Captain Cheap is Best

The boatyard guys all shook their heads but the American who'd bought the wreck was cocksure of his dream and pretty little dark haired Lizzie always smiling by his side had bought into him, even though his motto was 'cheap is best'.  
All summer the two of them worked, sawing, planing, scavenging dumpster wood, fixing up the wreck, scrounging discarded equipment, old rope from the beach and the treasure of a worn out sail, grayer than a gravestone and ragged as a toilet rag in tears.  
Cheap was always best but free seemed so much better.
Lizzie patched and sewed, made curtains to cover portholes, fixing up their home to make it as cosy as she could and got pregnant one night under the oil lamp's glow. Her love kept faith in her man even if it meant no electricity and shitting in a bucket.  
They had never sailed before but dreams of the wide wild ocean, dolphins smiling on balmy waves, flying fish for breakfast and being at one with nature offered an overdose of freedom in a harsh material world and it ate them like a worm.
The night before they sailed I bought them a farewell drink at the bar. As usual the captain had brushed away my concerns. He was proud of restoring his leaky old wreck, had read every sailing book in the library and besides they had a liferaft in case disaster struck.
No-one expected them to get too far but a week later the coastguard got a call. Two bodies three miles off the Nab, lashed to an aging liferaft that had failed to inflate.  
The weather had been set fair, there was no trace of the wreck, the coroner said and as ever, the sea didn't care because for her death has always been cheap.