DOWN MONTEREY LANE

EVERYONE’S GOT A STORY. THIS ONE BEGINS IN VINELAND, NEW JERSEY, SOME 40 YEARS AGO. DOMINICK LACOMBE SR., PRESIDENT OF AMERICAN CUSTOM YACHTS, CONTINUES TO LIVE THE QUINTESSENTIAL AMERICAN DREAM: MAKE IT HAPPEN FOR YOURSELF, OR WAIT FOR IT TO HAPPEN TO YOU—WHICH, AS WE KNOW, IS A STRATEGY THAT HARDLY EVER WORKS. HIS JOURNEY FROM SOUTH JERSEY TO STUART, FLORIDA, IS INTERWOVEN WITH THE TALE OF A LITTLE BOAT NAMED GLASS MACHINE.

At the age of 10, LaCombe was put behind the wheel of his maternal grandfather’s boat. His grandfather was a merchant mariner, in the Navy, and eventually the U.S. Coast Guard. Who better to teach him? After all, the stripers were biting, and someone had to drive.

LaCombe’s father and paternal grandfather were landlocked upholsterers who did the occasional canvas job for boatbuilders such as Post, Egg Harbor and Pacemaker. They also enjoyed fishing, and getting young Dom out of school early on Fridays to head down the shore was never a problem.

Both grandfathers were the biggest influences on the career path LaCombe eventually would follow, and little did he know, after burning up two 283 and 327 Chevys and two 318 Chryslers on his grandfather’s 30-foot Owens by the ripe age of 15, that he would parlay his experiences into a life of boatbuilding. Sure, he loved boats, but it was the building—the fabricating—that set him on a course to leading one of the most