A Long Line of Boats

If you spend any time on the water in the Northeast, in particular northern New England, you’ll cross paths with an Eastern boat. But there is Eastern, the boat brand, and then there is Eastern Boat Works, which builds multiple brands, including Eastern, Rosborough and Seaway.

Eastern was founded in 1981 in East Rochester, New Hampshire, when Carmen Carbone started building one model, an 18-footer drawn by the highly regarded Downeast designer Royal Lowell. The New Hampshire facility had two small bays for assembly and a glass shop that could hold two hulls at a time. Ten years later, two more models had joined the line, a 22-footer and a Royal Lowell 27-footer.

But in 1993, things changed. That’s when Bob Bourdeau, one of Eastern’s employees, purchased the company from Carbone, and, after the facilities burned down in a devastating fire, moved the entire operation to Milton, New Hampshire. There, Bourdeau would spend the next quarter century growing the company, seeing it through good times and bad times, while continually expanding its offerings.

In 1994, he acquired the molds for the highly regarded JC 31, another Royal Lowell lobster hull design, and the JC 35, an extended version of the 31. Along the way, he added more buildings to expand manufacturing capacity. By the early 2000s, Bourdeau was offering vessels with more features and finer finishes and by 2007 production hit a high of 117 boats. Things were going great. Then the 2008 recession hit. The next year production was down to 59 hulls.

Bourdeau knew he could sink or swim, so he swam. He took some of the new features out of the boats to keep prices down and started buying up competitors. Over the next few years, he bought the molds from Nova Scotia’s Rosborough Boats and purchased Maine’s Seaway Boats, eliminating competitors and giving the company a significantly stronger position in the 18- to 35-foot Downeast boat market.

The Rosborough purchase gave Bourdeau the 22-foot Sisu, another seaworthy Royal Lowell design, and the iconic 25-foot Rosborough RF-246, considered by many to be the original pocket trawler. The Seaway acquisition brought the company a line of sturdy, no-nonsense, Downeast boats with hard chines, for those who didn’t want Eastern’s round-chined hulls, or wanted a boat with exterior teak trim.

The recession also brought a change for Greg Hopkins, a salesman who had moved to Milton in 2008 to start a financial and insurance services firm. Hopkins, who was then 37, would regularly stop by Eastern to pitch Bourdeau on 401K plans and other services. Over the years the two developed a friendship and Bourdeau would often joke, “Hey, you want to buy the company?”

But one day in April of 2019, Hopkins walked into Eastern, and Bourdeau, who was by then in his 60s, said, “Hey, you want to buy the place? I really want to get out. The place needs a breath of fresh air.”

“I said, ‘you know what? Sure,’” Hopkins recalls, adding that Bourdeau almost fell off his chair when he said yes. “I told him I had planned a vacation to the Bahamas, and I said, ‘Bob, let me go to the Bahamas, let me talk to my wife about it and when I get back, I’ll give you a more definitive answer.’”

“The funny thing is,” Hopkins says now, “I used to leave here after having my visits, and I used to feel like, ‘you’re supposed to be here.’ Something really drew me to the place. I used to tell my wife, and she used to think I was crazy.”

In the Bahamas, Hopkins, who’d only owned one boat, a Maxum bowrider he’d use for waterskiing and tubing, told his wife, “You know, we could make this part of our life.” But his wife was skeptical. “She said, ‘you know nothing about building boats,’” Hopkins recalls. “And I said, ‘no, I don’t, but I know how to run a business.’ Even Bob said, ‘you know, I think you could do this. You know how to manage people. You can always learn to build a boat. I’ll teach you. And if you can keep the right people around, you’ll be successful.’”

Recalling the story five years later, Hopkins, who bought the company in 2019, says, “Bob told me he was shocked when I said [yes], but I now have 47 employees and 11 of them are from the past and those 11 are the foundation and the backbone of the company.”

To show me what he’s talking about, Hopkins leads me from the offices across Eastern’s property to one of the other buildings. There are four separate buildings with 30,000 square feet of manufacturing space for fiberglassing, assembly and rigging operations. As we approach the Eastern/Sisu build shop, he turns to Eastern’s Marketing Director Haley Bridges and says, “did we get that Duquette sign made yet?”

Inside, Hopkins introduces me to Randall Duquette who Hopkins tells me has laid up by hand—which is how they still do it—every Eastern boat built over the past 30 years. “He’s built more boats than most people alive,” Hopkins says. Duquette is busy showing Chris Beauvais, who joined the company a little over a year ago, how to lay up boats. Hopkins initiated the apprenticeship program to allow younger employees to spend multiple years working with the more experienced employees to acquire their skillset. The sign Hopkins was asking Bridges about will rename the fiberglassing building for Duquette who hopes to retire soon.

Like Bourdeau, who had to deal with the 1993 fire, Hopkins has had his own blaze. Last summer, the fiberglassing building’s interior caught on fire, which did heavy smoke damage and forced them to redo the entire interior. It was the second hit the company had taken since Hopkins purchased it, the first being the 2020 pandemic. “Before Covid, we were getting close to [building] 80 [boats per year],” Hopkins says. “Covid really upped the orders, but it really slowed down production. We were just coming out of that when we had the fire.” To make good use of the down time while the fiberglass shop was being rebuilt, they spruced up all the molds. “Now we’re really starting to get back,” Hopkins tells me during my March visit.

Hopkins leads me to the next building where we run into brothers Tom and Will Sargent, who have been with the company for 22 years. Hopkins jokes around with them, then leads me into the back of the building where 28-year-employee Keith Henner’s smiling face pops over the gunwale of the Rosborough RF-246 he’s working on. Minutes later, John Gaughran who’s been apprenticing with Henner for the past three years walks up and introduces himself.

“I think you have to have your own vision,” Hopkins says about the employees. “I think we’ve done a great job of injecting some youth into the company, and we’ve treated the experienced people fairly, to the point where they understand that I value them.”

Eastern now offers 21 outboard-powered models between 18 and 27 feet. The inboard-powered 31 and 35 were taken out of production right before Hopkins purchased the company. “With the whole switch over to outboard, the [31 and 35] molds are tucked in the back,” Hopkins says, explaining that today’s buyers want the convenience of outboards. “Everything’s cyclical. There’s always a trend. The younger generation wants to fish, but they want wine-and-cheese cruising as well. So, you have to be able to adapt.”

When it comes to outboard engines, the company is brand-agnostic. “We’re semi-custom, so you can pick what you want,” Hopkins says. “We offer pretty much everything. Honda, Yamaha, Mercury and Suzuki. We just added Suzuki back. They’re a very popular motor and they’re affordable.” Hopkins believes that what your local mechanic can service is what drives a lot of engine decisions. “In essence, they’re all the same,” he says about the outboard brands. “There are ones that may be quieter than another, but the outboards have become so reliable, it doesn’t really matter anymore.”

Power on the various boats is comparatively modest with all the hulls being easily driven. The Seaway 18 runs on as little as 50 horsepower, while the Rosborough 246 pocket trawler easily runs on a 150-horsepower outboard and the Eastern 27 runs nicely on twin 150s, although twin 200s are also available.

When it comes to choices, between 18 and 27 feet, Eastern Boat Works seems to have something for everyone with 18-, 21-, 24- and 27-foot Seaway hulls and 20-, 22-, 24- and 27-foot Eastern hulls, many in various configurations from center console to hardtop. A number of hulls are available in different layouts, with Hopkins describing the Eastern Islander as their wine-and-cheese cruiser, the Eastern Explorer having a more stripped-down plan, and the Eastern Tournament model offered as the fishing boat.

Then there are the Rosborough 246s, the Rosborough 22 Cape Breton and the Sisu, which was originally built in New Hampshire in the 1970s and is now branded as an Eastern.

The Rosborough 246s are available in three models—Halifax, Yarmouth and Digby—which allows customers to choose different interior layouts. The Digby provides a shower, in addition to the galley and head that is on all the 246s. They all have standing headroom of 6 feet, 5 inches, which is pretty stunning for a 25-foot pocket cruiser. The 246s are popular with cruisers who like to trailer their boats to different destinations and with Grand Loopers who can do that trip on a budget by using 150 horses or do it at a higher speed with a 250-hp outboard.

The Rosborough 246 Custom Wheelhouse is the design that started the Rosborough 246 story and which Eastern says can be used for pleasure cruising, fishing, diving, search and rescue or even commercial use. The Rosborough 22 Cape Breton is a smaller compact cruiser and shares its hull with the Sisu 22, which offers enormous 6-foot, 9-inch V-berths.

Hopkins says they are also planning some new models. “We’ve got a couple unveilings that we’ll bring out for the fall 2025 boat shows,” he says, “and we’re planning a rendezvous for our owners in Essex, Connecticut, in 2025.”

In a way, Eastern is a bit like that line from Arlo Guthrie’s song Alice’s Restaurant Massacree where he sings, “You can get anything you want at Alice’s Restaurant.” Eastern is like that with boats. You can get anything from a utilitarian center console, to a compact cruiser with all the necessary features, or even a mini lobster yacht. Almost no two boats are alike and whereas many builders limit boat colors, Hopkins says Eastern will give you any hull color you want. “You bring it to us, and we color match it,” he says. He also encourages buyers to come see their boat being built and go into the upholstery shop to pick out colors and patterns. “You make the boat your own,” he says. “We want to give the customers something to make them happy. But what we’ve really been doing since I got here is to breathe fresh air into this company.”

This article was originally published in the July 2024 issue.