TENDER LOVING CARE Brooklin boat builder produces traditional wooden dinghies

Cedar planks on oak frames – those were the materials used in boat building back before Maine was a state and before the United States was even a country.

It’s a combination of materials that has spawned a tradition of strong, seaworthy and often beautiful boats, and that tradition is being carried on today by Eric Jacobssen at his North Brooklin Boats shop.

Jacobssen specializes in building 101/2-foot lapstrake dinghies – modeled on lines taken from a 1915 boat – using copper rivets to fasten the clear cedar planks to the sinewy oak frames. He makes both rowing and sailing versions of the dinghy.

Although Jacobssen wanted to work with traditional materials and methods when he started the boatyard five years ago, his decision to focus on the wooden tenders also was based on modern-day marketplace considerations.

“This is the type of boat that every yachtsman used as a yacht tender,” he said. “But few of them are being built anymore.”

It can be very expensive for a yard to build a wooden tender from scratch, he explained. But Jacobssen builds his dinghies as semiproduction models. He has already done the prep work: He has the molds, the templates and the jigs made, so he doesn’t have to do them over again each time.

“I’m still building a handmade boat using traditional methods. I can include a few custom details and I can do it quickly, so I can get the price down,” he said. “And I can sell enough of them to keep it the core of my boat-building business.”

At 55, Jacobssen has been working with boats on and off for most of his life. His background includes restoration of much larger wooden boats as well as a career in carpentry that has ranged from building birdhouses to boats to homes. He and his wife moved to Brooklin – the self-proclaimed boat-building capital of the world – 12 years ago, and in 2002 he decided to open his own shop.

“I turned 50, and this is what I’ve always wanted to do, forever,” he said. “And I guess I felt I got good enough to do it.”

The shop is a converted barn that is attached to his farmhouse, set back from the main road to Brooklin village. The floor is worn and canted, with enough room to hold two boats. Partitioned off is another section that holds a collection of power tools – a table saw, band saw and router – as well as traditional hand tools such as hand planes and chisels.

The construction method is straightforward, but rife with meticulous details that give the boat its integrity. These details run through the entire process, from the “lofting” – or the transferring of lines from blueprints to a life-size drawing of the boat on plywood – where Jacobssen said he gets his first “hands-on” look at the boat, through the precise beveling of individual planks that ensures the tight fit which will keep the boat watertight.

It takes approximately 300 hours to turn out one dinghy, Jacobssen said. He’s now building four boats a year and selling them all. He just delivered one and he’s “right up against it” to finish two more.

He charges $6,800 for the rowing dinghy and $10,400 for the sailing version.

Business is good. When he first started building boats, he would just set the finished product out on his lawn and wait for someone to come by and buy it. Now his marketing has gotten a little more sophisticated. He advertises, attends boat shows, and maintains a Web site (www.northbrooklinboats.com), and his customers now come to him through a process.

“They’ll see me at a show, then they’ll see my ad, then see me at a show the next year. Then they’ll go online and eventually they give me a call,” he said. “It kind of grows on them.”

Business is good enough that Jacobssen is looking to expand his offerings. Although the small dinghy will remain his “bread and butter,” he is now shipping the boats off-site to be painted and is considering having different boat parts rough-cut off-site as well. He has figured he can still make a profit on the small boats and it will give him more time to work on other boats.

He’s ready to begin work on a 121/2-foot version of the dinghy and is also eyeing plans for a flat-bottom skiff and a 19-foot day sailer that he’d like to be able to offer.

The state’s interest in the boat-building industry has helped to focus attention on all of Maine’s boat builders, he said. Although educational programs have tended toward techniques for composite boat building, which don’t really apply to what he does, Jacobssen said, the state’s marketing efforts seem to be effective.

“It can’t hurt that everybody thinks that Maine is a great boat-building state,” he said.