Peter Halmos slowly maneuvers his 28-foot Carolina skiff along a 15-foot-wide bleached white sand scar flanked by a seagrass meadow off Calda Channel, forcing several large leopard rays to dart in and out of his wake. The scar stretches for hundreds of yards and, for him, marks the end of one journey and the beginning of another.

Four years ago, he was "Peter Halmos, Wall Street mogul," making millions from a credit-card insurance company and other real estate and business ventures -- a cutthroat world of litigation he'd just as soon forget.

But living on a floating village of houseboats he created off Key West, he is eccentric millionaire "Uncle Peter," who spends his days feeding his pet barracuda, collecting shells and cruising Key West Harbor and environs on a quest for "Halmosia," a secret spot he believes is loaded with Spanish treasures -- the reason he came to Key West in the first place.

Key West has lured many to make the transformation from mainland to island living, but Halmos came into it more forcefully than others.

That scar in the Calda Channel was made by the Legacy, his $16 million custom Italian sailing yacht that Hurricane Wilma pushed for more than a mile before it came to rest on the edge of Great White Heron National Wildlife Refuge. The 158-foot-long luxury yacht was locked to the seafloor in several feet of sandy muck for 2 1/2 years before Halmos managed to tow it to Man of War Harbor off Fleming Key.

The monumental effort to remove the yacht and his continuing struggle to repair her are what's kept him here. And there's nowhere he'd rather be, despite recently buying a house in Key West.

In Calda Channel, when he reaches the spot where the Legacy was grounded, Halmos stops for a moment to reflect, then retreats back down the sandy scar and toward the small sand flat he calls "the swimming hole."

The 65-year-old hits the water with the excitement of a 10-year-old boy as he searches for any small treasures buried in the sand. He comes back with a handful of shells and a lobster fin, which he proudly shows off to a group of friends. They are not the lost treasures of Halmosia, but the shells are enough to make an hour's snorkel worthwhile.

The entire area has become his backyard and he is familiar with every flat, trench and small wreck.

"I have always been a water person. It's like I am back in high school," Halmos said. "It's a lot more fun than battling with a bunch of sleazy, sweaty attorneys. It's really been fun. It has been hell on the financial stuff, but how can you not look around and say, 'Man, I'm lucky.' "

Humble beginnings

Halmos' life is an immigrant success story reminiscent of a Hollywood movie.

His father, a lawyer, smuggled the family out of Hungary in 1951, escaping persecution from communists who took control of the region after World War II. The family first settled in Oakland, Calif., before relocating to Key Biscayne, Fla., as Halmos was entering high school.

"There was pretty much no school on Mondays and Fridays," Halmos joked. "I took to the water pretty early. It was natural for me."

Halmos purchased his first boat at age 14. The 14-foot aluminum skiff, powered by a 35-horsepower Johnson engine, was a far cry from the grandeur of the Legacy. It cost Halmos $75 -- $15,999,925 less than he paid for the Legacy.

"I was all over Biscayne Bay at night," he said of his first boat.

Halmos attended the University of Florida, earning a Master's in Business Administration after seven years. He moved to New York City in 1970 and worked on Wall Street as a broker, but quit within a year.

Halmos and his younger brother, Steven, then founded SafeCard, which sold credit card insurance. The company took off in the 1970s and '80s and went public by 1987, when it was worth nearly $2 billion.

The venture baptized Halmos into the world of litigation.

When Barron's, a financial weekly magazine, questioned SafeCard's accounting practices in 1981, Halmos sued for libel. The suit eventually was thrown out, but that and subsequent cases earned him the reputation of being fearlessly litigious. However, he does not revel in litigation, but uses it as a last resort when backed into a corner, he said.

However, his litigation skills have served him well in his dilemma with the Legacy, as for four years he has fought against large insurance conglomerates, which have threatened to lay claim to his boat, and the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which is forcing him to pay for seagrass and other fish habitat restoration work.

Near-death experience

When talking with Halmos, one gets the impression that riding out Hurricane Wilma and being pulled around the harbor all night was the easiest part of his four-year ordeal.

"We had a good time that night," he said. "We joked and laughed. I figured if it was going to be our last night alive, we might as well enjoy it."

Halmos, who had three large anchors in the water, awaited the Category 3 storm's arrival from a hurricane hole off Channel Marker 15 in Key West Harbor. As Wilma moved toward Key West at 20 mph, Tropical Storm Alpha was projected to head toward Miami from the south, pushing 12-foot seas. Some forecasts had Wilma and Alpha colliding as in "The Perfect Storm," Halmos said.

The Legacy crew -- Halmos, Capt. Eddie Collins and three others -- had no option but to hunker down.

Several hours before Wilma's eye neared, when winds were only 60 mph to 70 mph, one of the Legacy's two main anchors failed. The anchor came apart, with the top half connected to the chain and the bottom half in the seabed, Halmos said. A few minutes later, the same thing happened to the second main anchor.

The third anchor was overwhelmed. Not knowing the anchors had broken, Collins and Halmos unsuccessfully tried to reattach them, as the Legacy remained under power in the Northwest Channel.

As Wilma sped eastward with her eye to the north of Key West, the Legacy was hit with what seemed like an explosion, lifting and rotating the vessel and sending the rigging down. Then Legacy was sucked into the Gulf of Mexico directly in Wilma's path. With seas estimated at 25 feet, water poured through vents and windows. After that, all power was shut off. The ship's clock froze at 2:45 a.m.

Remnants of the rigging hung over the rail and two 400-foot-long anchor chains dragged behind the Legacy as Wilma pushed her northward into the eye.

"Then the wind came from the other direction, shoving us back to the east-southeast," Halmos recalled.

The waves were lifting the Legacy and slamming her down, like cracking an egg. Around 8 a.m., the vessel came to rest, with the Legacy upright as if anchored, Halmos said.

Halmos credits his sturdy yacht for saving all their lives -- the reason, he says, he has battled NOAA and insurance companies to keep her, and the reason he is willing to spend $23 million, $7 million more than he initially paid, to restore her.

"She saved our lives and I am sure as hell going to save hers," Halmos said defiantly. "They talked about cutting her up and I wasn't going to let that happen."

It takes a village

To facilitate the long-term salvage project, Halmos created what is known as "Aqua Village," a floating community of more than a dozen houseboats and work boats. Initially, it was the staging area and "War Room."

After the salvage operation was completed in February 2008, Halmos and crew downsized the village and have continued to call it home while he battles his insurance company for repair money.

The village consists of three houseboats, connected by a series of floating docks, and his offshore fishing boat, the Mongoose.

He outfitted the village with a generator and a small desalination plant, reducing his trips to land and allowing for a full-size washer and dryer. The entire village is powered by an engine so it can be moved at anytime.

Anchors are attached to only one end of the village, allowing it to swing with the tide. With its white picket fences, dangling Christmas lights and cloth napkins dressing the patio tables, Halmos and crew have created a quaint community resembling a miniature houseboat row in Garrison Bight.

The village and nearby Legacy -- battered to a shadow of her former self -- has become a must-stop for Jet Ski and dolphin watching eco-tour boats. Each morning, Halmos is greeted by tourists passing by his breakfast table and tour guides relating his fateful night in October 2005 and subsequent salvage operation.

Halmos will soon dismantle the village, but has vowed to create Aqua Village II or 2.0 in Key West.

The next manifestation will have a zero carbon footprint, no fossil fuels and no waste, he said. He wants to use clean, renewable energy to power his next floating village.

"You realize how much energy is out here," Halmos said. "You've got the sun, the wind and the tide. This is the stuff that doesn't pollute our environment."

Halmos and crew installed toilets on his boats that incinerate waste, which eliminates the need for pump-out, he said. They have begun to tinker with designs and models for tide generators based on water and wind power.

They connected several wooden paddles, like the wheel of a steamboat, and run it in reverse to see whether it will generate electrical energy.

"He keeps me busy," Collins said of Halmos' makeshift research laboratory.

"There's always a project. He is very detailed-oriented."

Halmos, who studied marine biology at the University of Florida during his undergraduate studies, is attempting to grow tomatoes and something he dubbed African "magic fruit" in a combination of sand and seashells. He also has experimented with seaweed as fertilizer, but it has not yielded any results, and he is still looking for something in the ocean that would provide his plants with the proper nutrients.

"Look at those tomatoes," he said like a proud father as he inspected his garden on top of the houseboat. With a look of disappointment, he mutters, "The strawberries didn't do so well."

Halmos, whose wife, Vicki, chooses to live in their West Palm Beach home, soon must leave his garden and watery village to get back to the business of growing his business.

"I can't wrap my brain around living on land," Halmos said. "On land you tell time by your watch and by hopping in your car and going to work. Out here, you tell time by the tide.

"I like it here, but I have to get back to work."

All the while, he'll be dreaming of the day when work eases up enough to allow him to return to his spot in Calda Channel and live out his golden years on Aqua Village 2.0.

tohara@keysnews.com