Alec Brainerd’s Artisan Boatworks in Rockport, Maine, is a modestly sized yard with about 16 employees that builds, restores and maintains wooden yachts by some of the world’s most famous designers. Inside the yard’s sheds, there are boats by Nathanael Herreshoff, William Fife, Starling Burgess, K. Aage Nielsen, B. B. Crowninshield, John Alden, Sparkman & Stephens and other great naval architects. Every year, the yard keeps about 80 wooden boats in Bristol condition. And since its founding in 2002, it has rebuilt nearly 20 boats and completed 19 new builds up to 29 feet.

But in April 2023, Brainerd was approached by an experienced sailor, a man in his 80s, who was looking to construct something bigger than Artisan had ever built, a feature-rich daysailer in the 40-foot range. The caller had commissioned numerous builds throughout his long sailing career, including two yachts of around 100 feet from Royal Huisman in the Netherlands. His most recent commission had been a 50-footer from Rockport Marine in Rockport, Maine.

The caller would have been happy to go back to Rockport Marine for his next boat, but that yard was busy building a 95-footer, and the buyer was in a rush. Unable to find a quality yard whose dance card wasn’t filled, the buyer had reached out to yacht designer Bob Stephens of Stephens Waring Yacht Design in Belfast, Maine, who suggested the caller talk to Brainerd.

Stephens had worked with Brainerd before. Artisan had built a skiff for one of Stephens Waring’s clients in 2010 and refitted a 36-foot powerboat for another. Stephens knew that the smaller yard could build to the client’s high standards. “It’s a very different business model that Alec has, compared to much bigger yards like Lyman-Morse or Brooklin Boat Yard or Rockport Marine,” Stephens says. “Where Alec is rather unique is that he’s building at a world-class level with a very small yard, and a small crew. A very talented crew, but without the specialties and the big investment in infrastructure and real estate that the bigger yards have.”

Brainerd was game to build the boat, but there was a catch: The buyer wanted his new boat in the water by the summer of 2024 and other than some preliminary sketches by Stephens, she hadn’t even been designed yet. If Brainerd were to get the boat built on deadline, it would have to be constructed in a compressed timeline.

The boat, named Wisp, was launched in early August 2024. Brainerd’s ability to get it constructed in time can be attributed to meticulous planning and execution, but it’s also a testament to the collaboration among Maine’s boatbuilders, and a large cadre of specialists from New England and beyond.

As Brainerd says, “it takes a village” for a boatyard like his to build a 40-footer, but for Wisp to be sailed shorthanded by its 80-something owner and his wife, the process would be even more complex as the boat needed many systems. They would include push buttons and foot switches for hoisting, trimming and stowing of sails, furlers for the headsails, a roller furler for the boom, electric winches to handle the lines, and hydraulic systems to control the mainsheet, boomvang and backstay.

Stephens says it would normally take at least 18 months to design and build a custom 40-footer. To get the hull and deck built, Brainerd knew he could rely on his crew of talented carpenters and finishers. But to get the many systems designed and parts delivered and installed in a compressed timeframe he would need specialists. In the end, he would work with more than 40 specialists from about 30 different vendors.

Once Brainerd and the owner signed a deal in June 2023, the first step was to get the plans finished. The owner wanted a boat that was to be used exclusively as a daysailer, but he still wanted standing headroom and the ability to sleep on board. He also wanted to be able to do some work in the galley, make a cup of coffee, and have space for a comfortable head. He had envisioned a 45-footer, but before a contract was signed, Stephens had already convinced him that a 40-footer could do everything he wanted.

Stephens and his business partner Paul Waring specialize in custom naval architecture and engineering. Both sharpened their teeth at Brooklin Boat Yard in Brooklin, Maine, where they spent years as hands-on boat builders and project managers before turning to yacht design as a career. For three years, Stephens worked under designer Joel White, who helped pioneer the concept of Spirit of Tradition yachts, a style that blends the best of classic yacht designs with the latest in materials and technology. Stephens would use that Spirit of Tradition to draw Wisp and the latest technologies to make her swift and easy to operate.

With input from the client, he drew a hull with lovely overhangs that was reminiscent of a mid-20th-century cruiser-racer. On deck, he gave Wisp an oversized, dual-purpose cockpit with a plush, upholstered lounge area forward and a dedicated sailing zone aft. “They wanted a very, very comfortable cockpit and a very high level of finish and detail,” Stephens says about the owners. “They wanted to match and duplicate, as close as possible, the cockpit they had on their 50-foot sailboat.” For the house, Stephens drew a cabin that could accommodate the owner’s standing headroom requirements but restrained it to keep it from overwhelming the hull’s relatively low freeboard.

He gave Wisp a tall Solent rig with carbon spars, a working jib and a large, multipurpose reacher, both on fixed furlers. The mainsail could be hoisted from its carbon roller-furling boom at the push of a button by an electric winch and got a unique under-deck mainsheet trim system with a reverse-purchase hydraulic cylinder.

For construction, Stephens specified a foam-cored plywood deck for structural integrity that allowed for a swift and efficient build. By late August, Gardner Pickering, Hews & Company of Blue Hill, Maine, had delivered the CNC-cut deck molds, which were set up in the loft above the boat shed to start the deck construction.

Because Artisan Boatworks did not have its own in-house designer, the client had agreed that Stephens Waring would provide all the design and construction support that Brainerd’s team would need. Ordinarily, a design firm might provide up to a dozen drawings to a boat builder. But by the end of the project Stephens Waring would provide 60 drawings for the Artisan Boatworks crew; that didn’t include 3D renderings and other details. Brainerd is effusive about the insane amount of detail Stephens provided. “Knowing that we had Bob Stephens right there along with us really helped me,” he says. “It made me more comfortable with the decision [to build the boat].”

As the specs for the various parts and systems were drawn up, Brainerd hired contractors and started ordering parts. To store the components, he placed a container right outside the boat shed so everything would be at hand well before it was needed. “That worked out really well,” Brainerd says looking back. “I spent most of the month of September just pouring through the specifications and ordering every single part. The stanchions came from Italy and the furling boom came from Denmark. There were so many parts, coming from so many different places that we wanted to get them here early enough so we could make sure they were going to work.”

By mid-October, the hull molds, bulkheads, stem and transom were set up in the boat shed. For the hull, Stephens specified screwed and epoxied strip-composite hull planking encapsulated on both sides in triaxial sheathing, a fast and cost-effective construction method that results in a strong and durable hull.

By late October, Lyman-Morse delivered a pre-constructed fiberglass cockpit, which was hoisted into the loft and placed inside the already constructed deck. By late November, the hull setup was in place and by mid-December the hull planking was complete. Days later, construction of interior components began, and between Christmas and New Year, patterns were made for the teak decks.

In January, the keel fin and ballast keel arrived. The keel fin’s parts had been cut by a multi-axis CNC machine at Lyman-Morse in Thomaston, which also assembled the keel fin, and the ballast keel had been poured by Mars Metal in Ontario, Canada. That same month, the fiberglass hull sheathing and infusion was completed, and the hull was flipped upright. The next month, the hull was lifted onto the keel fin and ballast. The month after that, the house and cockpit coaming were completed, interior sheathing and paint were finished, the tanks were installed, and Awlgrip was sprayed on the house and cockpit. By late April the teak deck plus all the major interior components had been installed.

Early May would be momentous. The hull was pulled out of the shed, the gable end of the loft above the boat shop was torn out, the deck and cabin were slipped out of the loft and dropped onto the hull.

With the decked boat back in the shed and about three months to go, the race to the finish was on. The varnished interior cabinets had all been constructed off site by one subcontractor, while the steps, tables and steering pedestal had been built by another. Those components were on site, but they and all the systems—including hydraulics, electronics, plumbing and mechanicals—had to be installed and connected. To give all the carpenters, finishers, interior designers, electricians, mechanics, plumbers and other specialists the time they needed to install their pieces of the puzzle, Brainerd had to ask everyone to be flexible with their time. Often, one contractor would be crammed inside one compartment while another was crammed inside the one right next to it. To make it work, some of Brainerd’s crew was coming in on the weekends; the finishers were coming in from 5 to 9 at night and the electrician was often coming in late in the evenings or working on weekends.

“It was a great collaborative effort,” Brainerd says. “Everybody recognized that if they were going to get their job done on time, they had to be creative about when they were going to get access to the boat.”

In June, the final paint on the house and cockpit was applied. By early July, the bulwarks and caprails were finished and the topsides were Awlgripped. By mid-July, as all the specialists were cranking to meet the deadline, the carbon fiber mast and boom arrived from Moore Brothers Company in Bristol, Rhode Island.

About a week before the boat was launched, Ransom Morse—who Brainerd had hired from Dartmouth, Massachusetts, to design and install the hydraulics—was on site. “We were here at 10 at night finishing up some detail and having a beer,” Brainerd recalls, “and Ransom says, ‘You know, everybody’s happy right now and getting along. You never see that at this stage of a project.’”

For Morse, because he generally doesn’t work on boats under 60 feet, Wisp was a unique project. Ordinarily, he would have installed a ready-made hydraulic system, but because the 40-footer was on the small side for a hydraulic mainsheet, he designed a custom powerpack with analog controls, dual motors and two pumps for redundancy. “It’s what you would see on an 80-foot Swan,” Morse says about Wisp’s mainsheet controller.

Morse was keen to work with Brainerd again. They’d met years before when they’d worked together on another project. “I like the guy, and I like what they’re doing up there,” Morse says. He’d also previously worked with Stephens on a 70-footer. “Anytime you have an opportunity to work with people that you like, you should go do it, right?”

On August 5, Rockport Marine’s Walter Gray backed his truck up to Artisan Boatwork’s shed and loaded Wisp on the trailer for the short ride to Lyman-Morse’s Camden facility. With the boat under the Travelift, David “Jonesy” Jones, who Brainerd had hired to consult on Wisp’s plumbing and related systems, echoed Morse’s comments about Maine’s boatbuilding community. “It’s a great industry,” Jones said. “We all know each other. People will help each other and look out for each other.”

Brainerd tied a bouquet of flowers that his wife, Erin, had gathered from their garden to the bow and thanked everyone for their contributions. A friend of the owner smashed a bottle on the keel, and Wisp was lowered into Camden Harbor.

Throughout the morning, Brainerd and his wife, who manages the Artisan Boatworks office, couldn’t stop smiling.

“I couldn’t be happier with the end result,” Brainerd says. “I’ve always wanted to know whether I could build a bigger boat like the ones that Brooklin, Rockport and Lyman-Morse built. I knew the only way we were going to be able to build this boat in a year was to lean pretty heavily on subcontractors for a lot of systems and components that we didn’t have in-house capacity for. And this one worked as well as it did because we had a great client and a great designer.”

More than anything though, Brainerd feels beholden to his crew at Artisan Boatworks, whose contributions he doesn’t want overlooked. “Some were here for the early stages of hull and deck construction and moved on,” he says, “but they all deserve equal credit.”

Specifications

LOA: 39’ 6”

LWL: 30’ 3”

Beam: 11’ 0”

Draft: 6’ 0”

Displ.: 16,500 lbs.

Power: 40-hp Yanmar 3JH40

Fuel: 31 gals.

Water: 100 gals. 

This article was originally published in the November 2024 issue.