Selling an Island to Jimmy Buffett

Last week I stopped by my local Uncle Giuseppe’s supermarket. On weekends, there’s a one-man band who wanders the aisles singing while you shop. You hear him long before you see him.

That day, he was singing Margaritaville.

He was good — really good. Honestly, he could have passed for one of Jimmy Buffett’s cover-band singers.

I finally found him in the fresh foods aisle and asked,

“Who’s that supposed to be?”

He said,

“Jimmy Buffett.”

I replied,

“I sold my house to him. He’s sleeping in my bed.”

The singer looked at my Lieutenant Columbo outfit — wrinkled jacket, three-month-old beard — and laughed so hard he skipped a few lines of the song.

Then he looked at me and said,

“You know Jimmy Buffett died last year, right?”

That’s how I learned the news.

From a karaoke singer in an Italian supermarket.

***

Two decades earlier, I had returned from my Fourth of July trip to Bodrum, staying at the Divan Palmira with the boys — Grisha, Jeremy, Alex, and Robert — and went straight back to work Monday morning, because apparently I believed vacations cure everything.

I stopped by the office bathroom and discovered something deeply unsettling in my underwear — a shade of red best described as Cabernet Sauvignon, 1998. Bold. Full-bodied. Absolutely not recommended before breakfast.

Five seconds later, I was no longer a brave entrepreneur.

I was a man calling his wife.

Carmen drove me across the George Washington Bridge to Columbia Presbyterian Hospital while I sat in complete silence, wondering whether this was how my story ended — bleeding internally on a weekday, before lunch, with meetings still on my calendar.

It was a depressing situation.

While we waited for test results that Friday, Carmen decided I needed fresh air — or at least distance from New Jersey. She put me on a JetBlue flight back to our place in Florida at 3001 NE 36th Street in Lighthouse Point. I still have that address on my driver’s license.

On Saturday afternoon we drove to Shooters Waterfront — a lively dockside restaurant right on the Fort Lauderdale Intracoastal.

It was a beautiful day. Boats drifted by. The sun sparkled on the water.

Everyone looked healthy.

Suspiciously healthy.

I sat there with a beer and very gloomy thoughts.

Finally, I said,

“Carmen… let’s go buy a boat.”

She didn’t laugh.

That should have been my first warning.

We drove straight to MarineMax on Federal Highway just before closing time. A salesman greeted us.

“Hi, I’m Peter Quintal.”

We told him we were there to buy a boat. He walked us down the dock, showing model after model tied neatly in the water.

When we reached the very end, I stopped, pointed, and said,

“Peter… that’s it? I’ve seen bigger Sea Rays.”

He didn’t blink.

“We have a 58-foot Aft Cabin in Tampa,” he said. “We can bring it.”

Perfect.

I paid the deposit that afternoon and bought a 58-foot Sea Ray Aft Cabin for $1.2 million — about $2.38 million in today’s money — the very same day I was still waiting for my medical test results.

When we returned to New Jersey and went back to work, my new boat was delivered and tied up outside my house — because nothing says responsible medical recovery like purchasing a floating apartment.

I told the boys I had bought a beautiful brand-new boat with three staterooms.

Now it needed a name.

Alex designed the logo.

By the time I flew back to my Florida home to see it for the first time, the name was already painted on the aft of the boat:

FuYacht — Lighthouse Point.

***

The following Friday, Carmen and I anxiously flew back to Florida to see my stunning new purchase.

I hired Paul Turner as my captain. Paul lived at Lighthouse Point Marina, just around the corner.

Carmen set up her laptop at the living-room table of FuYacht and jumped straight into work, as if she were sitting in her office back in New Jersey.

I turned to our captain and said,

“Captain Paul, we’ve never been to the Bahamas. Can you take us there?”

He smiled. The weather was perfect — the ocean calm like a glass mirror.

“I never leave home without my passport,” Paul said. “If you both have yours, we can leave right now.”

Carmen pulled her passport from her handbag.

I had mine in my jacket pocket.

Done.

FuYacht was equipped with a full satellite navigation system — a Raymarine array radar integrated with autopilot, with a range of forty-eight miles.

From the Lighthouse Point inlet, we could already see an island glowing on the radar screen — a place we would later learn was exactly where Paul was planning to take us.

Captain Paul hollered from the upper deck,

“We’re here — welcome to the Bahamas!”

I ran upstairs to the third deck. Carmen joined me.

We stared at the land ahead.

“Captain Paul,” I said, “where are we? This can’t be the Bahamas. This is a tiny deserted island — the kind you see in cartoons with one palm tree.”

He smiled.

“There are more than seven hundred islands in the Bahamas,” he said. “This one is Cat Cay. It’s a private island.”

Then he added casually,

“I need to run over to immigration, get your passports stamped, and secure permits before you’re allowed to step ashore.”

A few minutes later he disappeared down the dock in a golf cart — leaving Carmen and me standing on the deck, staring at our very own cartoon island.

When he returned, he said,

“Get in the golf cart. Let me give you an island tour.”

The tour lasted about thirty seconds.

End to end, the entire island was barely a quarter mile long — smaller than thirty acres.

But then I saw turkeys, chickens, tiny baby chicks, and roosters singing their proud cock-a-doodle-doo.

Suddenly the island didn’t feel small at all.

It reminded me of my mother’s village, Osmaneli, where we spent our childhood summers.

***

I was on my BlackBerry texting with Levent as we arrived at David and his wife’s house.

Captain Paul opened the door and walked straight in — no knocking, no hello.

Suddenly we were standing in the middle of David’s living room.

During our introductions, David mentioned they lived in Cherry Hill, Pennsylvania.

I asked,

“Do you work for that international company based there?”

He looked surprised.

“Yes. How did you know?”

“Well,” I said, “that’s the only massive corporation in that town with a global headquarters.”

At the same time I texted Levent:

You won’t believe this — I just met a man from your company on a deserted island in the Bahamas, and now I’m standing in his living room.

Then I sent David’s full name.

Levent replied instantly:

“He’s the worldwide CEO of the company I work for. How did you run into him?”

I looked at David and said,

“My friend Levent runs your Turkey operation. He’s very upset about the Saudi Arabia curveball you threw at him yesterday. He didn’t think it was fair. He sends his regards — and says you need a stronger management team in Turkey.”

David froze.

I continued,

“He accepted the CEO position at your biggest competitor this morning.”

That’s how David found out.

From me.

On a tiny private island in the Bahamas.

What a small world.

***

Carmen and I have fond memories of Cat Cay.

We eventually bought a property there.

Our next-door neighbor was Wayne Huizenga.

I cooked many menemen breakfasts for Wayne and his wife, Marti. We were so close as neighbors that if you stretched your arms out, you could almost touch both houses at the same time.

Marti once gave Wayne a $75 million yacht for his birthday — Floridian, previously owned by Greg Norman.

Barry Gibb of the Bee Gees also had a place on Cat Cay with his wife, Linda. During the band’s peak years they spent a lot of time in South Florida, and Cat Cay was one of those quiet islands where celebrities could disappear for a while.

I invited Levent to Cat Cay once. 

We were driving to the golf course when we ran into Sandra MacMillan.

She said, “Hi Levent. Hi Fuat.”

We replied, “Hi Sandra.”

Sandra is one of the heirs to the Cargill giant. Her father was John H. “Hugh” MacMillan III of the Cargill family.

Levent turned to me and said,

“The Turkish president would wait six months to get an appointment with Sandra.”

That weekend, the three of us were the only people on the entire island.

Talking about the S&L crisis — Charles Keating had a home on Cat Cay before my time. Richard Nixon, Bebe Rebozo, and John McCain were frequent guests on the island.

But while I was living there, one day a homeless-looking man appeared. He bought half a dozen homes, tore them down, and built himself a beautiful spread. We were invited to his housewarming party.

At one point Carmen’s father locked himself in the guest bathroom and couldn’t get out. We ended up rescuing him through the tiny bathroom window.

The man who had just bought half the neighborhood was John Devaney.

John Devaney is a Wall Street investor known for founding United Capital Markets. He built a multibillion-dollar hedge fund trading distressed debt and mortgage securities during the credit boom of the 1990s and early 2000s. His firm suffered major losses during the 2008 financial crisis and eventually shut down, but Devaney remained active in distressed investing and credit markets afterward.

***

During my divorce from Carmen, I put our home on the market.

I was living in Turkey at the time, staying in my mother’s village house, sleeping on a thin mattress on the living-room floor.

One afternoon my phone rang.

I answered.

The voice on the other end said,

“I’m so-and-so. I want to buy your property on Cat Cay.”

I replied,

“Yes, it’s for sale.”

There was a pause.

Then he said,

“You don’t know who I am?”

I said,

“I’m Fuat Kircaali. Do you know who I am?”

The lawyers handled the paperwork, and I sold our beautiful private-island home.

Weeks later, I learned who the buyer actually was.

Jimmy Buffett.

Apparently, even my divorce needed a soundtrack.

And somewhere, in some supermarket aisle, someone is still singing Margaritaville.

Fade out.