FRANK EBERHART

EBERHART--Frank. Frank Eberhart, age 78, died peacefully Friday, January 10, 2020, surrounded by his family. He was a lifelong resident of New York City, where he met his wife Delphine and where they raised their four children, Nathaniel, James, Josiah and BelleAnna. He attended Collegiate School, Millbrook School, and studied civil engineering at Cornell University. Frank served in the Army National Guard after college. He spent his entire working life as a general partner at Eberhart Brothers, a family-run real estate company in New York City. Frank read constantly throughout his life, and his knowledge of history, both in breadth and depth, was unmatched. He welcomed one and all into his home and loved debating history and politics with people of all different opinions. He was outrageously funny, outspoken, and always original. Frank's greatest joy in life was sailing, first on his 45-foot wooden sloop, the Bride of Gastonia, and later on SY Hound. Offshore, he could be found in equal measures at the helm, the foredeck, the nav table, or in the galley cooking happily with the boat heeled over 35 degrees. In the late 1970s and early 80s, he sailed to Labrador, Iceland, and Greenland using celestial navigation which he learned at a young age. In 1991, he crossed the Atlantic on Hound, making it one of the earliest American yachts to enter the Soviet Union. He and Delphine then sailed clockwise around the Baltic and throughout Scandinavia with four children under the age of eight. He made several transatlantic crossings and sailed the North Atlantic extensively, bringing his family as far south as Panama, Colombia, Venezuela, Honduras and Cuba. He enjoyed the camaraderie of ocean racing. Repeat favorites were the Newport-Bermuda Race and the Caribbean 600. He introduced sailing to many people and was a mentor and friend to countless young sailors. In summers on Vinalhaven, he loved going for sails in the Penobscot Bay when the afternoon breeze came up around 2:30pm and cruising down east at the end of the summer. A joy nearly equal to sailing was cooking, and he cherished meals at home with his family. He was enormously wise and sympathetic to the struggles of others, large and small. He was more than anything else a loving husband to Delphine and loving father to their children.