When rescue workers reached the 40–foot catamaran Kaz II drifting off the Great Barrier Reef on April 20, it may have appeared the three–man crew had decided to go for a quick dip before sitting down to a meal.

The vessel's engine was running, as were several computers. The sails were up. Food and utensils were set out on the table. T–shirts and towels were neatly folded on the deck. A dinghy and three life jackets were still in place.

A shredded mainsail was the only sign that anything was out of the ordinary. That and the fact that the three Australian sailors, who had last made radio contact five days earlier, were nowhere to be found. Authorities called off the search for the bodies of Kaz II skipper Des Batten, 56, and brothers Peter and James Tunstead, 69 and 63, on April 21–and there is still no good explanation of what exactly happened to them.

Reports of eerie "ghost ship" incidents have fueled the imaginations of mariners and storytellers for centuries. If only the boats themselves could talk! Some cases, like that of the Kaz II, appear to be bona–fide mysteries that may never be solved. Others can be traced to less sensational origins, such as moorings that succumbed to the wrath of a storm. But in all cases, we are left to wonder about a vessel's sense of survival even in the absence of captain or crew. For boat owners, these stories prompt the inevitable query: How would my boat fare on her own?

MOST ARE NOT GHOSTS Cumberland County Museum ArchivesThe Mary Celeste

Although the term "ghost ship" is attached to virtually any story involving an abandoned vessel, Coast Guard officials say the vast majority of marine craft found drifting unattended are neither mysterious nor remarkable. Most turn up following periods of severe weather, and authorities use identifying information on the boat to track dow its owners, who often have no idea that the craft has gone sightseeing without them.

"It's kind of like if someone abandons their car. There's a lot of information that will lead us to the boat's owner," says Coast Guard Petty Officer Nyx Cangemi in Atlantic City, Nee Jersey.

Such was the case of a boat that appeared just one day after the Kaz II was found. An unmanned vessel was discovered in Queensland waters, loaded with fishing and scuba diving gear, a full tank of fuel and keys still in the ignition. Marine growth on its hull suggested the 19–foot fiberglass fishing boat had been adrift for several months. In this case, however, the mystery was short–lived; authorities confirmed within days that the boat had broken free from its moorings the previous December in Noumea, New Caledonia, where it was registered, and had drifted approximately 700 miles without a crew before being found.

Upon approaching an abandoned vessel, the Coast Guard's primary concern is whether any crewmembers may need rescuing. To this end, they first attempt to determine how long the craft may have been adrift.

"The first thing we look at is if there's any marine growth," says Petty Officer First Class Jennifer Johnson, in Miami. "If so, then it's derelict, and it's highly probable that it got loose from its mooring or tie."

If authorities find a relatively new or nearby debris field, however, that suggests that the boat was abandoned fairly recently and that crewmembers may be nearby in the water, Johnson says. In these situations, as in the case of the Kaz II, family members or other parties often will have already notified authorities that the crew members were suspected missing.

Coast Guard statistics on marine casualties do not distinguish between confirmed deaths and persons who are missing and presumed dead, but multiple Coast Guard officials–who, not surprisingly, eschew the term "ghost ship"–say the number of unsolved mysteries involving unmanned vessels in U.S. waters is minuscule.

ATTENTION GRABBERS

They do occasionally make headlines, however. In August 2001, following the discovery of the crewless 37–foot sailboat Concessions floating 25 miles off the Florida coast, officials searched in vain for the 66–year old owner, Jacques Pierre Gamache. But that wasn't the only mysterious element in the life of Gamache, a Quebec native who had fallen behind on alimony payments and was expected in court to stand trial for allegedly vandalizing the convertible of a man he suspected of having an affair with his wife, according to a report in the Orlando Sentinel.A shredded sail was the only sign that something was amiss on Kaz II. No crew was ever found.

Two years earlier, the 20–foot Atlantis was found eight miles from the Wisconsin shore of Lake Michigan, maneuvering in tight circles with its running lights on. Its 34–year–old owner, Sean O'Brien, a scuba instructor and ad salesman last seen at a concert in Milwaukee late on a Friday night in October 1999, was reported missing when he missed an appointment in his hometown of Port Washington, Wisconsin, the following morning. A 27-hour search yielded no sign of O'Brien; in a Milwaukee Journal–Sentinel report, a police official likened the eerie incident to that of the Linda E, a fishing boat that had disappeared–along with its three crew members–while deployed on Lake Michigan the previous December.

More recent media reports of truly perplexing ghost ship stories tend originate Down Under. A Jan. 13, 2003, New York Times article detailed the mystery of the High Aim No. 6, an 80–foot, long-line fishing boat found abandoned about 150 miles off Broome, in Western Australia. The engine was on full throttle, and clothing and international documents left behind indicated that the Taiwanese captain and engineer and eight Indonesian crew members left in a hurry, but with was no indication of why.

Valuable equipment and 10 tons of bonito tuna found on the boat seemed to rule out mutiny or piracy, though a missing radio could have suggested an interrupted pirate attack. High Aim spent more than a year as a tourist attraction in Broome's Roebuck Bay before she was demolished in October 2004.

The mystery of its vanished crew remains unsolved.

Yet another ghost ship, a 200–foot vessel discovered in the Gulf of Carpentaria off the Queensland coast with a load of rice, may never have been manned to begin with. As described in the March 26, 2006 edition of the Sydney Sun Herald, a broken towrope attached to the Jian Seng suggested it had broken free while under tow. The real mystery was that the vessel had been stripped of all identifying markings, other than its name, so that officials were unable to determine its owners or even its country of origin.

But the Kaz II was a ghost ship story that touched the hearts of readers and viewers around the world, a story that began with two brothers and a buddy setting sail on the trip of a lifetime and ended in a swirl of rumors, theories and unanswered questions. The neatly folded towels and T–shirts suggested to some that the three might have stopped for a swim, or to push the boat off a sandbar, and that a sudden wind might have nudged the vessel beyond their reach–yet if so, officials would have expected the men's bodies to turn up during the extensive search.

The boat's fenders were lowered, which could imply that she had been boarded, but piracy seemed unlikely as the valuables on board were untouched. In a May 5 article, police told the Sydney Morning Herald they did not suspect that the men staged their own disappearance, but offered little in the way of alternative explanations.

THE MARY CELESTE REVISTED

"Those stories have certainly gathered a lot of interest," says Amy Remeikis, a reporter who has covered maritime news for the Sunshine Coast Daily, though she acknowledges that even in Australia the majority of empty boats turn out to have come loose from their moorings during a storm. "I guess people are still interested in the unexplained, especially when it comes to ghost ships. I mean, we are still talking about the Mary Celeste!"

The Mary Celeste was found abandoned 400 miles east of the Azores on Dec. 5, 1872. And she is getting even greater exposure with the November unveiling of a new documentary about the 282–ton brig. It premiered Nov. 4 on the Smithsonian Channel.

British documentarian Anne MacGregor and American physical oceanographer Phil Richardson offer evidence that the Mary Celeste could, in fact, have sailed unmanned from its last recorded position–within sight of the Azores on Nov. 25, 1872–to where it was ultimately discovered.

A trickier question is why the ship's captain, Benjamin Spooner Briggs, might have ordered his wife, two-year-old daughter, and seven crewmen to abandon ship. Rumors abound, including a theory that the crewmembers mutinied after dipping into some of the 1,701 barrels of industrial alcohol in the ship's cargo hold. Additional details uncovered by MacGregor and Richardson, however, suggest Briggs may have had reason to believe the vessel was about to sink. In retrospect, it is clear the Mary Celeste was more than seaworthy, though those aboard chose to abandon ship within sight of land. Ultimately, the documentary leaves enough questions unanswered that MacGregor, a former journalist, decided to explore them further in a forthcoming book.

MILES AND MILES AWAY GETTY IMAGESAuthorities search for clues in the the case of Joe Cool, a south Florida charter that turned up with a missing crew. Two passengers were later charged with murder.

Walter Teper, for one, would not need convincing that a ship like the Mary Celeste could travel 400 miles on her own. In December 2005, bad weather and engine trouble off the Pacific coast of Costa Rica forced the former police officer to abandon his 33–foot sailboat, the Chaton de Foi, and he'd given up hope of ever seeing her again. But seven months later, he got a call from the Coast Guard saying the boat that Teper and his wife had called home for six years had been found off the Big Island of Hawaii–nearly 5,000 miles away from where he had left her.

"I was in my car when I got that call, and I had to go pull off the road," Teper says. "My wife was listening too, and she just started crying."

Although Teper had never sailed the Chaton de Foi farther than the 500–mile trip from San Diego up to San Francisco, he had no doubts about her seaworthiness. Upon leaving the sailboat to take refuge on a passing container ship, he noticed–too late–that in a rush to collect his possessions, he had left the two doors open on the pilothouse.

"You hear about boats that stay adrift. Some that are abandoned off of California will end up in Hawaii, that happens," Teper says. "And I knew she could take more than I could. But after leaving the boat with the two side doors open, I thought for sure she would end up filling with water and sink. But she didn't."

To be sure, the Chaton de Foi upon her arrival in Hawaiian waters was not exactly ship-shape. Scavengers had stripped the boat of anything valuable, and the sea and other elements had battered the leftovers. Teper's insurance didn't cover all of the damages, which he estimated in the tens of thousands of dollars, but with the insurance settlement and Teper's own hard work, the Chaton de Foi is now back in service.

"Knowing that she was out at sea and had such extreme exposure, I still want to change out the wiring when I'm able to save up some more money," he says. "But you look at the boat now, and you wouldn't think there was anything wrong with her."

Though her journey was longer than those of most other abandoned vessels, the Chaton de Foi is certainly in good company. In July 2001, a group of sailing students and instructors had to abandon their damaged 66–foot sailboat, Bonaire, about 800 miles from Hawaii; the boat was recovered nine months later on the South Pacific island of Nonouti, approximately 3,000 miles away.

And in November 2005, Soundings magazine detailed how 74–year–old Victor Gillings allowed Coast Guard officials to airlift him from his 33–foot ketch Sara Gamp during a nor'easter off the Massachusetts coast, despite his certainty that the boat could withstand the storm–a belief that was borne out when the Sara Gamp turned up two weeks later in Nova Scotia.