Richard Avery, 83

Portland, St. Thomas, Great Cranberry Island

“Dick” Avery died on Feb. 3. Graduating from Bard College with a degree in Sculpture was a proud accomplishment. In 1956, he entered the Army, and after two years landlocked in Oklahoma, he bought a one-way ticket to St. Thomas, U.S.V.I., where he lived on a houseboat he built, and then in a house on telephone poles he designed and built on the north side of the island.

After running day trips on a 65-foot schooner, he founded Bareboat Chartering and opened Avery’s Boathouse in Frenchtown, U.S.V.I., where he had a fleet of 24 boats for charter. He also became a Pearson Yacht dealer, selling to local friends and then helping them pay for them by chartering to New England sailors. A new industry was born, and the island had its first fleet of racing yachts.

Dick didn’t have $1,000 to become a charter member of St. Thomas Yacht Club, but he engineered and built the first clubhouse with Rudy Thompson. He was STYC’s commodore in 1975 and 1976.

Dick purchased “the shack” on Great Cranberry Island in 1970. When asked by his daughter his greatest accomplishment he answered “The Cranberry Gull,” a 41-foot trawler he and his son designed and built in Maine and took home to St. Thomas in 1987. He loved his family, classical music, being on the water, reading, and all animals, but most of all cats. He was a man to whom monetary things meant little, but he lived a rich life.