How Nicholas Lazares, who retired earlier this year from his managing director's post at Lehman Brothers, is now making lemons into lemonade.

During the squall of the Great Depression, super broker E.F. Hutton hoisted sail aboard his newly built $1.25 million luxury yacht and told the world that the 356- foot, four-masted barque Hussar V was a seafaring symbol for economic recovery.

``It is the intention of many owners of yachts not to put them into commission this year, for fear that they might offend in times like these,'' Hutton said a few hours before leaving on his 1931 summer vacation. ``I believe the newspapers could create the right sort of sentiment so that nearly every yacht would be placed in commission. It would help the general situation which all of us are trying to relieve.''

At sea some 77 summers later, off the Aegean island of Salamis, the erstwhile Wall Street jingle ``when E.F. Hutton speaks, people listen'' continues to ring true as the chilled pomegranate martinis are poured aboard the 100-foot Caldera.

``I can tell you the view from here is much better than from Wall Street,'' says owner Nicholas Lazares, who earlier this year retired from his position as a managing director of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., the fourth-biggest U.S. securities firm, and started a new company that specializes in purchasing distressed financial institutions. With family, friends and four crew members, he then boarded his pilot house cutter for a five- week cruise of the Greek islands and Croatia's Dalmatian coast.

``Caldera is named after the volcanic explosion that Plato figured sank the lost continent of Atlantis,'' Lazares says with an uneasy laugh as lunch is being served. ``But I've never done my best business by making house calls on investment banks. I do it through sailing. It's an attractive venue.''

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