Ron L. has logged over 16,000 hours since 1972.
His boat of choice – Skipjack. Ron has owned four!

Let me tell you a little story which reveals why I am committed to Skipjack boats and believe it is the best boat built in the world… In 1983 there was a big marlin bite off the west coast. We headed out of Santa Barbara in our third Skipjack “Blue Grass Special”.

The first two days we had thirty- two jig strikes. Although the fishing was beyond our dreams, what we next encountered was unexpected. We began noticing a turn for the worse in the weather. As we rounded Santa Rosa Island, known as the “wind tunnel”, we ran into up-side down water. A steep swell running 14’ – 15’ with a steady wind at 35 knots causing the swells to break on top. The three aboard, my son Alex and my friend “Big Al”, all put on life jackets, the first and last time in my boating career thus far. We decided to make it for a sheltered cove around the other side of the island.

Running into the seas our pulpit was under water climbing up the steep face of each mountainous swell. The bilge pumps ran continuously – we never would have made it in most other boats… The damn thing just hung to the swell! Once rounding the Santa Rosa Island we ran down swell—I mean we ran down swell! The damn boat stayed upright. In any different boat no way in hell I’d be here today – no way! To make a long exhausting story short we made it into our haven – Oh, the marlin we caught earlier was still strapped on the swim step. When someone talks about spending time offshore, I’ve got one word of advice, Skipjack!