BROOKLIN – Few things speak of Maine more than a new boat pulling at its mooring in slightly choppy waters, with a small, spruce-dotted island and a lighthouse a way off in the background.

That was the scene recently at the Atlantic Boat Co. The boat, a Duffy 42, had been launched a few days before and was undergoing sea trials. Although many of the boats built at the yard spend most of their lives in Maine waters, the 42 is headed for a warmer climate. By May, its owner will be taking the boat south to the equator to work in the waters off the coast of Brazil.

“She’s headed to the mouth of the Amazon,” said Atlantic Boat owner Nate Hopkins. “The guy who bought her is a free diver. He shoots fish with a spear gun. He has to go out 100 to 150 miles offshore to get to clear water because of all the silt coming down from the Amazon.”

The buyer was looking for a boat that was bigger and faster than his current one, and the Duffy 42 was just the ticket.

Like all of the boats constructed at Atlantic Boat, the 42 is built on a traditional Down East lobster boat V-hull with a full keel. The hulls vary in size, but they are all of that style, according to Hopkins. Topside and inside, however, the boats that the yard turns out are semicustom or custom designs depending on the needs and desires of the individual customer.

“We rarely build the same interior twice,” Hopkins said.

The lobster boat hull has made a natural transition from working boat to sport fishing boat and pleasure boat, Hopkins said.

“If you’re going lobstering, you need to have carrying capacity; you need a boat that’s seaworthy, fuel-efficient and maneuverable; and it needs to be practical in terms of maintenance,” he said. “Those features serve for a lobster boat, and they serve a pleasure boat as well.”

Atlantic Boat has been in business since 1995. Hopkins’ father purchased Flye Point Marine that year, and the next year bought the Duffy and Duffy Co. Hopkins joined the operation a few years later and now runs the company. They still build boats from the designs from the two former yards, the Blue Hill Marine design and Duffy and Duffy.

“It’s a timeless style,” Hopkins said. “We tend to stay in the traditional lobster boat styling.”

Atlantic Boat turns out on average 10 boats a year. It can take between five months and a year and a half or more to build a boat depending on the individual needs and desires of the customer. The yard builds boats from 26 feet to 48 feet on 12 different hulls. The crew – which is pretty stable and usually numbers around 30 – does all the laminating, the laying up of layers of fiberglass over the molds, which also are made on site.

Once the basic parts are molded, they are taken to “the hatchery” where, according to Hopkins, they are hatched off the molds and put together. Although the molds turn out the same basic parts, it’s in the hatchery and through the finishing process that the customizing takes place. In one bay, for example, there’s a Duffy 48 that is in the process of being stretched two feet. In another, there’s a BHM 36, built as a passenger boat for a school on Long Island Sound. The crew is extending the windshield on that one.

While the customizing work can be intricate and complicated, and requires the crews to “stick-build” the decks without the use of a mold, Hopkins said even the most demanding jobs go “like clockwork.”

“These guys know how to do this stuff,” he said.

They do a lot of stuff. In addition to the fiberglass fabrication work, the crews do all of the interior and exterior woodwork, including the traditional teak and balsa floors, and they customize interior layouts. The deck of the Duffy 42 bound for Brazil – which has not yet been named – included some special design features to meet the needs of the owner. There is a large fish hold and live-bait hold as well as salt-water ice maker, and additional berths for the crew.

The boat is powered by an 850-horsepower diesel engine that will give the owner more than double the speed he has with his current boat. According to Hopkins, the boat with that engine is capable of 26 knots and will cruise comfortably at 18 to 20 knots.

In addition to the boats they complete on site, the crew also builds “kit boats” – boats that are built to various stages of completion and ready to be finished by another yard or by the buyer.

The boat-building industry in Maine has gotten more publicity recently because of efforts at the state level and through the Maine Built Boats organization. But boat building remains a tough business that is capital-intensive and difficult to remain successful. Some boat builders in Maine are doing very well, Hopkins said, while others are struggling. The bays at Atlantic Boat’s yard are generally full this time of year, with new boats, kits and repairs, but the summers can be a challenge.

“We slow down,” Hopkins said. “People want to order their boats in the fall and launch them in the spring. What do you do with a full crew during the summer?”

Still, Atlantic Boat seems to have found a niche for itself in the industry.

“We went more heavy into the pleasure boat market than some commercial builders and it’s been good for us,” Hopkins said.

He likes the size of the business, which he said is free of some of the “complications” of a really large company, and he doesn’t see many changes coming in the future either in size or style.

“We’ve figured out what we do well and we try to do that.”

rhewitt@bangordailynews.net

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