Winters in Scotland are long, and the days are short and often dreary. Months stretch into seemingly endless semi-darkness, and it’s all too easy to slump into boredom. Dan Loveridge and his two friends, Jacques and Juan, have a way of avoiding the malaise: an annual Christmas Challenge. Two years ago, Dan won a fancy-dress challenge with a Bender Robot costume and a Bumblebee Transformer costume for two of his daughters, as well as an Oscar-the-Grouch costume for himself. Last winter, the challenge was to make something from small stirring sticks, and he won again with a fully articulated model excavator.

Marie Loveridge

Dan had a good feeling about SEA BESTIA's potential to be dangerously fast and take first place in the big race.

In the fall of 2022, one of the three friends mentioned building a boat and holding a Christmas Day regatta. Dan liked the suggestion. Originally from New Zealand, he grew up on the Bay of Islands surrounded by boats and always on the water, but he had never built a boat. Discussions centered around keeping costs down when someone mentioned the article in Small Boats about Riley Hall’s AVANTI, a diminutive outboard powerboat built from one sheet of plywood. “AVANTI really set the wheels in motion,” Dan says, “and she became the go-to example during our debates on how to proceed.”

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