MIAMI — Charlie Clarke throws his boat into gear and speeds toward the waterfront mansion in North Palm Beach. His eyes fix upon the 63-foot yacht docked outside. He's piloting Little Tow — an 18-footer that barely fits a crew of three.

Within minutes of hopping onto the wooden dock, he has untied the yacht from land and attached it to his own boat. Little Tow may seem like no match for the larger craft, but with a 150-horsepower engine, the job is a breeze as his tow captain pulls the yacht away with Clarke on board. "Piece of cake," Clarke says.

While the recession means hard times for most people, it's a godsend for the repo man, the person who shows up — often unexpectedly — to snatch your property when you're behind on payments.

At Clarke's employer, Fort Lauderdale boat repossessor and auctioneer National Liquidators, business has tripled in the last 18 months as higher maintenance fees, fuel and docking costs — as well as the real-estate crisis — have put boat owners behind on payments.

The same is true for those repo (short for repossession) men — and a few women — who spend their days and nights hunting and snatching luxury cars and SUVs from distressed owners.

"Before the house, everything else goes," says Clarke, a former navy engineer who's never seen more boats in five years on the job. He has taken small motorboats, sailboats and multimillion-dollar yachts. For the 63-footer he takes on this day, its loan hasn't been paid for months, with $200,000 overdue.

Clarke is soft-spoken and seems utterly unlike the stereotype of a rough-and-tumble, ethically challenged repo man. He's 5 feet 10, 215 pounds and wears navy shorts and sky blue company shirt — tucked in — with sunglasses and white cap. On the water, he weaves through marinas and private docks in daylight and is rarely confronted by owners.

While snatching boats may be easy, the inspection on board usually reveals problems.

"Something is always dismantled or missing," Clarke says. This yacht's engines and electric generators wouldn't start once it was towed far enough to run on its own. Inside, a seat was missing, wires were scrambled and a bathroom was trashed, its two bedrooms dusty and unused.

"Sometimes people sabotage the boat if they know you're coming to get it. They take fuel, they take parts," he says. Maybe that was the case here, or maybe the boat was just in the middle of servicing.

Clarke takes it just before noon, and 2 1/2 hours later it's docked in a marina a few miles away. The mechanic arrives, and in another hour the engines fire. Clarke's crew sails the yacht to the company's Fort Lauderdale dock and his day is done.

Along with nine other agents, the company recovers up to five boats daily throughout Florida. Each is listed online for auction within a week; most are bought by foreigners.

"I remember years ago when we used to pick up a boat a day," says company President Bob Toney. Right now he has 650 boats for sale or ready for sale across the country — in addition to Florida, he has teams working in Los Angeles and Cleveland. "People that have gotten into boating more recently are not as experienced and may not have realized the costs involved. Fuel is a big part of it. Marinas are charging $5 to $6 a gallon, and you've got a 300- to 400-gallon tank."

The day before taking the 63-foot yacht, Clarke had called the owner's phone number, even knocked on his door. Nothing. He is sure the missing boat won't be a surprise. When people don't pay, they know the repo man is bound to come, he says.

Back on land, many of South Florida's auto repo agents — there are more than 250 in Miami-Dade and Broward — are less than halfway through their day as Clarke finishes his.

At American Lenders Service in Kendall, owner Ed Wolmers has been awake since sunrise, taking calls from banks and shuffling through paperwork. He spends his days tracking down people, and his nights — when owners are most likely to be home — taking their cars.

"We do the dirty, ugly jobs that everybody hates," says Wolmers, who's been in the business, off and on, for a decade. "But if I don't take your car, someone else will."

He has taken tractor-trailers and riding lawn mowers, shiny new BMWs and beat-up Saturns. His unwilling targets: doctors, real estate agents, drug dealers, even a police officer.

He's 6 feet, 250 pounds with a buzzed head and goatee. He wears a bulletproof vest — he's been shot at, but never hit — and he's ready for a fight. He has already had a few: roadside after highway chases and outside homes. He was once pistol-whipped on the back of the head and needed stitches. Wolmers doesn't carry a gun, but he has his own ammo: to start the night, a medium coffee from Dunkin' Donuts; to keep him on track, a talking GPS unit on the dashboard; and a heavy-duty flashlight to find his way through dark neighborhoods.

Nights start at 10 p.m., as Wolmers takes off from his small office near Kendall-Tamiami Executive Airport for about a dozen potential jobs through early morning.

A recent tour begins in Tamarac, where he combs the neighborhood for a green '98 Chevy Blazer. A few neighbors emerge from the crowd of single-story homes as he slowly drives from house to house, beaming his flashlight on cars. No luck. A man on the street corner says the owner moved months ago.

From there, it's on to Miramar, Miami Gardens, Opa-locka, Sunny Isles. Hours have passed. He circles parking lots, peers into a condo garage, checks mailbox labels. He drives by a bus company where the driver of a Ford Expedition works. He swings by her mom's house. Nothing.

By 4 a.m., he's fuming. He hasn't slept in more than 20 hours. For the last six, he has zigzagged across South Florida on near-deserted highways, dreaming of his next catch.

"This is nuts," he says, gliding south on Interstate 95, hoping to spot a gray Infiniti G20 as he exits toward Northwest 86th Street. The car's loan hasn't been paid in more than three months. Its owner seems to have disappeared. When he arrives, the house is bare. There's an SUV in the driveway but no Infiniti. Particle board is nailed over the windows of a nearby home.

"People are more transient during the recession," Wolmers says. A house is foreclosed. People rent and jump from neighborhood to neighborhood, city to city. They move in with parents and friends. The calls and faxes from banks keep increasing, but it's also getting harder to find the people, he says.

He stops to fill his diesel tank for the second time in a day, setting him back $175 between both trips. And he has his own loan to pay, $1,000 a month for his truck. Still, business is better than ever. He's hiring for the first time in years, adding to his roster of three.

Wolmers won't say how much he charges, but most banks pay $400 for simple jobs and more than $1,000 for complicated ones, where it can take weeks or months to track down a vehicle. As more people default, more are voluntarily giving up those cars, too, he says. He's on his way to Kendall, dashing through Overtown and Coral Gables for a last-chance catch. Nope.

By 6:30 a.m., he's home sleeping. Clarke, the boat repo agent, is starting his day. He'll be in the office by 8 and on Little Tow again, cruising the Intracoastal Waterway in Fort Lauderdale, his eye out for a 43-foot yacht, $250,000 overdue.

Within a few hours, Wolmers gets a call to do a voluntary pickup: mini-excavators, tractor-trailers, dirt diggers and pickup trucks; tools of a failed construction firm. It's an easy few thousand dollars from the bank, if not more.

Maybe this, he thinks, will be his big day.