My favorite issue for exploring Off the Drawing Board topics has always been this one, with its freshwater focus. I love Maine’s ponds and lakes, and I harbor recurrent dreams of a lakeside home, or at least a proper camp. In the dreams I’m designing and building all manner of watercraft: wind-, fuel-, and electric-powered. One or two might even alight off the ripples and take to the air. What could be more rewarding than boat-tinkering while waist deep in a bathing suit?
Which brings me to someone who has lived that dream. I first met and wrote about Andy Payor for this column in the April/May 2011 freshwater issue. It was a story regarding an 18-foot keel sailboat, called the Tracie. Payor is a genuine renaissance man. Back then, while fully occupied designing and building high-fidelity loudspeakers and turntables in Rockport, he carved five days out of a 20-day trial subscription to learn the Aerohydro CAD yacht design system and conceived of the Tracie’s graceful lines.
The boat, built in Rockland, was exquisite—both in looks and performance. He sailed her for 14 years off the shores of what I would call his more-than-a-camp on Damariscotta Lake before he sold the boat. (Designer Ed Joy collaborated on the project and put his professional stamp of approval on the design.)
Payor had molds made for the original project, and one sistership of the sloop has also been built. I’ve told him I’m glad of that, because when my present larger keelboat gets to be too much for me, that is my favorite of all the little keelboats, so I’m a customer waiting in the wings.
Nearly 30 years ago, Payor also acquired a 17-foot Penbo outboard motorboat for the lake and, over several years with the help of some very skilled artisans, restored it. The Tracie lay to a mooring; the Penbo, drawing far less, lived at a dock at the end of a tree-shaded point that juts out into Muscongus Bay, which is not to be confused with the salty Muscongus Bay nearby.
Payor is not one to leave well enough alone. First, he reworked the Penbo’s cockpit seating. Next, he added one long tapered plank to both chines, and filled in the open space with fairing putty, thus creating flat lifting chines. This improved planing performance, and the motor delivered 400 more rpms.
Still, the heavy boat remained sluggish at midrange speeds, and anywhere below 4,000 rpms it would squat and make a wake that greatly troubled Payor. He is attuned to the amplitude of powerboat wakes and their influence on his neighbors’ shorefront, not to mention the nesting nooks of loons.
As an aside, Payor’s the sort of fellow who barbies his lamb with three different wood species, and who designed a smoker in which to cook it. He also blends his own vintage Muscongus Bay Reserve wine and bottles it with labels featuring an image of the Tracie in gold, and he takes photos of the lake fit for a calendar. In a word, he is concerned with doing all things right.
Out of that history comes this month’s design and Payor’s latest vessel. With help from his friends (which I’ll get to) Payor has been at it again, and his Muscongus Bay 18 Launch is presently being finished up at Brooklin Boat Yard.
I always love doing interviews and talking about boats, but this one was to prove particularly instructive and enjoyable. Too many years had slipped away since I’d seen Payor, and I’d always learned much in his presence. His current collaborator, Mark Fitzgerald, from Fitzgerald Marine Architecture in Thomaston, was also present, so I knew the open pit of my powerboat knowledge was bound to be somewhat backfilled.
We met at Payor’s self-designed post-and-beam home overlooking Mussel Ridge Channel, sipping his vintage Reserve and listening to concert hall-quality sound, while Payor outlined his design brief.
“Damariscotta Lake is 10 miles, north to south.” he said. “It’s no fun for me just blasting the length of it. The real enjoyment is nipping into every cove—there’s endless variety. Conversely, for those ashore—man or bird or beast—a powerboat is seldom a welcome addition. Granted, if it is wooden and beautiful, that can be a mitigating factor.”
Fitzgerald, in his quiet way, chimed in occasionally, reinforcing my assumption that while Payor has strong creative instincts, he was wise to enlist the boat designer to apply his expertise upon the hull lines.
“I picked Mark for two chief reasons. First, his experience. I like to push things, take some chances, and there’s always the possibility I’ll go too far. Mark keeps me between the rails,” Payor said. “Second, his traditional aesthetic. I came at this for performance. I wanted something that could plane early and quietly, at an unusually slow speed. Unlike some of the yahoos you see on my—or any—lake, I didn’t want to go the fastest with the most fuss. I wanted the slowest powerboat on the lake!”
Fitzgerald added, “The slowest, earliest boat to plane.”
“But I also wanted beauty,” Payor said. “Something that hearkened back to the panache of a Chris-Craft or a Hacker or a Riva, replete with their old-fashioned feel. It sealed the deal when I discovered that Mark still draws with pen and ink.”
It was Fitzgerald who suggested building at Brooklin Boat Yard. For what Payor wanted, the boat needed to be unusually light, especially given the level of hardwood finish. As said, planing slow and easy was the holy grail for this design brief, and this requires light weight foremost. BBY specializes in wooden boats, which was Payor’s first requirement. They have proven paramount in combining light weight with stiffness, strength, and high-luster beauty.
The yard added its own cast of essential characters. Chief designer Will Sturdy brought in his CAD modeling expertise, producing fast, accurate shop drawings, along with some superior design ideas throughout the process.
Equally important, the whole project was assigned to lead boatbuilder Andy Dorvillier. It’s noteworthy that BBY could tap a single person who could work basically on his own, up at the remote shop at the former Odd Fellows building, and make this boat come together in quick-time.
I met and talked to Dorvillier one Saturday when the skeleton of the boat was just showing off its bones. Two weeks later, the whole hull had been fleshed out and skinned by vacuum-bagging biaxial glass and resin that was just about to cure. Wow!
I’ve hung around the perimeters at the Brooklin yard for years, and their process has been described in several entertaining books. Success has come about (I suspect) due in part to the synergy between clever (and fast) computer precision and hands-on builders who love working in wood.
At Brooklin, they are often designing boats in-house and building them. But they work convivially with outside people like Fitzgerald, who are both boat designers and boatbuilders. Likely they support my prejudice that nobody can design a great boat unless they can build one, and visa-versa.
Sturdy and the gang, meanwhile, have the benefit of the nearby services of Hewes and Co., which cuts forms and jigs to shape, and other backup suppliers who can do the same.
In the case of the MB 18 Launch, the side supports for the solid Alaskan cedar Bimini top are cavity molds that were computer cut out of medium density fiberboard, which was then laminated with carbon-fiber cloth in the composite shop.
For his new launch, Payor knew about the importance of light loading per square foot of bottom surface. And he knew that his experiment with the Penbo’s flat lifting chines merited repeating, and even enlarging, on the new boat. He also called for very flat deadrise in the small amount of vee aft.
When Payor passed all this through the filter of Fitzgerald’s good judgment and oodles of experience designing and building powerboats, the designer attempted—unsuccessfully it turns out—to rein him in.
After seeing the launch’s hull upside down, I realized that it was very flat-stern dominated. Right in front of Payor, I asked Fitzgerald, “So how far back will the center of flotation be? What station?
Fitzgerald replied, “Well I’ve never put a powerboat CG (center of gravity) aft of station six.” (Station six refers to a point that is 60 percent of the distance between the bow and the last station aft, station 10.)
It was then that Payor took responsibility for the stretching of certain envelopes.
After having seen the hull at the yard, I can report the bottom was only mildly less usual than anything I’d ever seen before: a shallow but deep-V, wave-piercing entry at the bow that quickly twisted into a near-flat running surface.
The thing that more than stood out to me was the amazing twist in the topsides. To my eye, punctuated by the striped contrast in the diagonal side laminates, it had the appearance of the so-called “dazzle” camouflage of a destroyer-escort built toward the end of World War II. It was much harder to tell the size of a ship at a distance if they painted the hull with zig-zags, making it unrecognizable to a gunnery observer.
“I have never seen so much twist from bow to stern in any boat ever,” I told Payer.
His reply: “That was all me, from day one.”
So, I asked just one question of Fitzgerald, “Was this developable?” Meaning can thin, flat panels of cedar do that?
“Almost,” the designer replied. He described Sturdy’s reaction once he saw it: “You’ve gotta be kidding me!”
Still, the proof is in the pudding. I can attest that the last time I spied the hull in the BBY paint shop, 28 column-inches of mercury vacuum pressure and the airtight bag encircling the hull had clearly accomplished their task. The twist was there.
Payor reminisced: “I’d met yacht designer Bruce King by happenstance. He was an audiophile, and we found each other due to a shared interest in stereo turntables. We got together at the lake and Bruce compared vacuum bagging with vacuum flattening for vinyl records on phonograph turntables. This conversation migrated into King critiquing my lines plan of the MB 18 sailboat—and my complimenting him on his outrageous Hinckley Picnic Boat transom.”
That transom, Payor said, had extreme tumblehome.
Having seen the new launch, I would say Payor’s transom has even a little bit more drama. Which, I added, I very much like.
For the bow of the launch, Fitzgerald argued against Payor’s original design of a plumb stem, based only partially on the extreme twist along the length of the topsides. He emphasized the risk of a “powderhorn” look at certain viewing angles, and the difficulty to build such a structure. For the record, I liked Fitzgerald’s more conventional bow approach, which Payor adopted.
There was nothing controversial, I might add, about the rendering I saw of the launch. The layout of what will be varnished wood, probably set off by white seam stripes, promises to present a masterpiece of show-off brightwork.
During our conversation, Payor mentioned his treatment of the deck plan on the Penbo, which I hadn’t seen in years. When later I did, it became clear the extent to which he applied old lessons.
Many fancy runabouts are spiffy with their slippery varnished bows and humped coverings over massive inboard engines, but in practical terms, it’s more than handy to provide a single reliable level from the bow chocks back to an outboard motor. Full-length varnished mahogany on the side decks and sculpted covering boards give the MB 18 Launch what I would call an essential Stradivarius Factor.
In drawings of the launch the Bimini top above the steering station was something we all loved. Payor said, “I’ve had it with the sun on my skin all day. That’s over.” Then, he tossed Fitzgerald another bone, praising his improvement at the bow and beautifully drawn deck details.
The wine was mellowing us all. The setting sun began to illuminate the Mussel Ridge islets in a golden glow, evoking the aura of rare Honduras mahogany beneath multiple coats of Epifanes.
The new launch? All good.
✮
Contributing editor Art Paine is a boat designer, artist, and writer who lives in Bernard, Maine.
