Fifty-plus years after he started his eponymous boatyard in an old quarry on Somes Sound, John “Jock” Williams, 87, was ready to retire. But he didn’t want to see his waterfront land converted into high-end housing or to be bought by an out-of-state marina conglomerate like those that have been snapping up operations like his along the New England coast.
Then he found the perfect solution: a buyer who wanted the yard to continue as it is run now. This past April, Williams sold the John Williams Boatyard to a Mt. Desert Island summer resident, who has said he prefers to remain anonymous. General Manager Jaime Weir will continue running the yard, along with Operation Manager Lindsey Clough, and Service Manager Will Rackliffe, as the buyer has said he wants to preserve the current management, while also making some improvements, Williams said.
“It’s a win-win. Here is someone who wants to preserve the legacy of this being a yard,” he said. “I’m kind of floating on a cloud, looking down every once in a while and thinking now I’m just going to take it easy.”
Williams had not been looking to sell, but was persuaded by the buyer, who owns a Stanley 28 that the yard recently built. “He told me he liked the way I ran the yard. He liked that the customer was important, but that the employees were more important,” Williams said. “I decided he was the right person to buy the yard.”
Williams started his business in 1973 when his father helped him buy what was then an abandoned waterfront quarry. In its heyday the quarry had shipped its distinct pink stone all over. But by the time Williams bought the land, all that remained was a small camp at the end of a narrow road.
Williams, who grew up in New Jersey, has spent a lifetime around boats. He worked the gas pump at the Martha’s Vineyard Shipyard when he was 14, and later apprenticed at a yard in Denmark, where he learned all aspects of boatbuilding. He served in the Navy where he was stationed on a tug, charting waterways in Vietnam, and spent time coaching sailing at the Naval Academy.
At the time of the quarry purchase, Williams had been employed at the Hinckley Co. in Southwest Harbor, working alongside Norma Stanley, whose husband, Lyford Stanley, was a self-taught wooden boat builder. “She kept saying to me, ‘you guys ought to get into fiberglass,’” Williams recalled.
Williams and Stanley, with help from Norma and William’s wife, Debbie, made a fiberglass mold from a 36-foot wooden hull that Lyford had been building, and the team built the first fiberglass Stanley 36 in a small shed next to the Stanleys’ house. “That’s how vagabond we were,” recalled Williams. The first boat was sold to a high-line fisherman, and orders quickly poured in from other fishermen. The team moved their operation to the Hall Quarry site, and the design took off. The first buyers were fishermen, but soon yachters took notice of the sleek, stable boats.
Over the years Williams said he sold more than 150 Stanley 36s, and “I built every one of them.” Over time, the line was expanded to include the Stanley 28, 38, 39, 42 and 44. Lyford Stanley died in 2007, and as boatbuilding stagnated after the 2008 economic crash, the yard’s focus shifted. A Stanley 28 bass boat launched in 2022 and another Stanley 28 launched last year were the first boats built there in a decade.
In recent years, Williams has suffered health setbacks that put him in the hospital for months at a time. “I kind of regret losing my company, but I guess it’s time,” said Williams, who is spending his free time now working on a book about his life.
✮
We are sad to share the news that Jock Williams passed away in August 2026. He will be greatly missed.
Read our profile of John Williams and the boatyard from the January/February 2020 issue HERE.
