MELTING POT
A GENTLE, SALT-INFUSED BREEZE blows in from Seal Harbor as I tuck into my seat at McLoon’s, a rustic, red-shingled lobster shack alongside a working wharf on Sprucehead Island, Maine. Outside, a steady stream of steam rises from a boiling cauldron as an early summer crowd of people eagerly await their picnic-table suppers.
Beyond my table are 20 or more commercial lobster boats of diverse shapes, sizes and colors, their proud, high bows following the wind around their mooring balls like a nautical version of The Nutcracker ballet. It doesn’t take a highly trained eye to see the distinct similarities between these hard-working vessels and the Downeast-style recreational sail and powerboats we all know and love.
I came to Maine—the geographic triangle between Thomaston, Belfast and Mount Desert Island, specifically—to learn more about its storied boatbuilding history. And there’s no better spot, really, given the heavy concentration of boatbuilders with names you’ll likely know, such as Lyman-Morse, Back Cove, Hinckley, Sabre, Morris, Jarvis Newman. French & Webb; you get the idea. Freshly nourished with McLoon’s sweet lobster meat (five out of five stars) and a Maine Root blueberry soda, I set out to connect the past, present and future of some of the many boatbuilders still operating and building Downeast boats here today.
Driving up from Rockland along the lupine-lined back roads that run up the west side of Penobscot Bay, I make my way toward Front Street Shipyard in Belfast. While Belfast wasn’t the first place where boats were built in Maine, I learned that the
