History of Life (Our Boat)

As shared with us by Gary, the person who enjoyed her before we did.

I thought I would relate to you, the history of your boat as it was told to me.
When Kim and I came to Florida, we went to Ft. Lauderdale to search for a boat. We met Tom Harney, a broker, and he showed us several boats.

The boat we purchased was called RAVEN II at that time. We subsequently changed it to SolyMar.
The original owner, as explained to me by Tom, was a wealthy man from Africa. Apparently, in the early 90's, he was unhappy with the financial system in Africa. The government had ruled that no more than 10% of a persons money could leave the country in any given year. He wanted to take all of his money and transfer it to the U.S.. The man made a trip to the U.S. and met with the people at the Hunter Factory. I'm assuming that it is the facility on the east coast of Florida. He contracted to purchase 2 boats. His story was that he wanted to start a Hunter dealership in Africa. He purchased two boats and they were sailed to Africa.

The owner then setup a makeshift dealership and sold one of the boats, presumably to appear legitimate. He then over the course of time, extracted all of his money in cash from the banks. He hid the money on the boat (your boat) and sailed it back to the U.S., where he started a new life.

I am unaware of his name or whereabouts. I can't verify the story. The second owner, whom were purchased the boat from, is the one who told Tom Harney the story.
Thought you might be interested.

I thought it was cool that our boat was used to smuggle.  My grandfather was a rum runner during Prohibition, must be in the blood. ;)

The Junkanoo was fun, there were local 'bands' that played.  Rake and Scrap is an interesting mixture between taped music and playing a rusty saw.  Very interesting. 

There was a fire dancer who was a mixture between a clown and a pyromaniac.  It looked like he drank as much alcohol as he used to keep his fires burning.  He was amazingly strong and astoundingly flexible.

The Bahamian Marching Band played and they were really fun to watch.  The field was small, but they did a good job.

Oh and food.  Lots of food.   There were more attractions, but we'd been standing for a long time and still had a long way to walk to get back to the boat so we called it a night.  It was very fun,

Above is the footage of the dolphins playing with the bow of our boat.
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