The sleek, efficiency of high-tech sailboat racing captures the American imagination. However, one Anguillan boat builder, transplanted to Norfolk, Virginia, rhapsodizes about how it can’t compare with his island’s wooden boat racing for edge-of-your-seat excitement. 

Boat builder Levette Proctor came to the United States to make a new life for his family more than a decade ago.

For a while he was with Howdy Bailey Yacht Services in Norfolk, Virginia before becoming a full-time dad and part-time woodsmith for hire. His wife is a doctor and Levette is home with the kids when he isn’t doing custom projects, or wooden boat work.

Standing by the waters of The Hague in front of The Chrysler Museum of Art here in Norfolk he looks at a child maneuvering a remote control sailboat and begins to talk about how much he misses sailboat racing.  

“It is quite interesting in the United States because the boats have a deck,” Proctor explains. He pulls up a picture on his phone of one of the boats he built, "Superstar" with a canary yellow hull and shooting star logo.

“You can't see in this picture, but in Anguilla there are no decks on the racing boats and sometimes the boats sink while racing," he explains.

NExt he goes to YouTube and pulls up a VIDEO of racing from 2015 that gives some insight into what this racing is all about. Then another VIDEO of boat racing as told by Miss Anguilla.

These boats are so iconic to Anguilla they are on stamps.

Yes, the boats sink and that’s the fun part, or part of the fun at the very least.

“Every race a boat sinks. It’s exciting,” he adds. “But here in the U.S. you always know the boats all are coming back. It’s a little disappointing really that way. A little more dull.”

Anguilla is known for its no-holds-barred day boat racing. These craft are 28 feet long, with a mast that is 54 feet high and a 42-foot-long boom, crewed by about 20 people. The crew ranges from children to old men. That’s a lot of ballast and no lack of power.

“Four guys with a five-gallon bucket prepare to dip it (the water) out,” he says. While there is no deck, there’s a one-foot-wide rail all around to sit on.

“When the boat goes into the wind the water comes over the sides by the gallons,” he says happily.

The crew are used mainly as ballast and as the vessels take on water, the “ballast” jumps off into the sea. There are also no winches, just brute force in a tug-of-war with the sheets.

Perhaps the closest American equivalent to be found in the states is Chesapeake Bay Log Canoe racing.

However, the Anguillan boats are not pampered yachts on cradles, but often are hoisted from the bare ground by backhoe and dragged into the sea where the slabs of lead ballast are hand placed into the hold of the floating craft at the start of each season.

In videos of races one can see the added factor of a pell-mell assortment of chase craft weaving in and out of the racing fleet to scoop up the jettisoned crew.

“It’s thrillin’” Proctor exclaims. “Every race somebody sinks, something broke or gives way under the water pressure.”

“Three races and you can spend an hour and a half going downwind and three hours coming back up,” Proctor says. “Then there is a race around the whole island that’s at least six hours. Sometimes the leading boat is a half hour ahead of the following boat. It gets very crazy.”

That just might be because it started very crazy.

A Little History

Centuries ago, when the Anguillian plantation economy failed, the men of Anguilla took to the sea for employment on neighboring islands. The mainstay became the cane-plantation rich Dominican Republic, according to the Anguillan tourism website.

“On return, trips home became fierce competitions in speed. Schooners would battle the weather, the sea and each other to Road Bay for the glory of arriving home first,” the site states. “In the 1930’s a race of historic proportions was had.  The Warspite and the Ismay, two of Anguilla’s most famous schooners were on return from the D.R. along with several other boats bound from home.  On board between the fleet, three to four hundred men all hungry for the shores of their home.”

According to the website www.ivisitanguilla.com:

One Sunday morning, after five days of hard sailing, the schooners were sighted just west of Dog Island, racing toward Road Bay. 

Church was in session at Bethel Methodist atop of the hill that surrounds Road Bay.  As the boats came “hard lee,” tacking away from each other just to the leeward side of Dowling Shoal near Sandy Island, the excitement of the parishioners watching from the church windows became unbearable.  Eventually everyone, including the Minister, left their sermon to cheer on their boats from the brow of the hill, leaving the church empty.  So began the spectator sport that accompanies boat race.

In 1918, according to Sir Emile Gumbs, the first organized boat race occurred as part of the celebrations marking the end of World War I.  The race, which was held in Crocus Bay, was open to all fishing boats and was won by “Repel” a boat built and owned Joe Hodge of Long Bay.  However, the first race and its winner are still disputed on Anguilla to this day.  What is not up for dispute is the passion for this sport and its continued tradition.

Today, boats are still built by hand but are now built using the WEST (wood epoxy saturated) technique introduced by David Carty, rather than carved from the white cedar trees.  Size determines whether they are A, B and C class.  Class A is the largest and most popular, able to carry 14 men with hundreds of pounds of ballast.

Decades later, that race would lead to more high-stakes competitions, when alcohol smuggling in the 1940s became a race against the law from St. Martin to Anguilla.

When Alcohol faced high taxes in Anguilla in the 1930s and ‘40s, people started smuggling it from St. Martin. For this, they used smaller and lighter boats with no decks.

The first official race took place in 1940. The races had five different categories, each for a particular boat size.

Today, there are six major boat racing events in Anguilla throughout the year, the most important ones being August Monday, during the Anguilla Carnival, Anguilla Day and Easter Monday.

Here is a link to the 2016 racing schedule on the island.

Proctor misses the clear blue waters of Anguilla and the race day mayhem, but says, “I have to take care of my family and that’s what I am doing here. “

Aside from finding work, Proctor says he would like to try one new thing.

“I’ve never actually sailed myself,” he says. “Maybe now I am here I can try that and see what it’s like.”