If you grew up sailing in Florida in the 1970s and 80s as I did, you probably spent many hours daydreaming and looking at Hunters, or if you were fortunate, sailing one. Those memories might not exist at all were it not for bit of luck and perseverance. While the U.S. economy was caught in a global recession, the Hunter Marine plant in Florida was still churning out sailboat hulls by the dozens.
Photo courtesy of Noel Gingerich
You didnt have to spend a lot of time on these boats to realize that they werent the paragon of craftsmanship. The laminated floor and furniture seemed dated even back then, and the rough glasswork betrayed the boats mission: to persuade the average Joe that even he could still afford a clean escape. By the mid-1980s, it seemed as if every third sailboat in the Columbus Day Regatta-Biscayne Bays waterborne bacchanalia-was a Hunter.
While Hunters marketing genius is enviable, the true achievement in its early boats like the Hunter 30 (see page 26) is that theyve managed to endure at all. The first Hunter 30 was launched in the wake of the 1973 oil embargo, and the design survived through nine years of stagflation and rising unemployment.
Fortunately, for Hunter and other builders who prevailed in that era, significant improvements in fiberglass construction methods coincided with the need for lower production costs. Laminate schedules were getting thinner, and the higher fiber-to-resin ratio was more economical. Sailboat building could still be lucrative, but profitably often required a few corners to be cut.
Almost any sailing forum on the Internet has a resident boat snob who compares fixing up an old production boat from the 70s to putting lipstick on a pig. Certainly, the Hunter 30 has some inherent flaws, but none are irredeemable. In the same way a vase cracked during firing holds a charm lacking in the one that emerges pristine, an old Hunter can grow on you. The photos that accompany this months review are the clearest proof of this.
The hand-written surveys in our dusty decades-old file on the Hunter 30 were growing stale, so for this months review, we turned to current owners for their impressions. Several responded with detailed responses to our questions; some answers were astoundingly extensive.
The owners custom improvements were fascinating, but the personal stories behind the boats were what stuck with me. One Hunter 30 had been passed down through two generations, another had sailed to the Caribbean and back, and another had served as an affordable home while its owner pursued a graduate degree.
Browsing the photos of the Hunter 30s owned by Joel Tesoriero, Kasi McCain, and Noel Gingerich featured this month, I was reminded that a boats pedigree is a terrible gauge of a boats true worth. No, a Cherubini-designed Hunter-despite the exotic-sounding name-is not a Morris, a Hinckley, or a Swan. But in the hands of an owner who appreciates his good fortune, a modest Hunter 30 is worth more than the finest megayacht.
