Solo Sailor Found Dead

[Rasputin22]

Spronky (Roger) and his Mom have the big yacht provisioning and concierge service and he has a beach club/nightclub thing going on at Hog Island or Cay or whereabouts. His Dad started building the beautiful Spronk catamarans there in Prickly Bay before he moved his yard to St Martin. I that the son still has a couple of his Dad's boats doing daycharter.

 

[Huggy Bear Brown]

Spronky and his Mom have the big yacht provisioning and concierge service and he has a beach club/nightclub thing going on at Hog Island or Cay or whereabouts. His Dad starte building the beautiful Spronk catamarans there in Prickly Bay before he moved his yard to St Martin. I that the son still has a couple of his Dad's boats doing daycharter.

I'll have to track him down, should be pretty easy to do.  The Spronk cats are pretty interesting.  I saw Ppalu on our way down.....St. Martin I recall.  If I catch up with him I'll PM you.

 

[Rasputin22]

     One of the most pivotal sailing moments in my life was leaving St John and windsurfing over to Jost Van Dyke for the day to watch the first day of Foxy's Wooden Boat regatta. I think it was just the singlehanders race on the first day and I ran into a windsurfing buddy on the beach who introduced me to a buy who was a part of the small clan of hangliding pilots who would occasionally fly from the top of Sage Mt on Tortola or even more rarely the peak above Coral Bay on St John. Us local windsurfers at the time thought we had the biggest balls of anyone in the Islands at the time with our Hook In and Hold On regatta and windsurfing expeditions to Anegada and passages between St John and St Croix. Other than the hanglider macho dudes. Turns out Doug the hanglider was also the skipper of PPALU and a windsurfer as well. 

    I enjoyed Happy Hour (which is actually any hour of the day or night at Foxy's) and got on my board as the sun was setting behind for a nice twilight windsurf back to St John. as I ducked the stern of PPALU anchored in Great Bay, my new friend Doug was hailed my from the cockpit and asked me if I was coming back for the real racing the next day. I said yes and would say hi when I arrived in the morning. I heard one of the guests ask Doug where the hell I was going just before dark on a windsurfer and Doug told him I was sailing back to my trimaran still on St John. The guest was astounded that I would even attempt that trip much less with dark approaching and told his skipper to invite me on board. 

   I came back and stepped into the inflatable dinghy and tied my board to it like hitching a horse to the railing in front of a saloon and stepped up onboard to the further amazement of the guests. Apparently Doug had spent the day before trying to give windsurfing lessons to his guests with not much success and they couldn't believe that I was commuting by way of windsurfer. I was running a windsurfing school and concession in the Nation Park on St John and told them it was a walk in the park for me so they booked a day the next week to come get formal school training by a pro. Doug just winked at me and poured me a rum drink and suggested that I just stay for dinner and they would give my a cabin for the night and he would love to have me do the race on PPALU the next day.

    I accepted and after a fine dinner and good company slept like a baby in a roomy cabin and was up early with Doug rigging spinnaker gear before coffee and breakfast. The two couples from Miami who had chartered the boat for a week slept in late and would not be much help racing the big cat which helped explain the hospitality extended to me the night before. Turns out our big rival in the race that day was none other than the 60' SHADOWFAX which was a smaller Spronk sistership to PPALU at 75'. There was a long standing grudge match between the two boats and even more so between the skippers do it was a much anticipated event for bragging rights among the Caribbean multihull fleet of that era.

    I'll take a break here and have another cup of coffee and dredge up more details of the race and post later...

 

[Huggy Bear Brown]

Amazing....  I just read this for the first time, need to enjoy tomorrow morning again with a mug of coffee.  Classic.  Thank you.

 

[Windward]

What a cliff hanger!

Who won?

And what did you do with the windsurfer during the race?

 

[Rasputin22]

There was a beach about a hundred yards away... Sorry for the suspense but the race itself is a good story and should be worth the wait. In the meantime, watch this video about PPALU going on a reef about 25 years later. Good precautionary tale and the owner of PPALU at the time was none other that Randy West who was the skipper of Shadowfax at the time of my story. TIngs run deep in the Island Multihull Posse!

 

[Snaggletooth]

What a cliff hanger!

Adgreede!  Thissis wourser then the sasche waittes.                                   

 

[SloopJonB]

 

Those old cats were sure better looking than the newer ones (IMO).

I even like the reverse sheer.

 

[Rasputin22]

Yeah, the Spronk designs were sexy beasts for sure but the very fine lines made the fast but had limited interior room. Wet when pressed hard but tracked like they were on rails with that very deep sharp canoe body line. Sometimes hard to tack due to small shallow rudders but you didn't have to worry about dragging the transoms. Not a lot of underwing clearance and you could really slap down the cross deck but the hulls didn't really pound. Some nice deals available on some of the older Spronks. His son now owns and operated both the boats shown above I think. He may have a third one as well.

 

[MangoMan]

Yeah, the Spronk designs were sexy beasts for sure but the very fine lines made the fast but had limited interior room. Wet when pressed hard but tracked like they were on rails with that very deep sharp canoe body line. Sometimes hard to tack due to small shallow rudders but you didn't have to worry about dragging the transoms. Not a lot of underwing clearance and you could really slap down the cross deck but the hulls didn't really pound. Some nice deals available on some of the older Spronks. His son now owns and operated both the boats shown above I think. He may have a third one as well.

PPALU definitely my fave of all the Spronks I have seen. Lots of fun when Mr. Surprise was running her.

 

[linaszuk]

but reid stowe 

did he actually "go" anywhere? I thought he kinda drifted around and bounced off other boats.