"That's what you'd hear every morning at 6 o'clock for 30 years."
But now this building, where Young brothers once fabricated fiberglass boat hulls, is empty, and the 45 foot long hull molds lay behind the boatyard. Like the building and the land it sits on, everything associated with Young Brothers Boats on the Schoodic Peninsula is for sale. After more than 31 years, Young says there are no more orders for the boats his family has built for fisherman from the Bahamas to the Alaskan coast.
"Due to the economy today and the fishing industry, they've got it right to parade rest right now and it just...no boat orders in... so, we had no choice but to shut it down."
Aside from the economy, Colby says that none of his sons or daughters is interested in trying to shape a living from sheets of fiberglass, and he ran out of options.
"Lately, getting too damned old to do all the crawling and creeping and mud, but there's boats on the market everywhere -- any shape, size, model that you want. Pick the one you want and name your price and you got it."
"The immediate impact, obviously, in Corea and surrounding towns is that jobs are lost," said Susan Swanton.
At the Maine Marine Trades Association, executive director Susan Swanton says the demise of boatyards like Young Brothers is becoming an all too familiar story in Maine this year.
"I think that a lot of people knew the Young Brothers and they certainly build a very lovely hull. I kind of understand that Colby's gone back to fishing, not that that's a bad thing, but that's a builder lost to us, so that's a little bit of our cache -- our heritage -- that we may never get back."
"Yeah, we get just a bare hull that looks like a bathtub," said Joe Sargent.
In the Washington County town of Milbridge, Joe Sargent operates a small shop where he finishes lobster boats for fishermen who may have crafted the hulls themselves or had them built elsewhere. Sargent's specialty has allowed him to develop a niche in the lobster boatbuilding business, but the margin of profitability is so thin for fishermen, that one ripple in workflow can grow into a financial tsunami for craftsmen like Sargent.
"Last December, I would have told you that we were looking great, we've got work lined up for over a year and we feel very fortunate. Come January, I put in a request for one for the next payment on the 46-foot boat that we were working on and the owner told me he was out of money. So as quick as that, we went from having a year's worth of work to not having anything," said Sargent.
The impact of all this may mean the closure of more yards, and possibly a return to the smaller boats of the past. Jim Houtz, who manages the boatbuilding program at The Landing School in Arundel, says the industry trended toward bigger, faster, boats and higher horsepower as the markets for lobster peaked in the 1990s. If the current trend of lower prices and higher operating costs continues, he sees a future of smaller boats, with less powerful engines that are less expensive to operate.
"Maybe everyone will say in the morning 'maybe it's not a race to all my traps -- maybe it's I just need to be sure that I can still fish and I can afford to fish and still put my money away.' Instead of every day's a race out and every day's a race back," said Houtz.
In the final segment of our series on boatbuilding, we'll hear from several of Maine's powered yacht manufacturers, who see signs of recovery for their industry on the horizon.