Alec Brainerd’s Artisan Boatworks in Rockport, Maine, is a modestly sized yard with about 25 employees that builds, restores, and maintains wooden yachts, many designed by legends. Inside the yard’s sheds you’ll find boats by Nathanael Herreshoff, William Fife, Starling Burgess, K. Aage Nielsen, B. B. Crowninshield, John Alden, Sparkman & Stephens, and other renowned naval architects. Every year, the yard keeps about 80 wooden boats in Bristol condition. And since its founding in 2002, it has rebuilt nearly 20 boats and completed 19 new builds of up to 29 feet.
But in April 2023, Brainerd was approached by an experienced sailor, a man in his 80s, who was looking to construct something bigger than Artisan had ever built, a feature-rich daysailer in the 40-foot range. The caller had commissioned numerous builds throughout his long sailing career, including two yachts of around 100 feet from Royal Huisman in the Netherlands. And his most recent commission had been a 50-footer from Rockport Marine in Rockport, Maine.
The caller would have been happy to return to Rockport Marine for his next boat, but that yard was busy building a 95-footer, and the buyer was in a rush. Unable to find a quality yard whose dance card wasn’t filled, the buyer had reached out to yacht designer Bob Stephens of Stephens Waring Yacht Design in Belfast, Maine, who suggested the caller talk to Brainerd.
Stephens had worked with Brainerd before. Artisan had built a skiff for one of Stephens Waring’s clients in 2010 and refitted a 36-foot powerboat for another. Stephens knew that the smaller yard could build to the client’s very high standards.
“It’s a very different business model that Alec has, compared to much bigger yards like Lyman-Morse or Brooklin Boat Yard or Rockport Marine,” Stephens says. “Where Alec is rather unique is that he’s building at a world class level with a very small yard, with a small crew. A very talented crew, but without the specialties and without the big investment in infrastructure and real estate that the bigger yards have.”
Brainerd was game to build the boat, but there was a catch: The buyer wanted his new boat in the water by the summer of 2024, and other than some preliminary sketches by Stephens, she hadn’t even been designed yet. If Brainerd were to meet the owner’s tight schedule, the boat would have to be built in a very compressed timeline.
The boat, named Wisp, launched in early August of 2024. How Brainerd succeeded can be attributed to meticulous planning and his crew’s execution, but it’s also a testament to the collaboration among Maine’s boatbuilders and a large cadre of specialists from New England and beyond who Brainerd gathered to get the job done.
As Brainerd puts it, “it takes a village” for a modestly sized boatyard like his to build a 40-footer, but for Wisp to be sailed shorthanded by its 80-something owner and his wife, it would be more complex with lots of systems. That meant push buttons and foot switches for hoisting, trimming, and stowing sails, furlers for the headsails, a roller furler for the boom, electric winches to handle the lines, and hydraulic systems to control the mainsheet, vang, and backstay.
Stephens says it would normally take at least 18 months to design and build a custom 40-footer. To build the hull and deck, Brainerd knew he could rely on his crew of talented carpenters and finishers, but he would need a lot of experts to design the many systems, deliver and install parts, and get it all done in time. In the end, he would work with more than 40 specialists from about 30 different vendors.
Once Brainerd and the owner signed a deal in June 2023, the first step was to finish the plans. The owner wanted a daysailer, but one with standing head room and the option to sleep on board. He also wanted to be able to do some work in the galley, make a cup of coffee, and have space for a comfortable head. He had envisioned a 45-footer, but Stephens convinced him that a 40-footer could do everything he wanted.
Stephens and his business partner, Paul Waring, specialize in custom naval architecture and engineering. Both sharpened their teeth at Brooklin Boat Yard in Brooklin, Maine, where they spent years as hands-on boatbuilders and project managers before turning to yacht design as a career. For three years, Stephens worked under designer Joel White, who helped pioneer the concept of Spirit of Tradition yachts, a style that blends the best of classic yacht designs with the latest in materials and technology.
Stephens would use this to draw Wisp and employ the latest technologies to make her swift and easy to operate. With input from the client, he drew a hull with lovely overhangs, reminiscent of a mid-20th-century cruiser-racer. On deck, he gave Wisp an oversized dual-purpose cockpit with a plush, upholstered lounge area forward and a dedicated sailing zone aft.
“They wanted a very, very comfortable cockpit and a very high level of finish and detail,” Stephens says about the owners. “They wanted to match and duplicate, as close as possible, the cockpit they had on their 50-foot sailboat.”
For the house, Stephens drew a cabin that could accommodate the owner’s standing headroom requirements but restrained it to keep it from overwhelming the hull’s relatively low freeboard.
He gave Wisp a tall Solent rig with a carbon spar, a working jib, and a large, multi-purpose reacher, both on fixed furlers. The owner could push-button hoist the mainsail from its carbon roller-furling boom with an electric winch, and a reverse-purchase hydraulic cylinder enabled a unique under-deck mainsheet trim system.
For construction, Stephens specified a foam-cored plywood deck for structural integrity that allowed for a swift and efficient build. By late August, Gardner Pickering, Hews & Company of Blue Hill, Maine, had delivered the CNC-cut deck molds, which were set up in the loft above the boat shed to start the deck construction.
Because Artisan Boatworks did not have its own in-house designer, the client had agreed that Stephens Waring would provide all the design and construction support that Brainerd’s team would need. Ordinarily, a design firm might provide half a dozen or a dozen drawings to a boatbuilder. But by the end of the project, Stephens Waring would provide 60 drawings for the Artisan Boatworks crew, which didn’t include 3D renderings and other details. Brainerd is effusive about the insane amount of detail Stephens provided.
“Knowing that we had Bob Stephens right there along with us really helped me,” he says. “It made me more comfortable with the decision [to build the boat].”
As the specs for the various parts and systems were drawn up, Brainerd hired contractors and started ordering parts. To store the components, he placed a container right outside the boat shed so everything would arrive well before it was needed.
“That worked out really well,” Brainerd says. “I spent most of the month of September just poring through the specifications and ordering every single part. The stanchions came from Italy and the furling boom came from Denmark. There were so many parts, coming from so many different places, that we wanted to get them here early enough so we could make sure they were going to work.”
By mid-October, the hull molds, bulkheads, stem, and transom were set up in the boat shed. To speed up hull construction, rather than cold-molding multiple layers of thin veneers, Stephens specified screwed tongue-and-groove strip plank construction with epoxy-infused fiberglass hull sheathing.
By late October, Lyman-Morse delivered a pre-constructed fiberglass cockpit, which was hoisted into the loft and placed inside the pre-constructed deck. By late November, the hull setup was in place, and by mid-December the hull planking was complete. Days later, workers began building the interior components, and between Christmas and New Year, Teak Decking Services from Union, Maine, made patterns for the teak decks.
January saw the arrival of the keel fin and ballast keel. Mars Metal in Ontario, Canada, had poured the ballast keel, while Lyman-Morse in Thomaston cut the fin’s parts on a multi-axis CNC machine and assembled the keel fin. That same month, workers completed the fiberglass hull sheathing and infusion and flipped the hull upright. In February, the hull was lifted onto the keel fin and ballast; in March, builders completed the house and cockpit coaming and interior sheathing and paint, installed the tanks, and Awgripped the house and cockpit. By late April the teak deck and all the major interior components had been installed.
Early May would be momentous. Builders pulled the hull from the shed, tore out the gable end of the loft above the boat shop, and maneuvered the deck and cabin out of the loft and down to the hull below.
With the decked boat back in the shed and about three months to go, the race to the finish was on. The varnished interior cabinets had all been constructed off site by one subcontractor, while the steps, tables, and steering pedestal had been built by another. Those components were on site, but they and all the systems—including hydraulics, electronics, plumbing, and mechanicals—had to be installed and connected.
To give all the carpenters, finishers, interior designers, electricians, mechanics, plumbers, and other specialists the time they needed to install their pieces of the puzzle, Brainerd asked everyone to be flexible with their time. Often, one contractor would be crammed inside one compartment while another was crammed inside the one right next to it. To make it work, some of Brainerd’s crew came in on the weekends, the finishers worked from 5 to 9 at night, and the electrician often came in late in the evenings or working on weekends.
“It was a great collaborative effort,” Brainerd says. “Everybody recognized that if they were going to get their job done on time, they had to be creative about when they were going to get access to the boat.”
In June, painters applied the final paint on the house and cockpit. By early July, the bulwarks and cap rails were finished and the topsides were Awlgripped. By mid-July, as all the specialists were cranking to meet the deadline, the carbon fiber mast and boom arrived from Moore Brothers Company in Bristol, Rhode Island.
About a week before the boat was launched, Ransom Morse, who Brainerd had hired from Dartmouth, Massachusetts, to design and install the hydraulics, was on site. “We were here at 10 at night finishing up some detail and having a beer,” Brainerd recalls, “and Ransom says, ‘You know, everybody’s happy right now and getting along. You never see that at this stage of a project.’ ”
Wisp was a unique project for Morse because he generally doesn’t work on boats under 60 feet. Ordinarily, he would have installed a ready-made hydraulic system, but because a 40-footer was on the small side for the hydraulic mainsheet the owner wanted, he designed a custom powerpack with analog controls, dual motors, and two pumps for redundancy that could still fit inside the boat. “It’s what you would see on an 80-foot Swan,” Morse says about Wisp’s mainsheet controller.
Morse was keen to work with Brainerd on Wisp. They’d met years before when they’d worked together on another project. “I like the guy, and I like what they’re doing up there,” Morse says. He’d also previously worked with Stephens on a 70-footer. “Anytime you have an opportunity to work with people that you like, you should go do it, right?
On August 5, Walter Gray of Rockport Marine backed his truck up to Artisan Boatworks’ shed and loaded Wisp on the trailer for the short ride to Lyman-Morse’s Camden facility. With the boat under the Travelift, David “Jonesy” Jones, who Brainerd had hired to consult on Wisp’s plumbing and engine systems, echoed Morse’s comments about the boatbuilding community. “It’s a great industry,” Jones said. “We all know each other. People will help each other and look out for each other.”
With a bouquet of flowers that Brainerd’s wife, Erin, had gathered from their garden tied to the bow, the builder thanked everyone for their contributions. A friend of the owner smashed a bottle on the keel, and Wisp was lowered into Camden Harbor. Throughout the morning, Brainerd and Erin, who manages the Artisan Boatworks office, couldn’t stop smiling.
“I’m very, very happy,” Brainerd says. “I couldn’t be happier with the end result. I’ve always wanted to know whether I could build a bigger boat like the ones that Brooklin, Rockport, and Lyman-Morse build. I knew the only way we were going to be able to build this boat in a year was to lean pretty heavily on subcontractors for a lot of systems and components that we didn’t have in-house capacity for. And this one worked as well as it did because we had a great client and a great designer.”
More than anything though, Brainerd feels beholden to his crew at Artisan Boatworks whose contributions he doesn’t want overlooked. “Some were here for the early stages of hull and deck construction and moved on,” he says, “but they all deserve equal credit.”
Who Made Wisp Happen
Artisan Boatworks, Rockport, Maine:
President/project management, Alec Brainerd; Office management, Erin Brainerd; Administrative assistance, Nanette Gionfriddo; Carpentry, Robert Root, Joey Adams, Mike Piasecki, Jerry Borowski, Marty Allwine, Ian Bruce, Alan (Mouse) Castonguay, Kale Soud, Jasper Guyer-Stevens; Systems, Tim Frush; Systems and Hardware, Kai O’Connor, Colby Pearson, Tim Frush, Alex Shyduroff; Composites and finishing: Michael (Sprout) Gushee, Tony Buendo, Mark Brouillette, Paul Curtis, Pete Flansburg, Eric Gray, Apprentice Johannes Nightingale
Wisp Vendors:
Design and engineering: Bob Stephens, Stephens Waring Yacht Design, Belfast, Maine
CNC cutting, molds and bulkheads: Gardner Pickering, Hews & Company, Blue Hill, Maine
Hydraulic system design and installation: Ransom Morse, Buzzards Bay Boatworks, Dartmouth, Massachusetts
Waterjet metal cutting: Walt Fitzjurls, Front Street Shipyard, Belfast, Maine
Fiberglass cockpit tub, 3D CNC cutting: Steve Crane and Lance Buchanan, Lyman-Morse, Thomaston, Maine
Awlgrip coatings: Bob McClean and Jeremy Toleman, Custom Coatings, Thomaston, Maine
Metal fabrication and polishing: Angel Rios and Philip Pratt, Rockport Marine, Rockport, Maine
Metal fabrication: Chris Gammage, Bog Bronze, Rockland, Maine
Engraving: Dan Callahan, Ariston Engraving & Machine Co., Woburn, MA
Winches and winch controls: Skip Mattos and Oakley Jones, Harken Inc., Newport, Rhode Island
Deck hardware: Siebe and Annelies Noordzy, Euro Marine Trading, Newport, Rhode Island
Composite spars and standing rigging: Jacques Swart and Henry Maxwell, Moore Brothers Company, Bristol, Rhode Island
Electrical design and installation: Kevin Boughton and James Crawford, Midcoast Marine Electronics, Rockland, Maine
Furlers and running rigging: Loric Weymouth, Weymouth Yacht Rigging, Rockland, Maine
Ballast keel: Bill Souter, Mars Metal, Ontario, Canada
Interior cabinetry: Alan Rees, Sandhill Cabinetry, Lincolnville, Maine
Tables, steps, and steering pedestal: Ezra Smith and Jim Thompson, Newport Yacht Builders, Newport, Rhode Island
Steering, Jefa rudder: Phil Quartararo, PYI Inc., Seattle, Washington
Yanmar engine: Ryan Leadbetter and Adam Paulsen, Journey’s End Marina, Rockland, Maine
Lighting and electrical components supplier: Kinder Woodcock, Imtra, Dartmouth, Massachusetts
Wood supplier: Richard Simon, America’s Wood, Washington, Maine
Teak deck and interior sole: Larry Murray and Phil Huning, Teak Decking Services, Union, Maine
Sails: Tom Castiglione and Glen Cook, North Sails, Marblehead, Massachusetts
Canvas work: John LeMole, Gemini Marine Canvas, Rockland, Maine
On-site carpentry: Scott Wilmoth, Wilmoth Marine Carpentry, Rockport, Maine
Plumbing and systems: David (Jonesy) Jones, Waldo, Maine
Interior hardware: Eliot Lowe, Lowe Marine Hardware, Rockland, Maine
Gold-plating/name painting: Reed Hayden, Hayden Sign Company, Surry, Maine
Boat transportation: Walter Gray, Rockport Marine, Rockport, Maine
May 2025
