Local man spends 3 years repairing passenger boat to fulfill a lifelong dream

By Jessica Miller

The Post and Courier

Thursday, September 9, 2010

Lucas Smith and friends have spent more than 4,500 hours repairing the Osprey, a Gillikin wooden boat.

It has fresh paint and 650 sturdier bolts and is Coast Guard-certified for 49 paying passengers. The doors to the wheelhouse remain plywood, a window is cracked and the interior needs some trim, but it’s still Smith’s dream boat.

The Osprey is tied up at a private slip in the Hobcaw Point neighborhood in Mount Pleasant.

The Post and Courier

After three years of work, Lucas Smith’s vessel, the Osprey, is finally ready for chartered excursions. Fixing up the boat became the Pelican Dry Cleaner owner’s hobby after he found it on eBay.

Smith, owner of Pelican Dry Cleaners and a part-time charter boat captain, said he had wanted to find a commercial passenger boat for as long as he can remember. He searched the backs of boating magazines and found that the vessels advertised were either too expensive or just not what he wanted.

Most of them were offered up as fishing vessels left over from a sinking industry.

While Smith was piloting another Charleston boat, a passenger asked Smith if he knew about the vessel being sold on the online auction site eBay.

Smith searched for the listing, but instead found another boat, a 61-footer built in the 1960s. It was used for commercial fishing trips until 1996, when the owners didn’t want to spend the money needed to make the boat compliant with Coast Guard certifications.

It was sold to someone else and eventually given to a North Carolina man who no longer wanted it. The boat was listed at a buy-it-now price of $25,000, Smith said. There was no reserve price set, meaning the highest bidder would win.

Smith had never made an eBay purchase but had signed up in 2003 with the name Ospreyinc, thinking it would be a good business name. He watched the auction throughout the week and made a last-minute bid of less than $5,000 and won.

At the time, he thought he could be out as little as $500, the deposit required before he picked up the boat from its North Carolina dock and paid the balance. He knew the engines would be worth more than that as scrap metal.

He brought the boat to a private dock in Mount Pleasant’s Hobcaw Point neighborhood in late 2007 and set to work.

After putting in eight-hour days running his dry-cleaning business, he came to the dock to work on the boat.

“It’s how I relax. I get recharged instead of beat up,” Smith said.

He spent the first three years making repairs to meet current Coast Guard regulations, adding such things as seating, life jackets and a fuel system. Now he spends time adding on extras, moving seating from the midsection to benches on the bow and adding wooden trim to the wheelhouse’s interior.

“I’m keeping history alive,” Smith said.

Most wouldn’t sink as much time and money as he has into a wooden ship. And he’s also going back to his childhood, as a picture on the wall in the wheelhouse helps him remember. A 1975 photograph taken on a boat off Pawleys Island shows him at age 4 at the wheel sitting in his father’s lap. Smith said he doesn’t remember the picture being taken, just the day.

His father, Ellison Smith IV, often let Lucas run the boat so that he could fish.

“It was a little self-serving,” he said.

Smith will offer the Osprey up for chartered excursions mostly to pay for his hobby. He envisions small parties with food and live music, but he’s open to any trip.

“If people have an idea, we can do it,” Smith said.

Maria Aslage of Hearsay Communications calls it a very Lowcountry boat because of its wood finish.

The deck is made of juniper and the ribs of oak and it’s planked in mahogany.

Aslage said the Mount Pleasant Business Association, with which she is affiliated, has chosen the Osprey as the site of an upcoming corporate party.

Smith will enjoy the party from above.

He pilots the boat from the top of a two-story wheelhouse, where he can keep his eye on all passengers at all times, thanks to a modification from a previous owner who moved the wheelhouse to the back of the boat.

“The freedom, the saltwater in the air. It’s peaceful,” Smith said.

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Captain Lucas Smith