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By TOM BELL Staff Writer Friday, June 30, 2006

Dick Pulsifer nudged a wooden boat off its trailer near Cundy's Harbor. "The thing floats. Amazing," he said as the boat drifted backward into Quahog Bay on its maiden voyage Tuesday.

It was a joke, of course. There was no chance the boat would sink.

Pulsifer has been building boats for 33 years. And not just any boat. Just one kind of boat, a no-frills 22-foot boat equipped with an inboard engine. The design is based on the Casco Bay Hampton, a workboat that was popular from the mid-1800s to the mid-1900s. It was powered first by sail and later by engine.

Since 1973, Pulsifer has built 98 Hamptons, each one almost identical.

His single-minded approach to the business of boatbuilding is rare. Most Maine boatyards offer a portfolio of design options and make changes to please a customer.

But Pulsifer prefers the "take it or leave" approach. Either buy his boat or go elsewhere.

As a business model, it works on two levels. By focusing on one design, Pulsifer has created an efficient production system, allowing him to offer high-quality boats at a reasonable price. His boats sell for $45,000.

In addition, he has created a brand, the Pulsifer Hampton, that has developed a following. Hampton owners are his sales team. They sometimes travel together on long cruises. Some even bring their boats to exhibitions and display them for potential buyers.

For owners, the emotional attachment goes beyond the boat. It's more about the man who builds them, said Jim Drake of West Bath, who owns Pulsifer Hampton No. 46.

"It's the devotion we have to Dick Pulsifer and his commitment to purity and simplicity and making sure this tradition remains," he said.

Because nobody else is building the same style of boat, Pulsifer "owns that market," said Carl Cramer, publisher of WoodenBoat magazine.

The approach could be a model for other Maine boatbuilders, Cramer said. But it requires a passion for a particular boat style and the ability to stick to one's convictions. The biggest obstacle, he said, is combating the urge to try something different. Most builders, he said, would not be able to build the same boat over and over.

"It would drive them crazy," he said.

Pulsifer, who has one full-time employee, builds two or three boats a year, some on speculation and some with buyers in hand. In the fall, he devotes the business to maintaining and refurbishing old Pulsifer Hamptons.

Pulsifer said he enjoys refining the manufacturing process and meeting the goals he sets for himself. Although others might not notice it, he said, each boat is a little different.

For example, No. 98, like previous versions, is powered by a Yanmar, a 29-horsepower diesel engine normally used as an auxiliary engine on sailboats. But this Yanmar is a new model, and Pulsifer installed a propeller with a larger blade area to take advantage of its capabilities.

After he launched the boat Tuesday, Pulsifer took it for a test ride to see how fast it could go. The result: 12.6 knots, which is pretty fast for an engine so small that it uses only a half-gallon of fuel per hour.

For Pulsifer, the Hampton has come to represent an aesthetic viewpoint. It is a basic, unadorned vessel whose graceful lines give it beauty as well as strength.

That's why he continues to build them, even though he has enough savings now, at age 65, to retire comfortably.

"This is what I do on this earth," he said. "One is identified by what I do. And this is what I want to be identified with."

Pulsifer builds his boats in a cluttered shop near his home, on a wooded 20-acre parcel on Mere Point in Brunswick. He heats the shop with an old wood stove. He gives the wood chips to the nine chickens he keeps in a coop adjacent to the shop.

From white pine trees harvested from his lot or locally, he produces long strips, which he uses to create a boat's hull. Some wooden boatbuilders saturate planks in epoxy and install them diagonally. But Pulsifer and his assistant, John Lentz, 32, lay the thin strips horizontally, nailing the edges to the preceding strip. The strips are so tight that no caulking is needed.

Pulsifer looks and acts like a crusty character from Down East. In fact, he grew up in suburban New York, the son of an investment manager who took his family to Maine in the summers and later retired here when Pulsifer was a teenager.

In 1962, Pulsifer graduated from Bowdoin College, where he majored in economics. After a three-year stint in the Navy, he returned to Brunswick and got a job at Bowdoin as an administrator.

As a child, he fell in love with the Hampton boats on Casco Bay. In 1969, he bought a Hampton built by Charlie Gomes, a Phippsburg man who built boats from 1902 through the 1950s.

Pulsifer and a friend built a rough version of the Gomes' Hampton in 1973. Pulsifer followed with other versions, each one a little closer to the Gomes original in quality and style. Pulsifer eventually began adding his own innovations, such as applying natural finishes to the interior rather than using paint. He began building boats full time in 1978.

Pulsifer has yet to slow down. After he launched No. 98 on Tuesday, he went home and ordered a propeller for No. 99, telling the supplier he was pleased with the sea trials.

He said he and Lentz will finish No. 99 this winter and start on No. 100, which he hopes to finish in March.

But when he launches that landmark boat, he said, he doesn't plan to do anything to mark the event.

"It's exciting and awesome," he said, "but I look forward to doing 101 just as much."

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

tbell@pressherald.com