A trip to Port Townsend, Washington, is a journey to a place that’s inhabited by quite a few folks who make a living hanging planks on wooden hulls. But there are exceptions, including Larry Grobe, a wiry, unassuming late sexagenarian with a deadpan sense of humor and zero zest for fanfare. He wears a Tyvek suit and respirator with dignity and pride, content with a job that still brings him joy five decades in.
That’s how long Grobe has been “the glass guy” in the wooden-boat town of Port Townsend. He works out in the woods, at Cape George Marine Works, formerly known as Cecil Lange & Son. They are builders of the William Atkin-inspired Cape George cutters, especially the Cape George 36, an Ed-Monk design that made headlines when South African Kirsten Neuschaefer skippered one to victory in the Golden Globe Race, making her the first woman to win a singlehanded round-the-world competition. Grobe laid up that boat back in 1988, when owners could order bare hulls and finish them as DIY projects.
He recalls one retired couple who spent about five years building the boat. “Then they took off and headed down the coast. I guess she slipped and got hurt, so they pulled into San Francisco, parked the boat and sold it. I’ve seen many trips like that. You have this grand plan and then you realize it’s actually not at all what you thought it’s going to be.”
Witnessing cruising dreams gone awry is one reason why he “never really was that much into boats,” he says. “And I don’t like being cold. Here, you can go out on a day when it’s 75 degrees, but as you get on the water you’re freezing your ass off.” So he plays beach volleyball on Sundays (with a bionic hip), and spends winters at his second home in Texas.
He’s lived in Port Townsend since moving from Seattle as a teenager. After graduating from high school he apprenticed at Chinook, a local builder that sometimes loaned him to the larger Skookum yard. “I was cutting glass at first, then I got into [full] glass work.” When these shops closed, he found other jobs around town, always as a contractor, never as an employee. He worked for the likes of Joe Breskin, one of the original “Shed-Boys,” who founded Seven Seas Boatworks, and also for Cecil Lange.
“I started out laying up a 40-foot hull out of the blue, right in that little shop here,” Grobe says. It worked out well and turned into his vocation. “I probably laid up a hundred hulls. That’s a lot of stink and thousands of yards of glass.”
One of his companions was Todd Uecker, who started at Lange’s shop in 1990 and later bought the operation with his brother Tim, renaming it Cape George Marine Works. “Larry is laid back, affable and gets along with everyone,” Uecker notes. “He has his own shop, which looks like a disaster. But that’s a vivid contrast to his work, which is clean and precise. His layups are as smooth as a baby’s behind, so you have to take a close look to see that it’s actually all hand-laid.”
Grobe, who is not easily flattered, thinks he still could do smaller boats, but he’d rather focus on bench projects. “My favorite is doing little jobs, like building a mold, making the part, popping it out and painting it. I’m getting too old to lay up a 38 hull with all the up and down, climbing in and out [of the mold] and stretching to squeegee the resin. That was hard work, nine hours a day, back when I was in my thirties.” At times, his wife, Lori, assisted, hanging material from the sheer then wetting and squeegeeing, while Larry worked down in the mold.
Grobe said he also built other stuff, including composite bodies for replicas of vintage Maserati sports cars and dummy fiberglass fish, which people decorate and display. And he loves old vacuum tube guitar amplifiers. “I like to experiment with different sounds, but I’ve never had the patience to sit down and take [guitar] lessons. I never was that agile, or fluid.”
He’s still agile and fluid playing hacky sack with the yard crew during lunch break and on a tiny court—in full shop regalia of course. They’ll also play pickleball with a tennis ball. “That gets kind of gonzo,” he chuckles, “because you can try to block at the net, but the other guy can wail on the tennis ball and nail you with it.” What’s this game called? “Oh, you can’t write that down.” Only that it rhymes with duck call.
No matter the job, be it dusty or sticky, or hitting winners at adult-language pickleball, “when Larry is dialed in, he goes to town,” Uecker says “He is uncomplaining, has a buoyant attitude and still makes it happen.”
March 2025
