December 2013 MAINE COASTAL NEWS Page 5. Brooklin Boat Yard's Ultimate Houseboat
BROOKLIN – Back in early October a photograph fl ashed up on Facebook of this interesting looking houseboat and in hours it had thousands of hits. The Facebook page belonged to Steve White, owner of Brooklin Boat Yard in Brooklin, and was one of his latest creations.
Over the years Brooklin Boat Yard has turned out some of the most impressive boats on the coast of Maine. The new boats under construction have that traditional look and those in for repair are classics. So when one sees a houseboat at the yard there are defi - nitely some questions looking for answers. Steve began by explaining how this came about saying, “It started because I had another rental property here that I sold. I had some money and I thought I ought to rein- vested it. I started thinking about real estate and came up with the idea of a houseboat. I had seen some container house designs that I kind of liked the looks of and thought that was an interesting approach. There is quite a famous one here in Brooklin down on Flye Point.”
The outside design Steve took from one that he had seen in Costa Rica. He added, “It is very similar to that; two containers offset by a space and a raised roof. I took it a little further by raising the roof in the kitchen as well and offset it quite a bit more. The other only had a 2 foot offset and this one has an 8 foot offset. So I just started by making a cardboard model and keeping it really sim- ple how could that be expensive?” Last spring Steve went ahead with the project. “I had heard about something in Brewer called Snap Space, which is run by a guy I used to do business with. I talked to him and he got real excited about the idea. They did most of the work on the contain- ers. They cut out all the doors and windows welded in new frames and built the stairs on the outside. They roughed in the wiring, insulated it with spray foam insulation, sheet rock and primed the sheet rock. It was pretty well done when she got down here.” The welder on the project in Brewer was
Brent Phinney, owner of Kustom Steel, the boat yard across from Hollywood Casino. When she arrived at the yard she was
placed in a barge they had built there. Well there was just a slight issue, Steve said, “Most house builders and contractors don’t really care how much anything weighs. So getting real numbers was pretty diffi cult. I ended up having to weigh and count all the things going in. I had four pontoons that had a 77,000 displacement and I fi gured it was going to weigh around 50 to 55,000 pounds, but it weighed a lot closer at 80. So I needed more fl oatation. The method I had devised to launch the raft was basically a big slot down the middle and we could back the trailer under it and take it down to the water and unload it. Once the trailer was out from underneath it we had to get more fl oatation
under it before the tide came up. So the six hour launch window was pretty important. We were well prepared and actually had two or three hours left.”
Inside there are two bedrooms, a very
large living area, big galley, Head and show- er with washer and dryer, and then a furnace room for all the plumbing. There is not much deck space, but there is a big deck on top of one of the containers, which is eight by forty feet.
She has already been moved to Front Street Shipyard in Belfast where she will sit in one of the berths. She will be secured in place with pilings and then be hooked up to water, sewer and electricity.
After the photograph hit Facebook there has been no one ask how much it will cost to have one, but someone would like to rent it.
When asked if he would build another, he said, “If I had to do it again there is a lot of things that I would do differently and save myself an awful lot of money.”
There are plenty of other projects going on at the yard. One of the most interesting is PARDON ME, a very large Hackercraft. She was in for a new bottom and have her engine installed. Steve explained, “We are starting to fi t the engine. It is not the engine that came with the boat originally, but it is the same engine, just slightly different. So we have had to modify the engine beds a little bit. The tricky part now installing the engine and all of that, because we didn’t take anything apart. They are also modifying the cooling system, which is signifi cant. The boat always had a lot of cooling problems all through its life. I think a lot of it had to do with how fast the boat was going through the water. If it was going quickly it had enough pressure because the scoop went forward. When it stopped there wasn’t any pressure and was not pumping enough water. The cooling system is a non-pressurized cooling system, it is just an open tank. That has in- herent problems. We are hoping to be able to pressurize it, even a couple of pounds. The other part of the cooling system is that it has a big remote oil system tank and the oil is being sort of changed in the engine all the time. The oil is a big part of the cooling system. We are trying to fi gure all that out
In October work was progressing quickly on the houseboat at Brooklin Boat Yard. Now she can be seen at Front Street Shipyard in Belfast, her permanent home.
and there is not a lot of knowledgeable peo- ple left from that era to ask.”
They also will be modifying the shifting
arrangement. The transmission has a 200 foot pound shifting lever, which is a six foot bronze bar about eight feet behind the helmsman. The helmsman could not control it and had to yell back to somebody to do it. They are trying to remedy that with an elec- tro-server that will use a ram. For a simple boat it is complicated.
Also under construction is a Jim Taylor 49. She is a racer-cruiser and should be a really good performing boat. The hull is
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planked and she has been rolled over. Right now they are working on the interior. Other workers are building the cabin trunk and cockpit, which are set up on the third fl oor. They also have a 74-foot German Frers design to build. She is lofted and they are getting ready to start putting pieces together. She will be done the spring of 2015.
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