Osprey with Love

                            Osprey With Love


     I bought Osprey from Robert Vest in the 1960's  Shew was designed by S.S. Crocker and Built By Herman Lund in Erie Pennsylvania on Lake Erie.  For My family she was a home away from home.  We drove the 80 miles from Richmond to  Gene Ruarks Marina in Deltaville Va.
    We sailed on weekends Vacations and stolen days  winter and summer whenever we could get away.  She was seen in those years in creeks and small towns up and down the bay From Baltimore to  Norfolk. On winter weekends we sailed across the bay often to Eastern shore and sometimes Tangier island.  Her wood burning Shipmate kept her warm and cozy even on Bitter cold nights.  This young family broke bread to reset and read by lantern light.  My Wife Gerogene raised in the Virginia Mountains took to the sailing life like a frog in a pond.
     Osprey on a failed trip to Bermuda suffer a broken Mizzen mast and a broken rudder we limped int the Chesapeake bay. To her credit we sailed with a half a rudder and a mizzen that with some jury rigged stays was able to sail and steer with ease.  We ran on engine son me but with the engine shifted on the bed we snapped the drive shaft inside the transmission.  After a year of repairing the things that broke and all the things our lessons had taught us might break we headed out again.  No thing without flesh and blood has ever been held so high in any families esteem and love than Osprey.
       We sold her at a time when my business would not allow me to maintain her.  A young couple lived aboard her for a time and she was sold again.  The New owner had the misfortune of having he main mast blown out of her and she is now reduced to a few rotting timbers in a Carolina marsh. She lives in ours and our Children's memories today.              Doug