By TOM BELL, Staff Writer Friday, May 12, 2006

Staff photo by John Ewing

Brothers Joe (front) and Jamie Lowell own Even Keel Marine in Yarmouth, where they build both commercial and pleasure boats. The Lowell brothers are sixth generation boat builders.

Near Casco Bay, where mass-produced pleasure craft are increasingly popular, Jamie and Joe Lowell are still building boats one at a time, as their family has for a century. In cramped work bays near the banks of the Cousins River, the brothers build fiberglass and wood fishing and pleasure boats based on traditional lobster boat hull designs that an ancestor developed.

Their great-grandfather, William "Pappy" Frost, who immigrated to Beals Island from Digby, Nova Scotia, in the early 1900s, introduced the design to Maine at the time when gasoline motors first began replacing sails on fishing boats.

He generally is regarded as the primary forefather of the Maine lobster boat, said Jon Johansen, a maritime historian and publisher of Maine Coastal News, a maritime newspaper.

The brothers take full advantage of their family history when they market their boats: The family boat-building heritage spans six generations. The company Web site reads like a history book. Their uncle, Royal Lowell, wrote the book "Boatbuilding Downeast: How Lobsterboats Are Built."

The marketing effort is necessary for a company that, in many ways, is located in the wrong part of the state.

Maine's high-end boatbuilding capital is Mount Desert Island. That's where the skilled workers are and where the market demand is the strongest for Maine-made and custom-made boats.

Higher housing costs in the Portland area make it harder to attract and keep skilled workers. And Downeast boatbuilders can pay their workers less, making Lowell Brothers' Even Keel Marine Specialties less cost- competitive.

So the firm emphasizes its history and the brothers' reputation as skilled craftsman who do things right.

"They are not polished (individuals)," said Paul Rich, president of Maine Built Boats Inc., a trade association. "But what they do well is know their customers' needs and desires and deliver high quality."

Johansen said the brothers learned their craft from their father, Carroll Lowell, who died in 1997. Jamie and Joe were in their early 20s at the time.

The brothers' company is one of few the boat builders left in Casco Bay. That's a marketing problem because people look to Maine's Downeast and midcoast regions for builders, failing to consider a yard 13 miles north of Portland.

The brothers design boats to fit the customers' needs. They prefer building fishing boats rather than pleasure boats because fisherman know exactly what they want, while pleasure boaters often don't have the vaguest idea.

The brothers have fiberglass molds for 22-foot, 26-foot and 43-foot hulls, but they can make any size hull in wood or fiberglass. They claim their hull designs allow boats to travel fast in the roughest conditions.

"Most people would not have the guts to see what these boats can go through," said Jamie Lowell, 33.

The brothers employee three to five people at any given time and say they struggle to keep good craftsmen. Workers often leave to make more money in yards that specialize in the more lucrative boat-repair business.

The brothers could boost profits if they focused on repairing boats, they say, but that would be less satisfying.

"You don't want to wake up and look forward to grinding a bunch of fiberglass because somebody has hit the rocks," Jamie Lowell said. "There is a certain amount of satisfaction creating something. It's wonderful. It's like having a child almost."

"We were born boat builders," said Joe Lowell, 29. "That is what we are known for. That's why we do it. We love to build boats."

They sell a 43-foot fiberglass hull for $33,000. A basic 22-foot boat, with an engine, starts at $27,000. A finished 43-foot pleasure boat sells for at least $300,000 and can cost twice as much depending what the customer wants.

Jamie Lowell compares his custom-made boats to the wool socks his mom knitted from him when growing up in Pownal.

"Boat building for us is a real love affair," Jamie Lowell said. "You are putting your heart and soul into something that is a living entity."

Staff Writer Tom Bell can be contacted at 791-6369 or at:

tbell@pressherald.com