Though their wives weren’t particularly keen on sailing, Tris, Josh, and Ken had their hearts set on having a cruising boat of their own.
“He is…How would I even describe Canadian Ken?” Tris Coburn muses about his friend Ken Chipman. “He’s an eager learner and perfectionist when it comes to all things boating. I’d say that I’m Don Quixote, and he’s Sancho Panza, but then he’d probably say ‘but you’re the round one, and I’m the skinny one.’ ”
“Josh, well, he’ll do whatever needs to be done,” he says of his friend of 48 years, Josh Ledwith. “He’ll paint the bottom of the hull, do all the dirty work, but the trick is getting him here since he’s moved away. But he can do anything, and he smokes a pack a day. He’s a real throwback.”
Tris is a character in his own right with a blustery, jovial persona that belies a thoughtful, nostalgic approach to boating, even as everything around him seems to be careering through the digital age. “We always say ‘ease is the new disease.’ It’s so easy to Google answers, pay someone else to do the work, or even not do it at all. That mindset breaks my heart. The whole beauty of sailing is in doing the work.”
The trio began sailing together in the early 2000s, aboard C&Cs and Sabres, fostering an appreciation for classic fiberglass boats that would resurface again and again over the coming decades. Josh and Tris were childhood friends (“Josh’s dad dated my mom before we were born, so we might even be brothers,” Tris jokes), and Ken’s mother was friends with Tris’, making them all longtime family friends.
Despite being the newest to sailing, Ken was the first to dive in and buy his own boat, a Bristol 27 that the other two helped him sail for a few seasons. “One day we were like ‘wouldn’t it be fun if we got our own big boat and did some more extensive cruising? And that’s how it happened,” Tris says. “The three of us went in on a boat partnership. We found a 1980 Morgan 382, and decided to go for it.”
“Our spouses aren’t as enamored with sailing as we are, and so we pitched them on the partnership idea to defray the costs across the three of us. And I somehow convinced my wife to let us put the boat off our driveway in the off-season. I said, ‘you’ll hardly notice it,’ but I forgot that a boat is like an iceberg when it’s out of the water. There’s a whole other section that you can see. And so she’s like, “yeah, sure, hardly notice it. You see it every time we come in.’ ”
During the partnership’s first season, they began to run into all the maintenance work that a bigger boat requires, and it gave them the idea for a website. “It started as a collective of information for boaters in Maine of where to find a rigger and a diesel mechanic and a sailmaker, because when you’re a newbie, you don’t even know where to start. It was supposed to be a repository for all of that information.”
But Tris was soon thinking bigger. “I also wanted to interview boat owners to find out why they selected the particular boat that they had. For me, and I think for many people, it’s a love at first sight affair. I wanted to know what made them fall in love.”
And thus began the BoatFools YouTube channel. It’s a little bit Car Talk, a little bit This Old House, and a lot of the trio’s own personality. Tris acts as the host, bantering with “Canadian Ken” as they explore the wide world of classic fiberglass and wooden boats. Josh, who doesn’t live locally, is primarily there in spirit, but he pops in from time to time, especially when they turn the camera around and talk about their own boat ownership experience. There’s something charming about their easy camaraderie and dated graphics, which harken back to an earlier era of the internet, somehow fitting for a channel celebrating yesteryear’s sailboat design.
To date they’ve racked up 25,000 subscribers, and their top videos receive well over 100,000 views—significant numbers for a platform exclusively focused on telling the stories of and giving advice about the specific niche of “old sailboats in coastal Maine.”
Videos on purchasing and ownership tips with titles like “We Set a Launch Date and Immediately Panicked” and “Anatomy of a Sailboat Scam” have helped hundreds of thousands of viewers better understand the process of owning a boat that needs a little TLC, highs and lows included. “The joy of sailing is not just in the nature, but in the nurture of your boat,” Tris says.
The true staple of the channel, however, is profiling used boats for sale. The friends search for interesting listings in online marketplaces and reach out to ask if they can come by for a visit and a tour. To date, just over 60% of the boats they’ve showcased have been sold after their videos were published, but Tris is humble about acknowledging there’s no real way to track how much of that is their impact. “On several occasions,” Tris says with a smile, “the boats didn’t change hands because the owners fell back in love with their boats all over again after seeing our video. Those are the best ones.”
“Most of the sellers we talk to are selling because they’re aging out of sailing. That’s the sad story. Most of them really just want their boat to go to a good home. So many of them tell us on the side that they’d basically be willing to give their boat away if they were sure it was going to a good home.”
BoatFools hopes to facilitate connections between the next generation that needs mentorship and current owners who can’t singlehand anymore but aren’t ready to hang up their Sperrys just yet. Sometimes all it takes is an introduction. This keeps older sailors on the water longer and helps younger sailors learn what they need to know in order to become owners themselves some day.
Tris knows keeping an older fleet active is a massive undertaking and that he’s trying to turn the tide on a trend far bigger than his local community. It’s about how people spend their time and money, and ultimately what they value.
“Just like Don Quixote, we’re tilting at windmills. Each of these boats is a work of art, in my opinion, and we just want to keep them on the water.”
“The fantasy for us is to bring back that ‘70s and ‘80s beer can sailing, the numbers of people on the water, the spirit. The coast of Maine is some of the best sailing in the world, and I just wish more people were out there enjoying it,” Tris says. In showcasing the beauty, ability, and ingenuity of older designs, he believes new owners will fall in love with these boats the same way their original owners did. With a little know-how about proper maintenance, this fleet has a lot of good years left ahead of it.
“The romance is in taking care of something with so much history in its soul,” Tris says. “Each one, without exception, has its own special story.”
Slowly, they’re breathing new life into Maine’s classic fiberglass fleet. The YouTube audience has expanded so much that it’s spilled over into other community projects like flotillas to connect in person with the owners of boats they’ve featured and consulting services for fans interested in personal feedback when buying their own boat. They’ve also enlisted the help of one of the original boat review YouTubers, Alan Kew or Captain Q, who has retired his own channel but is a regular guest on BoatFools’ as well as a part of their consultation team. And if that’s not enough to juggle, Tris’ Substack The BoatFools Report offers monthly updates with market trends, boat showcases, and occasional think pieces about the sailing culture he’s trying to foster, with a more philosophical approach than the usual, practical tours and how-tos.
So far, the response has been huge, and it’s not just armchair sailors tuning in. Countless viewers have commented to share their own plans and dreams for buying a classic plastic boat, inspired and informed by the BoatFools.
But for these viewers, finding and falling in love with a boat is just the first step on a very long road.
The BoatFools only half-jokingly cite their audience demographic as “45 to dead,” but say that most of the buyers are in their 60s and 70s. “Comment after comment that we get say ‘I’m retiring in a few years, and I’m looking for my retirement boat.’ ” The barriers to that, however, are numerous.
“Before you even think about buying a boat, you need to think about where you’re going to put it and how you’re going to move it. You have to talk to your local harbormaster and ask these things.” Wait times for moorings in popular boating areas can be multiple decades, and water access gets more and more difficult each year. A commute is necessary for many, and before you start shopping, you need to know what kind of boat your desired area can accommodate.
“We also often hear that a boat is too old to insure, or that a marina won’t take a boat of a certain age. It’s just not true. There’s so much misinformation out there. I think that dissuades people. A properly maintained old boat isn’t a risk. You’re the risk, the person driving the boat.”
And lifestyle also plays a big role too. “People just don’t really have leisure time any more. There are myriad things distracting us. It’s not like hopping on a bicycle. You have to dedicate a lot of time to this, and time is at a premium now.”
This year, the BoatFools purchased a second Morgan, this time a 1986 384 that they’re planning to charter out locally. (“We bought ourselves a Christmas present and our wives did not leave us,” Tris says in an announcement video posted back in December. “Huge!” Josh flashes a thumbs up.) Unfortunately, it didn’t go quite so smoothly the second time around.
“Everything went sideways with our launch. We didn’t even go out for a beer afterwards, we just went home and cried,” Tris recalls wryly. “But the next morning Ken, who can basically see our boat in Rockland Harbor from his backyard, texted us, and he wrote ‘looking good on the mooring, so happy to have such great boat partners. We got this.’ ”
“Even in our darkest moments, I wouldn’t trade these two for anybody. We all have our specialties and deficiencies, and we all piss each other off from time to time, but when the three of us are on the boat, I wouldn’t trade it for the world.”
Josh moved to Vermont in 2015, but the shared ownership brings them back together despite the distance. It’s a project that requires them to make an effort to show up for each other.
“I think men in general as they age have a harder time connecting with other guys. We’re sort of solitary creatures in that way, though there are always exceptions. But it’s said that if you have a few good friends that’s really all you need. And not that they’re my only friends, but they’re my two besties. And the boat keeps us out of trouble—and gets us into trouble—but it gives us a thing. It’s our thing. And I think that’s important.”
What began as three friends in search of a boat for cruising has evolved over the years. First into an effort to help other new boaters, then into an online community, more recently into an offline gathering of people joined by a like-minded appreciation of the yacht design of yesteryear and the desire to keep these boats afloat. And throughout it all, boat partnership has helped to keep their friendship strong over the distance and the years.
When asked what it is that draws people to these older models when so many newer boats are also on the market, Tris has an easy answer. “Why would anyone go buy a beautiful old farmhouse when they could buy a brand new home with no deferred maintenance? There’s a certain charm, an allure, to the thing with a soul.”
This article was originally published in the August/September 2026 issue.
