, maybe it was too busy trying to save the boat to get on the radio, I mean, and maybe by the time he realized that it was hopeless, the radio was already under water for some reason. Yeah, yeah, or or who knows, I mean, maybe the I say, if he runs in this something, maybe he loses his balance and hits his head. There's

all kinds of reasons. I think a lot of times about being like the first responder to like a medical emergency, right, you know, and you're like, oh, having to run up to this thing, and then at what point do you call mine? One? One? You know, it's like if you're the only person there and you're trying to assist somebody and I'm trying to liken this to a ship, right, You're like, you're so busy doing all these things that

you realize, oh, crap, I never actually called someone. I have been so big trying to do these other things, and it's it's too late. You know. I'm I'm doing CPR. I can't stop doing CBR because like really, you're not allowed to stop doing CPR once you're starting to do it. So like, how am I going to I hope somebody comes along. Yeah, it's a little Dutch boy with his finger in the dike, trying to stop this one spot leaking. Yeah, so you can't get away because if you let's go,

it's gonna leak. Yeah. Yeah. I can totally sympathize with the idea of it just being too late. Yeah. It could it could be that he just didn't Maybe he didn't realize. Jim was a very capable guy from everything I heard, and it might well be that he thought, well, I can handle this. Yeah, and it realized he late, maybe I can't handle this. I'll see my radios fried and get off the life raft while it's too late

for that too. I'm still not so sure. I think one of the other things, at least for me, I'm a very like controlling person, as you guys know, and whenever I've been in situation with like I mean, you know, like after a lie tragedy like losing a parent for instance, right, sometimes you try to grasp at these straws of like, these are the only situations I can control, you know

what can I control? And even I think it could even have extrapolated out even more in a situation with an emergency, where he would be like, yes, I can control this, I can do it. I will take care of myself. It's it's all on me, and I can do it, and everything's gonna be great and everything's gonna be perfect, and then it just kind of yeah, I don't think you even have to add the fact of,

you know, the loss of a parent. But I don't think he may have just considered himself such a competent sailor that he bypassed standard procedures because he knew better, because he's a brilliant I'm a brilliant guy. Alternately, we you know, we talked about this to a lot. I think just you know, the last couple of weeks, we've talked about this where you never know how somebody's going to react in an emergency. He could have just lost it. He could have just suddenly not known what to do

at all. It's just totally frozen and been like, I'm gonna release the jip. That'll help it. You know. It's like, well, in no rational brain is that going to help? But his brain just panicked. It's just like it's kind of like people acting horror movies, you know, Yeah, like okay, I just I just clubbed the villain with the baseball bat. Now I'm going to drop the bat and run away. Okay, Okay, that makes sense, Yeah, of course. Yeah. Yeah. The only week this is the series again, we have no no

radio stress, no flots and whatsoever. Although one series that's been put out about that is that apparently it could be that if the boat was holed at the back or even in the middle, took on a lot of water, there's more weight in the back of the boat. Fuel tanks for the diesel, also the diesel engine itself or in the back. It could have gone down stern first. And so assuming he had nothing like laying around on

the deck, everything was strapped down. Everything was either strapped down or already below x uh and it goes down stern first, Well, then nothing gets out. You know that. That actually is one of the things that a lot of people point to, which we didn't actually talk about in the suicide theories, that if he intentionally did this, he could have He probably was smart enough. Yeah, he

would have had everything strapped down. He would have shut the door and then punched a hole in the bottom and the water would have come in, but nothing would have been able to actually escape from the cabin because the hatch was closed. Yeah. Yeah, you pop. You can pop those hatches open, actually for ventilation purposes. You can pop them open distant inch or two pop, chop them up and enough to let air out. It makes it hard for things to get out because those things are

too big to slide through that little hole. Yeah. Yeah, So Jim being a smart guy, he would know where the continental shelf was. He would go past it in the nice deep, deep deep water where he's not going to be found as they did look around the bottom for him. My my, my, my, final thoughts and the

whole thing. Or even though I think that's possible, I still have a problem with that scenario, which is, again, his eprip didn't go off, no rate to distress signal, no plots in from the boat, he couldn't deploy his life raft. I mean, that's a lot of things that

should have happened. At least at least a couple of those things should have happened if he if he took some damage and started took started taking on huge amounts of water, which it leads me to think that again the possibility that he might have had a heart attack or a stroke or something. And yeah, we were talking about this, and again the coast Guard was searching, but they were searching initially I think, fairly close in between

the islands and San Francisco. And it wasn't until as far as I know, I mean, I calculated how how far just under sale he would have gotten at the end of the first day. I mean we're talking five to six knots he would have been around And it says this is by eight am the next morning the one in the morning of the twenty nine, he would have been around a hundred two hundred and sixty miles west of San Francisco, which would have been no theoretically

within the search area. But I don't know how are out at that point they were flying their planes, so I don't know, well, especially because we as we talked about, he wasn't reported missing until like eight pm that night and the night yeah and as night, so um, so

I don't know how far. I'm pretty sure that they that that immediate night they would have been searching between the islands and his and I would agree with that San Francisco that that gives him about fifty miles to play with, because it's only thirty miles to the island. In twelve hours he would have gone seventy or eighty miles. He would have been well outside of their search area.

That sure. And then yeah, we're talking like since you know, so he keeps putting another hundred eighty or a hundred forty hundred fifty miles of distance between them per day, and I don't think they actually the coast Guard actually started looking further out there eventually went as far as I think three hundred fifty miles out from shore. But eventually but by that yeah, by that time, he could

have been far far further out than that. And so and I know that they brought all sorts of resource, all these satellites overflew the area and everything, and they looked at this stuff. But it's really hard to say without knowing what areas were photographed by this satellite and when the photograph was taken, it's really hard to say. I mean, if it was taken like two d miles out, but it was you know, it was taken like, you know, three or four days after he went missing, well he

would have been long gone. Yeah, so what do you what's your best theory? My my best theory is that he had he had something incapacitated him in the boat just sailed on, just stayed on an autopilot, and then eventually, of course the battery ran flat, the autopilot failed, the boat just started wallowing, and probably at some point it was just um and I'm assuming because it was a nice day, the hatches, including the main hatch, they were probably all open, and so probably the boat eventually just

got swamped. But somewhere like in the middle of the Pacific Ocean where we ever find it. Yeah, probably that's that's that's that's my best theory. But there's not. It's not conclusive at all. And see what's your best theory? Um? I still in this instance, Uh, it's either a new life or or he was abducted. Yeah, I think. I mean I like to think good thoughts, so I would generally say a new life. Okay, I don't think it, you know, in my rational brain, I don't think that's

the best theory. But well, that's the one I want to be. He may have realized that he was is it. It is not in the ZENI if he was at the tail end of his career and he was starting to be outpaced, but yes, thank you, and things were outpacing him, and he may have realized he didn't have too much longer, that he was going to be able to be on top of the game, and I had to go out. Yeah, yeah, this is this theory. It only just occurred to me. What well combined the disappeared

on a new life thing with the pirates. With pirates, he went to go be a pirate. Yeah, essentially, when the pirates, the pirates go to take over his boat and he starts talking to him. He says, you know, I've been taking about a career change, and I am leaving to go to answer out to start a new life. Anyway, why don't I be nc became a pirate. I think

maybe aliens could have just abducted his entire boat. Yeah, they could have beamed They beamed him up, and then they got he got there and they realized how smart he was, and they were like, yeah, okay, we're keeping you. Yeah, great, you can be the person who will help us understand database. Can you clean up? Can you clean up our coolball code? Dude? See, you know we cannot get Windows ninety eight to work anymore, Just like, oh yeah, I know, nobody couldn't. I can't

even help you with that. Sorry. Until they dropped him in the ocean Windows XP because the screen of death. Yeah, I don't know. I I think I just hope he started a new life somewhere. Yeah. I like the idea of they're becoming a pirate. He eventually became a captain of the pirates. But I'm gonna go with the he had a stroke or something like that theory. But as seems most likely and it fits the facts of the best. But other than that, I can't really say much more. Jim,

if you're out there listening, send us a note. Don't post on Reddit, just send us an email please, Uh problems keep your secret? Yeah, we will keep your secret and less well now, of course we will. Yeah. All right. Uh so that's about it for this week. If you're out there, of course, Jim, you're gonna want a email address, which is Thinking Sideways Podcast at gmail dot com and and anybody else if you want to send us an email and argue with us, or tell us how wonderful

we are whatever, you can do that too. Of course, we have a website it is Thinking Sideways podcast dot com. Or you can listen to our episodes. Um. You'll also find an episode list out there for all the many many episodes we've done, and you can buy merch Look on the right hand side you can buy muggs, do shirts, bombs, I don't know what else, bombs out damn it? Uh what else? We're on social media? We are on Facebook where we have a group and our page. So like

the page, joined the group. Lots of fun stuff happening out there. Answer the questions. Yeah, oh yeah, answer the questions. You have to answer the questions in the group. We now have questions. I forgot about that. Also social media, we are on Twitter where we are thinking Sideways, and we're on Reddit where we have subreddit called thinking sideways. Hey. And also, of course you're gonna wonder where you can where else you can find us. You can find us

on iTunes, which we probably know that already. We don't tell you that anyway, And of course leave a comment, leave a rating. We like those things, good ratings anyway. And also you can stream us on Stitcher and god knows all kinds of other places. All right, Well, and that's about it. So it looks like we're gonna sail off into the sunset. So till next week, bye, guys. I don't have any puns and sorry O. High chips are high blad