Harry Andrew Hoffman met Anne Katherine Hardee in 2004 whereas they realized to sail an Optimist dinghy, or Opti, throughout summer time crusing camp in St. Croix, V.I. They have been each 8.
The dinghy “was the closest factor to a bath with a mast and sails,” mentioned Mr. Hoffman, 28, now a lieutenant within the U.S. Coast Guard in Washington.
His household had moved to St. Croix from Toms River, N.J., in 2000, the identical yr her household, who lived in Fort Value, Texas, started spending summers and faculty breaks there.
She recalled being “envious of his lovely blond ringlets, larger than Shirley Temple’s.” He was intrigued by her Texas twang.
In 2011, when she was 14, her household started spending the second half of every college yr on St. Croix as a result of they appreciated the neighborhood feeling.
“She was a breath of recent air,” mentioned Mr. Hoffman, when she joined his freshman highschool class at St. Croix Nation Day College, now Good Hope Nation Day College.
After courses, they went to crusing follow — he as a skipper and she or he a crew member — of their scrappy gear, together with rash guards defending them from the solar.
“Practices have been aggressive,” mentioned Ms. Hardee, additionally 28, and now working as an analytics supervisor for operations on the RealReal, the net luxurious style reseller.
On weekends, they might hang around with a few of their 20 classmates on Buck Island or Rainbow Seashore, and sometimes snacked on mangoes.
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In 2013, throughout junior yr, he drove her to and from college every day — they lived on neighboring hills — and shortly, in change for the rides, she usually made him goat cheese omelets, normally with turkey bacon.
That April, they determined to go to the junior promenade as associates, however that quickly modified after they flew to Miami for a regatta, or a sailboat race.
They have been watching the MTV Video Music Awards within the lounge of their resort once they stole their first kiss.
After she returned to Fort Value for the primary semester of her senior yr, they usually spoke on the telephone till 3 a.m., and he even took per week off college to go to her. “We have been so in love,” Mr. Hoffman mentioned, including that he received the “full American expertise within the big Texas highschool system,” the place he met her associates and went to a category and a soccer recreation along with her.
Throughout their second semester, when she returned to St. Croix, he requested her to their senior promenade in a well-known setting — underwater.
“PROM?” he had spray-painted in crimson letters on a big piece of canvas, which he identified whereas they went scuba diving at Cane Bay on the island.
Every week after commencement, he left for swab summer time, a boot camp for incoming Coast Guard cadets. She wrote him a letter daily, and he replied each time he may. She nonetheless has the letters in a file cupboard.
“They received me via swab summer time,” he mentioned.
Mr. Hoffman graduated from the U.S. Coast Guard Academy in New London, Conn., with a bachelor’s diploma in naval structure and marine engineering. Ms. Hardee graduated cum laude with a bachelor’s diploma in economics from George Washington College.
In 2018, after graduating from the academy, he was assigned to a Coast Guard cutter, or ship, on Virginia Seashore, and she or he labored as an financial marketing consultant for a agency in New York.
Whereas at sea and incommunicado for as much as three months, he picked up trinkets for her within the Caribbean and Central America. Whereas at port in Virginia, he visited her in New York almost each weekend.
In March 2020, when Covid hit, she packed her luggage and went to stick with him in Norfolk, Va., for a few weeks. She by no means left. “It was an impromptu growth,” Mr. Hoffman mentioned, with fun.
A few months later, after he obtained orders to Base Alameda in California, they moved to Oakland, and, a yr later, to San Francisco. In June 2023, they returned to the East Coast when he was assigned to Coast Guard headquarters in Washington.
“We rolled with it,” Mr. Hoffman mentioned. That December, whereas visiting St. Croix, he proposed on their favourite spot on the western level of Buck Island.
On March 15, Eliana L. Schuster-Brown, a Common Life minister, officiated earlier than 143 friends on the Fort St. Croix, as soon as a contessa’s hilltop property constructed within the Nineteen Seventies.
After the ceremony, they walked via a sword arch fashioned by his Coast Guard associates. Later, on the reception, native dishes included fried breadfruit, mashed cassava and recent mahi mahi.
“We had Moko Jumbie males on stilts to introduce associates to St. Croix tradition,” she mentioned.
Mr. Hoffman mentioned: “Circumstances have been optimum. No rain, not a cloud within the sky and slightly breezy. It was a typical scorching day in St. Croix, however a particular one as a result of I used to be capable of marry Annie.”
