Windjammer Days

Boat Builders of the Region

Boat building is at the very essence of Boothbay Harbor’s Windjammer Days Festival. We take great pride in the legacy of shipbuilding that has taken place in our region going all the way back to the 18th century. Passed on from generation to generation, the construction of vessels runs deep in the blood here. When a new boat is launched, an entire community turns out acknowledging that she is now part of our history and part of what makes our peninsula extraordinary.

Just like every boat has a story to tell, so does every boatbuilder. This year each of our schooner sponsors have chosen a local shipwright to honor during Windjammer Days. Below are their stories.

If you would like to meet some of the Boat Builders, mark this date on your calendar, for an informal Meet & Greet at Boothbay Harbor Oceanside Golf Resort on Monday, June 24th, 3:30-5:00. 

Skip Orne started boatbuilding when he was young, around 12 or 13 years old. He recalls helping his father, Kenneth Orne, with the rebuild of a smaller lobster boat on the weekends. He was able to learn a lot about boats, fairness of hulls and a lot of sanding! They used the boat to go lobstering in Linekin Bay that summer, which gave Skip an appreciation of what all the hard work had been for. Growing up in the area, with having family history/heritage in boatbuilding, Skip always had an interest in boats and crafting things. The feeling of accomplishment with seeing things many years down the road that he had been a part of creating. These are some experiences that led him to his now 30-year career in boatbuilding.

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My Journey into shipbuilding My early life was spent around boats in Rhode Island where my father ran a boatyard and later two marine deck machinery manufacturers. I was always assisting him maintaining and repairing boats. In high school I worked summers in the machine shop doing whatever dirty jobs needed doing. As I went off to college I knew I wanted a career working with commercial workboats. After 4 years, earning a degree in naval architecture, I took a position as an associate engineer at Bath Iron Works. Click here to see the rest of the article.

My “journey “ has had high and low points, but mostly high and at times quite humbling, and most times it has provided a chance for a positive learning experience. My father J. Ervin Jones was a wooden boat builder and worked alone so when I was old enough to be of some help I would be in his shop helping. He always would have me stay home from school on the day he would be steam bending frames and as he bent the frames out to the ribbands and I would clamp them off. After two years at CMVTI, in 1974 I went to work for P. E. Luke Boatbuilders, working in the machine shop for two years. After that I started working for my father full time so I guess that’s fifty years. Click here to see the rest of the article.

I’ve had an appreciation for boats and the sea from a young age. I grew up lobstering on Southport.

In high school, I was an Ocean Classroom semester student on the schooner Harvey Gamage. I knew I wanted to continue working on the water. Afterwards, Nat Wilson took me on as a work study student at his sail loft in East Boothbay. Nat taught me everything I know. He also pushed me to continue sailing on vessels around the globe.

This is my 10th year at the sail loft. Although it doesn’t feel like it. I have made sails for everything from racing yachts to 17th century replica ships. I enjoy the challenge of building different kinds of sails by hand. The skills I’ve learned at the sail loft have made me a better sailor. This has really helped on the ships I have worked on. Click here to see the rest of the article.

Growing up in Bath in the 1940’s and early 1950’s with a father, uncles and grandfathers working in various capacities at BIW, I was generally aware of what was happening in the shipyard and had great respect for the importance of their work…especially during the war years when BIW built 82 destroyer type combatants for our navy. I can recall being very proud of my father who was a Leading Man in the “tin shop” for 42 years. Dad actually overlapped my early years with the company in the 1960’s. But, I never really considered working in Bath or shipbuilding in my early years. Football, basketball and baseball at Morse…followed by a History, Government and Economics major at Colby really did not provide much of a technological or manufacturing background for me.

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I was born and raised in Marblehead, Massachusetts where I grew up on the water boating. I learned to sail at an early age as well as working on a commercial lobster boat. Growing up in and around boats left an indelible mark on me that initially led me to want to become a Naval Architect. I attended Tabor Academy due to the fact that they offered a course in boat design. While I was attending Wentworth Institute of Technology, my roommate discovered the Landing School of Design and Boat Building. I attended the Landing School for a degree in yacht design. Towards the end of my design year, the school director came around to see who would like to attend the boat building side of the school. Click here to see the rest of the article.

Growing up in the Boothbay Region meant there was no escaping the water. From sailing lessons at the local yacht clubs, exploring all the coves of Linekin Bay and Ocean Point, snooping around in the local shipyards, Luke’s, Goudy and Stevens, as well as some afternoons in the scrap pile of Sony Hodgdon’s second floor shop. Building scale model boats in grammar school was my first boat building experience. Overall, just a love for water and building things has kept me at it. This led me into high school and trade school for building construction, working as a sub-contractor in our family construction business. Residential and commercial construction gave me some invaluable experience in the business world as well as work ethic. Click here to see the rest of the article.

Hodgdon Shipbuilding began in 1816. As I like to say, that is 4 years before Maine became a state. My career started in 1971 when I was still in high school, working summers and school vacations in my father’s (Sonny Hodgdon) small yard of half a dozen or so employees. He was a traditional “plank on frame” wooden boatbuilder. The first new boat I worked on was Sea Fever, that we built for Bobby Brown who was portrayed in the book/movie “The Perfect Storm”. I learned a lot working with those traditional boatbuilders including my father, Neil Jones, our bookkeeper Alice Thompson (who was the daughter of Boothbay Harbor boatbuilder Norman Hodgdon), and many others. Going back to 1816, I believe the company has built something north of 460 boats of all types. Most were built well before me by skilled wooden boatbuilders, building “state of the art” vessels of the day. How they built the boats that they did, I will never know. It is hard to imagine what they would think about boatbuilding today. Click here to see the rest of the article.

“If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.” Antoine de Saint-Exupery