The current patients in the iconic red boat sheds at the head of Rockport Harbor are a 65-foot Herreshoff schooner, Mystic Seaport’s 62-foot schooner, Brilliant and a 55-foot P-class sailboat, originally built in 1916. They have all come north to Maine to find new life at Taylor Allen’s wooden boat clinic for reconstructive surgery.
Allen is a burly, red-headed sort of boat doctor who is more at ease amiably talking with some of his highly skilled crew of 45 woodworkers and nautical experts than discussing his successes as the owner of one of Maine’s premier wooden boatbuilding shops. But his successes stare you in the face when you enter his sheds: the Herreshoff schooner is in for repair from storm damage sustained after a fall gale drove her ashore; Brilliant is here for a new deck and transom and the P-class sailboat from Lake Ontario is here for a complete restoration.
Once past these large hulls where ribs and other skeletal parts are on display under surgical drapes, Dr. Allen takes you up the winding staircase and through a magic door, where you miraculously enter what used to be his family’s Sail Loft restaurant. Allen points that a lot of the restoration work comes from southern New England because there aren’t enough boatyards there that do wooden boat work. You would think that the lack of competition would be good for Rockport Marine, but Allen, surprisingly, sees just the reverse. The flip side of the limited number of yards doing wooden boat restoration is the limited number of customers who are concerned about having their boats properly maintained. “The customer base is dwindling,” he says, although Allen takes some satisfaction that a few more yards, like French and Webb in Belfast, are moving into wooden boat restoration and he believes such developments will be good for the this segment of the boatbuilding business.
Although Rockport Marine’s current work is primarily restoration, during the past two years the firm launched two extraordinary new wooden vessels, the replica of the Godspeed to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the founding of Jamestown and then the Spirit of Bermuda to celebrate the island’s nautical heritage. The launchings of these vessels were huge local spectacles. Thousands came to see how these classic wooden vessels were launched at the little slip at Rockport’s public landing where the vessels had to make a 90-degree turn as soon they splashed in. Allen credits the town for its stolid support of what have become moments of civic pride when the town connects with its marine heritage.
Asked how owners find out about Rockport Marine, Allen responds, “We do some advertising, but as my daughter says, it’s pretty sick. It mostly comes down to word of mouth.” In the case of the two new vessels the yard recently launched, the marine architects suggested a number of yards the clients should visit. The competition was worldwide. In the case of the Spirit of Bermuda, wooden boatyards in Canada, New Zealand and England were contacted, but the owners liked the idea that the entire boat could be built under one roof, with no major work farmed out as was the case in other yards. In the case of the Godspeed, because the owner was the Commonwealth of Virginia, the builder had to be the low bidder, and Rockport Marine was.
But when pressed, Allen suggests that the success of Rockport Marine comes from more than being the low bidder or doing all the work on site. Customers, he says, come in and take a look around. They see a highly skilled workforce of craftsmen (and three crafts-women) that has been stable, in many cases over several decades. They take in the ambience and ethos of the work environment. The beauty of the harbor undoubtedly helps.
He would never say so, but Taylor Allen is a brilliant salesman in an understated way. But in the end, says Allen, “It’s all based on trust.”