stitch and glue

Travel Day Maine

Today I flew to Maine and picked up a rental car in Portland. I am making my way to Brooklin Boat Yard but wanted to spend a couple of days visiting boat yards. My first stop was Rockport Marine where I had the pleasure of inspecting their recently launched 1938 Alden motorsailer. The restoration was a 3 year process and it shows. Fantastic boat. Click here to access their website and see the finished product. I certainly hope this leads to more restorations of this type, especially if they are S&S motorsailers. I have a policy of not posting articles about other designer's work but in this case it is worth the exception.

I then drove over to Artisan Boatworks. This is a smaller yard run by a alum from Rockport Marine, Alec Brainerd and his crew. They specialize in smaller boats and custom construction but they tend to do their fair share of restoration work as well. Check out their website here. That boat at at the top is Sparkman & Stephens yacht Glory, a Finisterre type undergoing complete restoration. Here's a shot of her gutted interior. At the moment they are replacing broken frames.


And here's a Dark Harbor 20 being spiffed up for the season. I think this a great yard to build a smaller daysailer or cruising boat out of wood and really enjoy the process. Click here to access their website.


Tomorrow I am off to Morris Yachts. I will have the pleasure of sailing a new M42 with "short house" (sport edition) later tomorrow afternoon. This will be the second launched of this new series. I'll try to get some images and I'll be sure to post them here.