Page 20. MAINE COASTAL NEWS January 2014 SEVENTIES MEMORIES: STEVE WESSEL By Lee S. Wilbur
The fi rst time I’d ever met Steve Wes- sel was in 1982 when he and Mac Pette- grow had just fi nished the soon-to-be well- known MISTY LYNN, a Jarvis Newman 46. They’d asked Jarvis and I to stop down to the dock to look her over and perhaps go for a quick run. Mac and Steve, instead of using fi berglass over ¾-inch plywood for the pilot house, had chosen instead to save as much weight as possible using more modern materials and had succeeded in reducing overall poundage by some 6,000 pounds. They’d done an impressive job and with the added speed of the vessel, soon made a name for themselves in the hotly competitive workboat market.
Steve, after graduating from Maine
Maritime Academy in 1974, spent several months at Bath Iron Works working on the new lightweight naval patrol frigates. Soon deciding in 1975 this wasn’t his life’s ca- reer, he ordered a Newman 36 from Jarvis and had the hull fi nished to go lobstering. “I enjoyed lobstering,” Steve recalls, “But I was still legally in the Navy, “Navy Standby” because of my education at MMA. We all graduated as Naval offi cers and were locked in if needed for six years.” Steve tells the story of his decision to
step to a larger boat and ordering a new 38-footer from Jarvis and sending Jarvis a deposit. “It was the fi rst and only time I’ve ever had to back out of a deal. In 1978, after I’d ordered the hull, there was a big blow- up in Iran and darned if it didn’t look like my unit was going to be called up. I had to call Jarvis and cancel the order. He was good about it and said “Sure Sport I com- pletely understand. Then we never were called up. I decided to wait for another boat until I was discharged in 1980.”
By 1982, Steve was still lobstering, but in addition, he and Mac had not only fi n- ished off the MISTY-LYNN and the MINK, both Newman 46s, the MINK as the Isle au Haut mailboat.
And, with wife Lorraine,
had formed Wessel Marine Brokerage. “These were the boom years,” Steve said, “We could sell whatever we could get our hands on. Shops would no more than get a “demo” built and we’d have it sold. The demand for fi berglass workboats was un- believable. We sold 26 boats that year and launched a total of 60. Sounds impossible, but I’ve got the papers to prove it.” “That same year, Don Lynch from down on the Chesapeake called me at ten o’ clock one night to tell me he’d had an idea. Build a boat with Maine “lines” above the waterline and Chesapeake deadrise “lines” below the waterline. I told him it sounded good but we should talk about it the next day.”
From that conversation and courage,
the “Wesmac 42” became a reality along with Wesmac Boats. Steve and Mac had the foresight and courage to break away from the classic round bilge, soft chine, Maine lines and do something new and faster. Steve and Mac remained partners, albeit in seperate shops, until Mac’s retirement a few years ago. “You know,” Steve said when I men- tioned the “golden years of fi breglass build- ing”, We did really well didn’t we up until about 1988 (read Luxury Tax years), when the bottom fell out and it really took about 4-5 years before picking up again. Those were diffi cult times. I remember we got stuck with six boats in progress and man it was hard to fi nally get rid of them. Had to sell them cheap just to hang on.” Steve has a new model he’s getting
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facilities, more buildings and overhead.” I asked Steve if he’d had time to fi n- ish his wife Linda ex-Greenlaw’s new boat which he’d started a year ago Sept. 15th
. He
chuckled and said, “No, we’re still working on it though. Should be done pretty soon.” Heartening to know that deadlines in the boatbuilding include family as well.
A Storm too Soon Continued from Page 8.
side world, the reasons for the disaster might seem absurd or even just plain stupid. Why would a crew, heavily warned by weather forecasts and the media about the coming storm, make their way straight into the center of Sandy? With his coauthor, veteran journalist Douglas A. Campbell, Tougias reveals the psychological motivations that drove a proud, principled captain and his loyal crew to believe that, in braving the storm at sea, they were saving the “Bounty”
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