I built the Black Seas Barracuda today. Well, over the past week. I bought this on CL along with about 8 other pirate sets from the same era, and some LOTR sets. I got them all for $45. Total score, I have the box to Barracuda, and instructions for the dozen or so sets. The build was pretty fun. The old skool techniques are a bit painful compared to newer sets. One major difference is the instructions. The entire set was just 28 steps in the manual. I feel like a set this size would easily be 2 big manuals by todays standards. They packed in a lot of changes into each step. I had to backtrack MANY times because I missed something. There is no highlighting or diagrams for which parts will be used in the step. The minifigures are pretty cool, I can picture some good imaginative play with the blue vs red capped pirates. The interior details are very poor. There is a whole roof section that is hinged, that just reveals a simple treasure box. Very lack-lustre compared to the BP or QAR interiors. But the colors are pretty cool.
I need to flatten my sails for sure, but I wanted to snap a quick pic with the finished product. I'm missing a few pieces that I hope are fairly common. If there are any classic pirate system fans out there, shoot me a PM if you are interested, I'm going to put it up for sale as soon as I get the spare parts.