While in Cuba, where I am from, and on the year of 1939, when I was 8 years old and the war coming, my father had to sell his Luscombe airplane and deciding to try sailing he bought an old, wooden Bahama gaff-rigged sailboat. He learned to sail and I learned to keep the boat dry by bailing constantly, but we both loved it so in 1944 father commissioned a 27' Seabird Yawl built, which we finished and started sailing in 1945. On Easter week 1946, preparing for a one year circumnavigation of Cuba father had a brain stroke and died. He left me with Alfin, our Seabird Yawl. For obvious reasons (15 year old captain) mother sold Alfin and we then bought a small, one-design sailboat called "Snorky" which I sailed for years. Work made me stop owning but I still boated all the time.
Go forward to 1960, lost everything in Cuba and immigrated to USA with three kids, a wife and $5.00 in my pocket. Started working on a boat manufacturing company in Little Rock Arkansas and got a 10ft. dinghy we were building for Sears Roebuck. That is what started a large fleet. If we count the boats we, as a family have had since 1962 the number is 53. Being in the boat design and manufacturing business, you can imaging. My three children have had boats by themselves ever since, my daughter home-schooled her three children by circumnavigating the world for eight years, my sons have raced the transpacific, and countess other races all over.
1989 I bought a new Brewer 44 sloop rigged vessel which I named ALFIN II and navigated her 66,000 miles in the 25 years I've owned her. Due to age, etc. changed to an Eagle 40 Trawler named ALFIN III which is fantastic and just last week sold her and bought a 24 ft. Newcastle Launch named ALFIN IV to gunkhole around Pine Island Fl, where I live until I reach the coming old-age. That is it--80 years of sailing and motor boating. If my grammar is faulty, please excuse it--I'm Cuban.