A major boatyard in a Maine town that bills itself as the world’s boatbuilding capital is adding a new facility and 10 jobs as it leans into advanced technology.
Brooklin Boat Yard, one of Hancock County’s larger employers, has grown in recent decades from a small yard in a town defined by wooden boatbuilding to a 65-person operation building custom high-end vessels and servicing about 160 more.
Along the way, it has developed unique approaches to mixing wood and composite materials along with 3D printing. The boatyard is set to continue in that direction with a $1.5 million state investment aimed at adding more room for working with and developing such technology, along with expanded space for boat projects.
“I think I can honestly say that we’re the best yard in the world” in how it integrates wood and carbon fiber composites, said chief designer Will Sturdy. “There’s literally nobody else doing what we’re doing here.”
The boatyard last month received backing for the new facility from the Maine Technology Institute’s Maine Technology Asset Fund, which voters approved in 2024 to give interest-free loans to “drive growth in Maine’s innovation economy.” Businesses provide a match for the loans, which can be partially forgiven based on financial results, according to the institute.
The boatyard is one of 23 businesses and research organizations, four of them in Hancock County, to get funding from $25 million awarded in February.
With a new 7,520-square foot building at its Brooklin headquarters replacing a 1960s-era metal shed, it will have room for more building, restoration and service projects. Servicing boats is the more profitable arm of the business, according to its president, and growing it will help the boatyard stay flexible and continue with building projects.
The facility will also include a machine workshop and 3D printing workshop with space for composite projects. Brooklin Boat Yard hopes to open it next year.
The business designs and builds one to three custom high-end boats in a typical season along with servicing others for a long list of clients, including national politicians and celebrities. The boatyard moves roughly $12 million to $14 million through the small town of Brooklin each year, president Brian Larkin said.
The now employee-owned boatyard was founded in 1960 and expanded beyond traditional wooden construction starting in the 1990s, when then-president Steve White developed and promoted a cold-molded hull design. The yard continued to grow its tech skills by trying to meet customer requests, according to Larkin.
Most yards are either focused on wooden or composite boats, but the Brooklin business has a hybrid approach, Sturdy said.
Specialized technology in composites, wood and metal all come together at the boatyard, which pushes research and development ahead in a unique way, according to Eric Blake, vice president and head of new construction.
“A big part of this new facility in my mind is … there’s a whole new world that we’ve been involved in for a number of years, and we need to create a proper space to house it and take better advantage of it,” he said.
Three-dimensional printing for components has been a “game changer” for the boatyard in the last 15 years and is used more and more, for example.
Designers have also reached the threshold of what it can do with wood, aluminum or composites alone, according to service and yard manager Nick Bellico, but combining them raises the ceiling again.
The boatyard aims to use this technology to help skilled labor rather than replace it, according to Sturdy, who said that contributes to the boatyard’s relative ease in attracting and keeping workers.
Still, keeping a local boatbuilding industry alive faces some more acute challenges in Maine than elsewhere in the country, said Amy Strother, the yard’s marketing lead. Knowledgeable workers are retiring, workforce growth isn’t as fast as it could be and housing is a challenge statewide.
It’s hard to know whether those factors can be addressed fast enough to meet demand, she said.
When demand at the Brooklin boatyard is too high, they refer work to other businesses in Maine, describing it as a generally collaborative industry.
“The more people continue to associate Maine as being the building capital of the world, the better it is for all of us,” Sturdy said.