March 7, 2023

Maine boat builder resists the rubber-deck trend

Michael Crowley

Guest Author:

Quarters are tight in each of Taylored Boats two boatbuilding shops but even in the preliminary stages there’s a good sense there will be enough deck space for 200 lobster traps when Taiyored Boats finishes this 46-foot lobster boat. Taylored Boats photo.

In Addison, Maine, Peter Taylor at Taylored Boats is getting close to finishing up a 46’ x 17’ 6” lobster boat for a Stonington, Maine, fisherman. The hull is an Osmond Beal design, built as a bare hull at H&H Marine in Steuben, Maine, and delivered to Taylored Boats in April 2022.

When the 46 footer leaves, hopefully this spring, she will go out with a split wheelhouse, an 800-hp FPT for power, two lobster tanks and a fuel tank below the main deck, and a V-berth and maintenance locker up forward. Taylor describes the construction “as pretty normal” with the transom remaining intact. He figures it should carry 200 lobster traps.

Prior to working on the Stonington lobster boat, Taylor launched the 44-foot Deja Vu, a Willis Beal-designed RP hull that Taylor widened from 15’ 2” to 18’ for a Trescott, Maine, lobsterman. Taylored Boats has the Willis Beal (also known as RP) molds for the 35, 36, 37, 38, 40, 42 and 44 designs.

Unlike the boat Taylor is currently working on, the Deja Vu left with an open transom but also carries about 200 lobster traps. Bolted to the Deja Vu’s engine beds is an 800-hp Scania that gets the 44 footer to 22.5 knots.

Both the Deja Vu, and the boat that’s being built, have a fiberglass main deck. Though some Maine boatbuilders are starting to finish off a lobster boat’s main deck with rubber tiles or 4-foot-wide lengths of rolled rubber, Taylor is having nothing to do with rubber decks.

“I actively put them (boat owners) off of it,” he says. Allowing that while tiles can be “extremely heavy — a good thing for stability,” he says over time the rubber starts to shrink and the rubber tiles separate. “After five years there’s a quarter-inch gap between each one. They are pretty terrible.”

Taylor started working on the 46 footer he’s building now in April 2022. The normal building period is 8 to 10 months, but “now it’s more like a year. It’s the covid thing,” says Taylor. “They are staying at home and not wanting a job,” referring to the difficulty of hiring workers. It’s basically been Taylor, one helper, and now and then a part-time fisherman pitching in.

Taylor has been “advertising for two years. I got one inquiry and I hired him. I’ve never seen anything like it in my entire life. This is not how work should be done.” As of this February, Taylored Boats has an open slot for another boat when the 46 footer leaves for Stonington.