From collection Maynard Bray Collection
The 36' 9" Yawl SPRAY (Replica)
A replica of the 36' 9" yawl Spray lies on her starboard side at the head of Southwest Harbor, Maine, for bottom painting in April 1984. This version of Spray was built by Ed Davis of Seal Cove, Maine in 1982; she was later converted to a sloop, then rigged as a Chinese junk. Her hull shape makes her surprisingly fast off the wind. The original vessel inspired many copies, largely due to the sailing saga she gave rise to. Spray was built as an oyster smack and worked the waters of the Chesapeake until the early 1880s. In a decrepit state, she was offered to the writer and skilled sailor Joshua Slocum in 1892; Slocum took her on as a refit project. His subsequent solo circumnavigation of the globe was widely feted as the first on record. However, luck abandoned Slocum on a later voyage out of Vineyard Haven in Massachusetts. En route to the headwaters of the Orinoco River in South America, he and the vessel disappeared and were not seen again.
