enlarge Staff photo by Doug Jones

Hinckley Picnic Boats rest side by side in Northeast Harbor. Hinckley’s yard, known for building world-class yachts, is nearby, in Southwest Harbor.

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Cuyler Morris, president of Morris Yachts, greets the Birney family, including Arthur, left, after their 50-foot sloop put in at the boatbuilding company’s dock in Bass Harbor recently. The sailboat was built in nearby Trenton.

enlarge Photos by Doug Jones/Staff Photographer

A Hinckley Picnic Boat passes visiting yachts in Northeast Harbor earlier this month. Though Maine harbors attract some huge vessels in the summer, most people who are seasonal residents prefer boats built by local yards.

enlarge Doug Jones/Staff Photographer

The Hinckley symbol is seen around Northeast Harbor, along with those of Morris Yachts, Ellis and other Maine boatbuilders.

Today's story is the 14th in a 15-part series in the Maine Sunday Telegram. Shipbuilding is one of Maine's original and defining industries, deeply embedded in the state's history and still flourishing today. Next Sunday: Boatbuilders say there aren't enough skilled workers in Maine to meet the demand, and experts say the industry needs to do a better job training its work force.

Go to www.pressherald.com for more on Maine's shipbuilding legacy, including previous stories in this series, videos, pictures and reminiscences from readers. You also can submit your own photos and material online.

Although he heaped praise on the $380,000 yacht, he was even more exuberant about his experience cruising along eastern Maine, with its rugged granite coastline, mountain views and multitude of islands.

"This is a boater's paradise," he said.

Maine's coast, particularly the region around Mount Desert Island, has been a summer playground for the wealthy for more than a century. The visitors' money and tastes have fueled and shaped the boatbuilding industry, which has come to specialize in production of high-end custom and semi-custom sail and motor yachts.

Although the nation's manufacturers of cheaper, mass-produced boats continue to be in a slump, particularly in states that have seen a sharp downturn in housing prices, Maine boatbuilders are prospering.

The state has more builders of high-end custom boats than any other, and it's benefiting from a huge increase in the number of wealthy people globally and nationally, said Thom Dammrich, president of the National Marine Manufacturers Association.

"For people who can afford a boat that costs $1 million, there are no cycles or slumps," he said.

And never in the nation's history have there been so many rich people.

The top 1 percent of earners receive a bigger share of the nation's income today than at any time since the late 1920s, said Mark Weisbrot, an economist and co-director at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a think tank based in Washington, D.C.

"Over the last 30 years, you have seen one of the most massive upward redistributions of income in the history of the United States," he said.

Weisbrot worries that the widening income disparity is unhealthy for society and democracy.

For Maine boatbuilders, however, the increase in millionaires translates into more customers and more jobs. The industry, the third-largest manufacturing sector in the state, is seen as one of the segments of the Maine economy that has growth potential.

Stephen Mullane, 50, of Bar Harbor, manager of production for Morris Yachts at its Trenton yard, said a career in boatbuilding has allowed him to stay in Maine, buy a home and raise a family.

"I remember reading a newspaper article years ago," he said, "about how people can make a living in Maine by going where the rich folks were."

Mullane is leading the production of a 57-foot sailboat that costs $3.5 million. He said he prefers building custom boats rather than mass-production models. Custom work, he said, allows for more personal expression and the chance to establish lasting friendships with the boat owners.

He said the owners treat boatbuilders as social equals. He described the relationship as that of patrons who support the work of artisans.

That respect was evident at the Morris Yachts pier, at the company's head office in Bass Harbor. A 50-foot sloop from Maryland was docked at the pier. Skipper Lex Birney, a commercial real estate and golf course developer from Annapolis, was on board with his family.

The boat was built in nearby Trenton by now-defunct Able Marine, and Morris Yachts later built boats using the same mold, obtained after purchasing the boatyard's assets.

Birney told Cuyler Morris, president of Morris Yachts, that he had traveled to Bass Harbor to meet him, and he invited him to come aboard and talk about his boat and their shared love of long- distance sailing excursions.

"We've come back to its roots," Birney told Morris.

A RICH HISTORY

Mount Desert has been a summer retreat for the wealthy ever since the Gilded Age of the late 1800s, when America's most socially prominent families – the Astors, Rockefellers, Fords, Morgans, Pulitzers and Vanderbilts – began spending their summers in Bar Harbor...