It has been blowing 30 to plus knots all night, and we can finally see the sea state at first light. It was a wild night bombing down massive waves in the pitch-black under a full main and a heavy-air running spinnaker. Without instruments, our only guides were a flashlight taped to the backstay, so we could barely make out a masthead fly and the dim glow of the running lights.
I vividly remember passing waves at such a velocity that we flew off the front of one wave and slammed violently into the back the next. This happened two or three times in succession. An hour before the sunrise, the boom broke. We thought that the competitive part of the race was over for us, so we took the opportunity to rest and hobble down the racecourse.
Unfortunately, along with the sunrise came the realization that we could see daylight through the hull-to-deck joint most of the way around the boat, and after finishing the race, we thought that was the end of the Hobie Instead, Plant and my father, Jon Shampain, decided to rebuild the boat, stiffen it back to its previous glory, and add an open transom. Plant, a longtime sailor and architect by trade, is well-versed in construction techniques and design.
Between the two of them, and with my prowess for deck layouts and rigging systems, we were sure that we would have a great platform.
My father became a boat partner with Plant, and Still Crazy was born. Years later, another full retrofit was done, and I became a third partner.
