Sailing Story: Waymon Arnold
Waymon Arnold has been a long-time resident of the Virgin Islands. His kids were born here. Grew up here. Boated here. But sailing? Never. Not Waymon, or his wife, or his kids. 
“I never learned to sail that first go around when I lived here the first time.” Waymon explained. “We were on boats all the time but they were powerboats.”
Waymon moved back to the continental United States having never learned to sail. However, it wouldn’t last. He was living in California with his wife and running his business ‘Arnold Solar’ when his 50th birthday rolled around. His wife decided the perfect gift would be buying Waymon sailing lessons in San Diego.
“I just loved it. The only thing I hated about it was smelling the diesel generator all the time,” Waymon said.
The lessons ended up sparking two big life decisions for Waylon. First, he was going to use his knowledge in solar to create a boat that ran off the sun’s power rather than a diesel generator’s. Second, he was going to move back to the Virgin Islands.
“I’ve always missed the water down here and both of our children were grown so we decided to come back,” Waymon explained. “We moved down here within 4 months of purchasing [Speculation].”
Speculation is the name of Waymon’s 2012 Leopard 44 Catamaran and at the time, very much so, a fixer-upper project.
“It was rundown,” Waymon said frankly.”[but] we rehabbed her.”
Waymon gave Speculation a full make-over and then spent another 40 or so manhours outfitting her to run on solar power.
“I bet it’s the only boat that can run AC, and hot water heaters without a generator! That is until the 24 kw hours of battery are gone and then you have to turn the generators on,” Waymon laughed.
Once Waymon had completed Speculation’s full remodel, he was ready to share her beauty with others.
“Speculation is a big condo on the water, basically,” he said. “We usually charter the boat 20 weeks of the year, we have four weeks we are working on it, and the rest of [the time, me and my wife] are using it.”
When Waymon isn’t busy sailing Speculation himself, he partners with Go Sail Virgin Islands to use her for solar classic catamaran courses with Captain Jalil! Learn more about Speculation and the solar classic catamaran courses here.