Updated 12 April 2024:
Fortune was built as a two-mast three-sail bateau, as a recreational vessel. She was acquired by a private owner in 2015 and converted into a single-mast skipjack. After participating in both 2015 skipjack races, she was sold to another private owner and worked as a dredge boat. Current status is uncertain.
Fortune was built not as a skipjack but as a three-sail bateau in Little Ferry, New Jersey, by Lawrence W. Zeman in 1978. Built as a pleasure boat, she was made out of mahogany and originally had a large cabin and inboard diesel engine.
Beyond that, we have found few details to fill out the history of Fortune. According to Coast Guard records in 2015, her latest owner had been Glen Roudebush of Bel Air, Maryland, and previous owners listed were Stephen A. Orlando, James Michael Culver and Paul E. Becker. At some point, she had been named Miss Fortune, but it is unknown whether that was her original name.
In 2015, we found Fortune in Cambridge, Maryland, bought that year by Phil Todd. She still showed her homeport as Baltimore on her transom. Phil took off the big cabin and traded it for sails from Curlew III, converting Fortune to a skipjack rig. He sailed her in both the Deal Island and Cambridge skipjack races that year.
He also owned Virginia W at the time and planned on dredging one boat out of Deal Island and the other out of Cambridge, but then sold Fortune that same year to Gibby Robinson. In 2016, we found Fortune dredging out of Cambridge, using a pushboat. But as of 2024, she was reported to be in storage on land at a boatyard in Fishing Creek and not likely to be around for much longer.