Witchcraft was a 23-foot long luxury cabin cruiser owned by Burrack, owner of a hotel. On December 22, 1967 he invited his close friend Father Patrick Horgan to show him the wonderful Christmas time lights along the shoreline of Miami at night.
Their plan was not to go too far. Instead go offshore for about a mile towards buoy #7, stop the engine, and enjoy the lights.
They left the Miami yacht marina in the evening and everything was going well till 9pm when the coast guards received a call from Burrack.
Well, it wasn't an SOS. Burrack's voice was steady and calm. He said that his boat seemed to have hit something, but it was not an emergency. He said his boat needed to be towed. At that time, they were not even a mile offshore.
From the message it was quite obvious that while there might have been some damages in the propeller or the rudder, the hull would have surely been intact. Otherwise Burrack would have called for an emergency. In fact Burrack also mentioned that he had flares with him and would fire one of them to let the coast guards know their exact position.
In about 19 minutes, the coast guards reached the point from where they thought they received the message.
There was no sign of the Witchcraft. Neither did Burrack fire any flares to indicate where he was, nor was his voice heard again.
That night the coast guards continued the search operations covering some 1200 square miles around the spot. No trace of Witchcraft or anyone on board.
Burrack was a veteran and an extremely cautious yachtsman. Apart from the usual life saving equipment like the floating cushions and life jackets, he had fixed a special floatation device in the boat to make it unsinkable. Which means, even if the hull is ruptured and the boat is flooded with water, a part of the hull will still be over the water.
In fact, coast guards do destroy boats with built-in flotation devices that are found half sunk in order to avoid navigational hazards for others. But in this case, nothing was visible. The coast guards even notified the private vessels up to 50 miles away to look out for any debris. They also expanded the search northwards towards the gulf stream. Still no luck.
There was a small thunderstorm on that night for a brief period. So one could imagine whether this squall could have swept the Witchcraft away. That doesn't seem possible either. Burrack would have got enough time to pass on another message or even fire a flare in such a case.
On December 28 after completing a search covering some 24,500 square miles, the coast guards had finally given up. Their final statement said - "They are presumed missing, but not lost at sea".
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