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New training centers offer hope for an industry forced to look outside Maine for workers.

By TOM BELL, Staff Writer September 2, 2007

EAST BOOTHBAY — As he watched a welder from Louisiana work on a 92-foot tugboat at the Washburn & Doughty Associates Inc. boatyard, Matthew Maddox explained that the company has brought in a dozen contractors from the South to help fill orders because he can't find local people to do the job.

"I'd rather give the jobs to Mainers," said Maddox, the company's human resources director.

Farther up the coast at Wilbur Yachts in Southwest Harbor, owner John Kashmar said he's trying to fill four open positions: two carpenters, a fiberglass technician and a systems technician.

"I can hire four people and keep them busy for the winter," he said. "But I can't find them."

In shipyards from Kittery to Eastport, the story is the same. The lack of skilled workers is an obstacle to growth. How this is addressed will affect both the scale and shape of the 400-year- old industry as it moves into its fifth century.

While the manufacturing sector in Maine continues to slump, many of the state's boatyards are adding workers. More than 300 new jobs have been created since 2000, and total annual wages have jumped $19 million during that time, according to Maine Labor Department statistics.

Wages in the industry range from $11.62 an hour for beginning carpenters to $22.74 an hour for seasoned installers of electronic equipment.

The concentration of much of the industry in relatively isolated peninsulas in the midcoast and Down East regions makes it difficult to attract skilled and motivated young workers, according to an industry-funded study by Planning Decisions of South Portland.

Boatbuilders say fewer young people respect the value of working with their hands.

Moreover, they complain that the perception that manufacturing has no future has caused parents and educators to discourage young people from learning a trade.

Maine boatyards are labor-intensive. When yards get more orders, they can't simply add machines. They can expand only by hiring more workers, said Michael Lesard, the marine trades coordinator for the state's community college system.

"We have the yards and infrastructure to do everything we need to do," he said. "The one thing that limits our boatbuilding capacity is the skilled work force. That's what puts the plug in the barrel right there."

NEW TECHNIQUES TAKING OVER

For the industry to compete globally in the future, though, it will have to do more than recruit workers.

It has to provide more training for its existing work force, because the industry has fallen behind other regions in the United States in fiberglass technology, said Andre Cocquyt, a leading expert in closed molding of fiberglass reinforced plastics.

Cocquyt, formerly based in Florida, recently moved to Maine, where he has developed the curriculum for the Advanced Composites Training Center in Brunswick to teach the latest fiberglass and composite construction methods.

He said boatbuilders must move away from the conventional method of building fiberglass hulls, a messy, odorous job that involves applying fiberglass and resin by hand in an open mold.

With the new method, a precut fiberglass weave is draped over a mold, which is then sealed in a plastic bag.

Using pressure created by a vacuum, liquid resin is injected into the woven mesh.

No toxic vapors are left over because no resin is wasted in the process, and workers can build hulls to precise specifications.

Cocquyt has trained more than 100 people since the Advanced Composites Training Center opened early this summer. Most of the attendees already worked in the industry, and Cocquyt said he was surprised that a high percentage were not familiar with the new technology.

He also found that many lack necessary math skills and don't pay enough attention to increasingly strict federal environmental standards for handling toxic materials.

He said boatbuilders in Rhode Island, Tennessee, the Carolinas...