As usual, Memory Lane stories jump to mind.
Have you ever seen the home-built steel sloops popular with many Europeans on a small budget? Hard-chined, the Caribbean is full of them. They were easy to build, roomy, and very cheap. Lots of people went cruising on a very tight budget with them. One couple that we knew lived on theirs in the Caribbean for better than 10 years. The man was a teacher, and when school let out for summer break he and his wife cruised the Caribbean and S. America until school reopened.
Then in the late 80s we joined the Hawaiian Tropic St. Martin to Nevis race. The race to Nevis is to weather and fighting a tough current running along St. Kitts, so the monohulls started about 9 pm the night before, then multihulls started the next morning. The Committee boat for the race was a power boat, and as soon as the monohulls crossed the start line the Committee boat headed for Nevis to be in place for the afternoon finish of the monohulls. So you can imagine the Committee boat's dismay when at about 7 in the morning we heard on the radio, "where's the finish line? Where's the committee boat?" An Antigua boat, Caccia alla Volpe, was already there! and the rest of the boats weren't even halfway past St. Kitts. I was impressed, because there were some serious sailors (not us) in this low season, no tourists in sight, race.
Caccia alla Volpe was built like one of the hard-chined steel boats, but was glass over plywood, and damn fast. I thought the boat was super cool!
The owner is often a contender in the annual Heinekken Regatta held every March in St. Maarten/St. Martin. Here's a picture - still hard-chined, but I'm not sure if it's the same boat as I saw 20 years ago.
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