The Long Haul

Like expensive custom homes, building a large custom boat can be stressful. Design debates, change orders, delays, cost overruns, negotiations and renegotiations—these are the soul-sucking realities of a custom job. For Timothy Coffey, those problems proved trivial by comparison when the owners of Custom Steel Boats, the company building his 72-footer, were murdered mid-project.

All work stopped on Coffey’s project as the yard owners’ family coped with the loss and the children struggled to manage a business they did not expect