Boat Yards Boom on IslesboroThursday, May 10, 2001
By JAMEY BUMBALO - ISLESBORO - Boat yards are growing businesses on Islesboro.

A recently launched sailboat is docked at Dark Harbor Boat Yard

Dark Harbor Boat Yard, located on Seven Hundred Acre Island's Cradle Cove since around 1900, is expanding to serve its increasing number of customers. The yard is the creator of the Dark Harbor 20-footer, a racing boat built mainly in the 1920s, '30s and '40s. It still owns the molds, jigs and rights to build the classic boats.

General manager John Gorham said the yard is primarily a service yard, but it is doing more and more construction and is already lining up major jobs for the winter. In addition, the yard does what Gorham terms "considerable business" in building floats and moorings. Dark Harbor is erecting a three-bay, 60-foot-by-70-foot steel building, Gorham said, "to alleviate a lot of the pressure we have in the other buildings."

For example, with about 200 storage customers storing one to six boats each, storage space is at a premium.

Dark Harbor is also a Johnson and Evinrude dealer, runs a small ship store, and offers showers, ice, and laundry service to visiting sailors.

Including Gorham, who worked with legendary Maine boatbuilder Ralph Ellis, Dark Harbor has an experienced crew of 12 ("Everybody does a little of everything," according to Gorham), with one more person about to come on board. Only a couple members of the crew live on Islesboro, so each workday a yard boat leaves Lincolnville Beach at 6:15 a.m. During the harsh winter weather, employees work four 10-hour days to minimize the commute, but in warm weather they work five or six days per week. The boat yard is owned by a group of Islesboro residents.

Among the many restoration and maintenance services Dark Harbor offers are varnishing, painting hulls and bottoms, waxing hulls, draining engines, and replacing and installing new inboard and outboard engines - "the whole nine yards," said Gorham. As for storage, beautiful, classic wooden boats are everywhere, and in one building, modern powerboats are stacked to the rafters.

"I love what I do. The yard is on the move; it's really blossoming," said Gorham. "We're in the service business. We do what we say we'll do."

Across Gilkey Harbor, on Islesboro itself, Pendleton Yacht Yard, owned by Stanley Pendleton, has been in business for 26 years. Bill Boardman, the general manager in fact if not in name ("They keep giving me titles," he said), has been with the business since its inception.

A classic Herreshoff 12-1/2-footer awaits launching at Pendleton Yahct Yard.

He said the site of the boat yard was once a livery stable, but in 1935, when cars were allowed on Islesboro, Pendleton's grandfather "threw the buckboards overboard or burned them" and started a garage. After doing a bit of this and a bit of that, Pendleton turned the property into a boat yard. Pendleton himself used the word "nebulous" to describe PYY's start, and with his ostensibly casual attitude he could easily be loafing on a yacht in the Caribbean rather than running a busy boat yard.

"I was working on this boat, working on that boat, doing this, doing that," he said. "One day I was just working on boats."

Boardman said 25 people are working at the yard. "It used to be really seasonal," he said, "but it keeps 20 people busy yearround." He said seven or eight employees leave in mid-June to go lobstering.

Most of PYY's business is storing and maintaining boats. There is also a newly expanded store, which on Friday was a frenzy of activity as employees worked to ready it for the summer season.

PYY had some special projects this past winter. One was restoring a Herreshoff 12-1/2 footer, a popular racing boat, in the 1920s.
"This content originally appeared as a copyrighted article in the Thursday, May 10, 2001 edition of the THE CAMDEN HERALD and is used here with permission."