06: Cruising: The Caribbean
A Rare Bird

A Rare Bird

We have Free Range for sale on Craigslist and Sailboatlistings.com. If you’re curious to see the ads:

http://virgin.craigslist.org/boa/4890379030.html

http://www.sailboatlistings.com/view/48540

 

Anyways,

since posting Free Range for sale, we’ve been contacted by a fair number of programs/people – some scammers (the programs), some tire kickers, some pretty serious.

Through the course of interacting with these potential buyers, we received an email from a man who owns – get this – A SLOCUM 37! Other than Our S&S (original owners of Free Range), we’d yet to interact with another Slocum 37 owner. We’d never seen one other Slocum 37 in all of our internet research and all of our sailing. So this is pretty neat for us.

 

Free Range is Hull #9 (meaning that she was the ninth boat built in the Slocum 37 series).

The Slocum owner who contacted us is the owner of Hull #5.

 

Our new Slocum #5 friend was curious if we knew how many Slocum 37s were built and when they quit production. I had no idea but told him I’d look through the Slocum paperwork that was passed down to us  and that I’d email S&S to see if they knew.

In looking through the old Slocum paperwork you would not believe what I discovered – a letter from the ORIGINAL owner of…

HULL #5!!!!

I took a photo of the letter and emailed it to Slocum #5, who was pretty pleased to receive it. He sent us photos of the work he had done to restore Perseverance.

 

Image 65
Letter from the original owner of Hull #5 (“Morning Star”, now “Perseverance”). 

Image 66

 

 

S&S wrote back telling us that Free Range, Hull #9, was the last of her kind. They built only NINE Slocum 37s in all. And from what I can tell, each one was pretty custom, as far as the finishes / upgrades / layout. Pretty neat.
I wrote Hull #5 to share this news with him. He replies:

 

Hi Sara,

Only NINE! Now that’s what you call a rare bird.  I have searched and searched for that information for over 3 years. Sure glad I emailed you.  Makes all the work I put into Perseverance all the more worth while.  If you don’t mind me asking, why are you selling Free Range?

I’m sure you know what you have and know that the Slocum 37 is a refinement of Huntingfords Rafiki 37.  On Sail.net someone inquiring about a Slocum 37 asked what the forum thought of the boat. One of the replies was, ” A Slocum is to a Westsail as an Eagle is to a Sparrow.”  Now that’s saying a lot considering a Westsail survived the Perfect Storm, unattended. 

Remember, it may be a buyers market but rare is rare. Don’t give in to the low ballers, she’s worth every penny you are asking…

Best regards and thank for the info,

 

Kind of neat to know we have a rare little bird. We always knew she was super special, just had no clue how rare she was.

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