Antiguan resident Joe Hutchens began sailing when he was four, in Minnesota. By the time he was 13 he was working on Gulf Clipper, a sightseeing boat.
Several small jobs later, he soon found himself in the UK where he worked in the famous Mercury Boatyard in the Hamble.
From there, he wound up in the USVI where he worked on the 71′ Oceana. At the age of 22 he became captain, plying the well-worn route for the next six years between the Caribbean and the Med.
He was also captain of a Swann 55 Abracadabra and an Oyster Flying Scotsman from Antigua, where he built a house and settled down.
Joe then spent three years as a delivery skipper and worked for Tidewater Marine supplying drilling ships in the Gulf of Mexico, but when the company insisted he go to Nigeria, he quit and joined Inigo and Xavier Ross at Wadadli Cats where he drove Sprit of Antigua for two years.
A while later he couldn’t resist the chance to take on a large schooner called My Way which had gone on the rocks in a hurricane near the entrance to Falmouth Harbour. She rested beside Slipway for a long time, termites eating her cabin by cabin, until finally she was recently scuttled in the deep water towards Montserrat from English Harbour.
Last year he bought himself a charter yacht called Ivy and works now, aged 39, in his Real Estate office and spends a lot of time with his daughter, Arizona.
Joe is a very likeable guy, ready for anything – we all hope that he can take some time off in the spring to join the crew of St. Peter for the sequel of Pirates of the Caribbean, to be filmed once again in St. Vincent.
