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Harry Andrew Hoffman met Anne Katherine Hardee in 2004 while they learned to sail an Optimist dinghy, or Opti, during summer sailing camp in St. Croix, V.I. They were both 8.
The dinghy “was the closest thing to a bathtub with a mast and sails,” said Mr. Hoffman, 28, now a lieutenant in the U.S. Coast Guard in Washington.
His family had moved to St. Croix from Toms River, N.J., in 2000, the same year her family, who lived in Fort Worth, Texas, began spending summers and school breaks there.
She recalled being “envious of his beautiful blond ringlets, bigger than Shirley Temple’s.” He was intrigued by her Texas twang.
In 2011, when she was 14, her family began spending the second half of each school year on St. Croix because they liked the community feeling.
“She was a breath of fresh air,” said Mr. Hoffman, when she joined his freshman high school class at St. Croix Country Day School, now Good Hope Country Day School.
After classes, they went to sailing practice — he as a skipper and she a crew member — in their scrappy gear, including rash guards protecting them from the sun.
“Practices were competitive,” said Ms. Hardee, also 28, and now working as an analytics manager for operations at the RealReal, the online luxury fashion reseller.
On weekends, they would hang out with some of their 20 classmates on Buck Island or Rainbow Beach, and often snacked on mangoes.
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