The word came years later than we expected, but it’s now decision time for the publisher of Latitude 38 with regard to his Leopard 45 catamaran ‘ti Profligate in the BVI Yacht Charters yacht management program in the British Virgins.

To recap, we’d taken Latitude’s 63-ft Profligate from California to the Caribbean in late 2004 for the 2005 winter/spring season, then brought her back to San Francisco. While we had a great time — particularly Doña ‘Party Girl’ de Mallorca, who didn’t have to commute back to California and work — it took just under a month of hardcore traveling to get from Cabo to Antigua, and about the same amount of time to get from Antigua back to San Francisco. As great as cruising in the Caribbean is, we concluded that two months of travel for four months in the Caribbean wasn’t something we’d want to do on a regular basis.

Unwilling to give up on the fabulous sailing in the Caribbean, in late 2005 the publisher bought the 2000 Leopard 45 cat Eva ‘Evil’ Louise coming out of The Moorings charter fleet in Tortola. He then placed her in the management program at BVI Yacht Charters. She would be chartered in the British Virgins for nine months each year, and she would be Latitude’s Caribbean office in St. Barth from February through April. Hard but very nice work if you can get it. Our firm intention was to keep the boat for just three years, then sell her.

If you’re good at math, you know that we’ve kept ‘ti for nine years now, or three times longer than we’d intended. How could we not? The boat’s charter income offset all the repairs and gear replacements. And working/cruising in the Caribbean is sooooooo sweet, particularly from the middle of February to the middle of May, when the weather is the best.

Apparently there was considerable demand to charter ‘ti because of her association with Latitude 38, which is the only reason that BVI kept her in their fleet for so long. Understandably, the charter company prefers to have newer boats on offer.

Thanks to the regular maintenance performed by Anthony and the staff at BVI Yacht Charters, ‘ti Profligate is still in remarkably good shape. Nonetheless, she’s 15 years old, and thus we just got the word from BVI Yacht Charter owner Arjan Stoof that she will be pulled from their fleet at the end of July. It’s been a great run, we think, for both parties.

So what do we do next? We can think of five options:

1) Sell ‘ti and buy a newer boat that would be accepted in the BVI Yacht Management program.

2) Sell ‘ti and use the money to short the tumbling euro.

3) Keep ‘ti and try to find a 50% partner to use her November through mid-February.

4) Keep ‘ti and try to find a 50% partner for sailing her in the Caribbean from November to February, then up the East Coast in the summers.

5) Keep ‘ti and use her as a moveable base from which to take drone photos for a photo book on anchorages in the Caribbean, while doing a few weeks of specialty charters — photography charters, anti-magnet charters, toxic cleansing charters, lesbian charters, etc — to offset expenses.

Option 1 is off the table — it’s going to be The Summer of ’67 for us, so we’ve likely bought our last boat. Option 2 is out of the question because we’re not smart enough for currency speculation. Options 3 and 4 have their attractions, but Option 5 is the current favorite. We really enjoy photography and particularly drone photography, and we’d like to have a powerful excuse to visit all the islands again. And niche charters appeal to our sense of humor.

One thing we really like is the fact that the folks at BVI Charters, who really know and like ‘ti, are willing to continue maintenance and offer off-season storage.

What would you do if you were in our Top-Siders?

If you had a yacht in yacht management in the Caribbean — or anywhere else — what did you do when the agreement was up? Send us your comments by email.

There’s something missing from Sausalito’s Richardson Bay anchorage: the notorious Flyin’ Hawaiian catamaran. Word around the docks is that Hot Rod Lane’s home-built creation actually made it out the Golden Gate and headed south over the weekend.

Why is that news? Because Lane’s 65-ft cat — which was launched in May 2013 after a three-year build process at San Rafael’s Loch Lomond Marina — had been unsuccessful on all previous attempts to either sail or motor. And she’d dragged several times in different parts of the North Bay, once having to be rescued by the Coast Guard. 

Designed and built by Lane, 53, and his son Michael Johnson, 29, without any professional help, the big cat’s odd shape, 2-by-4-and-plywood construction and unconventional rig have made it the butt of many caustic comments on cruiser forums. 

So where is Flyin’ Hawaiian headed? Lane’s original goal was to reach Hawaii and live aboard there at anchor. But conjecture around the Richardson Bay anchorage seems to be that she’s heading to Southern Cal first. 

The bottom line for Belvedere homeowners living adjacent to the anchorage is that there is now one less illegal liveaboard vessel to blight their view. And for the Richardson Bay Regional Authority, which oversees the anchorage, there’s one less unnavigable vessel that might drag ashore and have to be removed at great taxpayer expense.