HITE STONE--Growing up, Bruce Burgess and his sister, Janet, would sometimes accompany their father on forays to photograph and examine the Chesapeake Bay sailing vessels that were his passion.

Robert H. Burgess fell in love with sailing craft as a young traveler on the decks of steamboats taking him for visits to grandparents in Northumberland County. He was simply driven to document the wooden craft that harnessed the power of the wind to work on the bay.

Deep down, say his children, their father somehow knew early on that the sloops, pungies, bugeyes, schooners and skipjacks wouldn't be around forever.

First with a primitive Brownie box camera and later with a more sophisticated Ikomat folding camera, Robert Burgess captured the working sailboats of the bay. He filled the back of each photo with names, dates and details of each boat's captain, history and more.

During that time, Bruce Burgess, who now lives part time near the bay in the Lancaster County community of White Stone, didn't share his father's fascination with old boats.

To the eyes of a young boy, the often dilapidated hulks driven up on beaches or in shallow marshes were wrecks of rotting wood and rusting riggings.

Where his father worked in the field that he loved, as a curator and more at the Mariner's Museum in Newport News, Bruce Burgess became an architect and the owner of a successful bicycle-touring company, living first in Richmond and later, in Middlebury, Vt.

In the past few years, the accomplished businessman made an emotional connection to the father he loved, both before and after he passed away in 2003.

In essence, the younger Burgess--with his sister, wife and a lifelong friend who's an expert on maritime history--helped fulfill the promise of a book on Chesapeake sailing craft that his father created decades ago.

"It's been hard work and emotional at times, finishing this for my father," said Bruce Burgess. "But somehow, it just felt like what we needed to do."

Don't be confused about that promise.