At one point when Morris Yacht founder Tom Morris was being interviewed about the company, he said, “We’re in a tricky spot around here, but we’re doing okay.”
But he wasn’t talking about the company. At the time, he was negotiating a sailboat through a problematic patch of water near Cape Canaveral, Florida.
Actually, the future of Morris Yachts has never been brighter. Last month, the company won its second straight best-in-show award from the yacht magazine, Cruising World. Maine Gov. John Baldacci was on hand at the Morris Trenton facility as Cruising World officials honored the M42 daysailer with the ’07 award for “Best Special Purpose Cruiser.” Judges labeled the sailboat “the prettiest, best-built and most delightful new boat.”
The award nicely complemented Cruising World’s ’06 “Domestic Boat of the Year” award for the Morris Ocean-Series M42. Both awards, coupled with recent expansion of Morris boatbuilding facilities on Mount Desert Island and in Trenton, provide strong evidence that times couldn’t be better.
But these days Tom Morris spends more time on the water and less time at the boatyard. He turned company operations over to his son, Cuyler Morris, and returned to something he loves more than boatbuilding.
“I had always hoped to spend more time sailing,” Morris said.
Morris now serves the company as “ambassador-at-large and glorified delivery skipper,” according to company spokeswoman Marnie Read.
Marketing and Skill
But while Morris no longer runs Morris Yachts’ day-to-day operations, his boatbuilding philosophy does. “Passion” and “quality” are the buzzwords employees use to describe Morris’s approach to boat-building and how Morris Yachts continues to build boats today.
Will Ratcliff has been with the company for 18 years and now serves as its general manager. His path to Morris Yachts was circuitous. While teaching marine design, he landed a position working under legendary boat designer Chuck Paine. But Paine couldn’t keep Ratcliff on indefinitely, so he instead persuaded Morris to find him a position.
“I essentially got traded to Morris,” Ratcliff said.
In his years at Morris Yachts, Ratcliff has seen vast changes in the boatbuilding industry, as designers have gone from pencil and paper to Computer-Aided Design (CAD) drawing. He’s also witnessed some of the company’s growth from a one-man operation to employing more than 100 today. Morris Yachts used to build four to six boats a year; now the company averages in the low twenties.
But it hasn’t always been smooth sailing. Like other boatbuilders, Morris Yachts endured significant business dips in troubled times, like after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. In fact, several local boatbuilding companies have come and gone during Ratcliff’s tenure.
“There have been some tough times in the marine industry,” said Ratcliff. “But we were able to be flexible enough to adapt.”
He said Morris Yachts does a careful balancing act between knowing when to leap at a new boatbuilding idea and when to stand pat. The company is one of the few major boatbuilders, for example, that didn’t enter into the powerboat bonanza.
“Everybody jumped on the bandwagon,” Ratcliff said.
By sticking with sailboats, Morris has become one of the only U.S. manufacturers focusing on custom and semi-custom sailboat work.
Knowing what to design, when, depends on listening to your customers, said Ratcliff.
“Our customers are our best feedback loop,” he said.
It was through customer feedback that Morris designers came up with the popular M-class daysailing fleet. Sailors complained their biggest hindrance was the commitment of time and crew to operate a yacht-size sailboat.
“If you have a [traditional] 45-foot boat, you can’t just take it out for a spin ordinarily,” Read said.
But customers told Morris that’s just what they wanted to do, so Morris and independent designers worked collaboratively to design the M-class daysailers.
An M-class boat is designed so all controls and lines are within the captain’s reach, making it feasible for one person to sail it alone.
The timing was right, apparently. “They hit it just right in terms of answering what people need,” Read said.
Help Wanted and the Future
Like other area boatbuilders, Morris Yachts chronically has trouble finding enough skilled labor.
“It’s probably one of our biggest challenges,” Ratcliff said. “There’s a limited pool.”
This problem is exasperated by the company’s perfectionist standards, he said.
“With the level of craftsmanship we demand, not everyone can meet that standard,” he said.
Morris works hard to retain employees by offering high wages and good health insurance and retirement plans. The firm also offers free training and sends employees to boatbuilding schools. But Ratcliff wishes more were done to market boatbuilding as a good, viable, year-round profession in Maine.
In the near future, Morris won’t continue to expand at the same recent rate, Ratcliff said. Instead, the company will solidify its recent expansions.
“We’re trying to find a sweet spot,” he said.
But Morris Yachts will celebrate its 35th anniversary this summer and host two galas. On July 20 there’ll be an open house boat show at the Northeast Harbor facility, and on August 17 Morris Yachts welcomes back all past customers at three Morris facilities.