May 2016 MAINE COASTAL NEWS Page 5. Robinhood Marine Center Under New Ownership
GEORGETOWN – Rumours began swirl- ing around the coast that Robinhood Marine Center of Georgetown was on the market last fall. A couple of months later rumours were fl ying around again as to the possible sale and the new owner. When the dust had settled and the rumours had become fact Robinhood Marine had been sold to Paul Derecktor and John Koenig with the fi nal closing on 7 March. One of the fi rst moves was the hiring of a new general manager, Neil Collins, who came on board even be- fore the fi nal paperwork was complete and the fi rst change was the yard’s name, which became Derecktor-Robinhood. Neil added, “Andy put this up for sale
last year and he had a bunch of interested parties. Paul Derecktor, who owns Dereck- tor Shipyards and the Derecktor yard in Flor- ida, with his very good friend John Koenig, saw the yard advertised. Like many other people who were interested, they came and looked at the yard and saw its great location and potential and they made an off er. The off er was accepted and then a friend of a friend introduced me to John and Paul and they off ered me the general manager’s po- sition. When they closed on the yard I came in and started looking through the work and started reaching out to the customers.” The name Derecktor is well known in
the yachting world as one of the fi nest build- ers and service yards in the world. The yard was started by Robert Derecktor at Mama- roneck, New York in 1947. Two years later he began building the well-known Gulfst- ream 30, which was designed by Sparkman & Stephens. Six years later they introduced the Gulfstream 36. It would not be long be- fore they switched from building in wood to the use of steel and aluminum and this added to their reputation. In 1967, they opened their yard at Dania Cutoff Canal in Florida, which is aimed at servicing large vessels on their 17 acre site with a 900-ton Cimola lift. They also opened yards at Portsmouth, RI and Bridgeport, CT, but these have since been closed. Some of the most noted yachts built at their yards were: GREY GOOSE, PALAWAN III, ONDINE, BOOMERANG, VOLCANO, STARS & STRIPES ’87, and CAKEWALK. However, they did not just build or repair yachts they have also done a lot of commercial and military projects. Bob Derecktor has passed the running of the yards to his son Paul. Neil added, “John Koenig worked at the
Derecktor yard for years and years, and he and Paul were childhood friends. He worked in the crew there from age 14 by his admis- sion and got to know the industry pretty well. He comes from an advertising background. His father is a very well-known ad execu- tive. He had gone into the advertising fi eld
for a while and got out of that and he and Paul started a high-speed ferry business to- gether that ran between New York and New Jersey. John also owned a marina in Sandy Hook that got wiped out by the hurricane. John had lost that yard and they weren’t running the ferry business anymore and they were just sort of looking around for another partnership and that is how they found this.” When asked what direction they were
looking to take the yard, Neil said, “We wanted to get bigger boats. With our in- frastructure we can haul bigger boats than we ordinarily do. The customers here have a huge loyalty to the yard. People come in and say they have been here for years and they want to stay here. Paul and John are very aware of that and they are not trying to reinvent the wheel here. We are going to try to take on some projects of larger size, but we are also not going to alienate the people who have been here for a long time or change things so much that the place is unrecognizable.” One change that Neil wants to make is
adding heated storage. “Right now we have two indoor cold storage buildings, a heated boatbuilding shop and paint shop and a heat- ed Quonset hut that is a workspace as well,” said Neil. “I would like to have dedicated heated storage and I am just beginning to work on proposals for that. Right now the proposal that I’m working on is to retrofi t one of the present storage buildings. Wheth- er that will work or not or economically feasible, I am not sure. Another goal is to get the storage, slip and the mooring numbers up.”
“We have a lot of components here,”
continued Neil, “and people probably don’t even realize how many things happen down here. Of course we have our service and stor- age yard. We can probably store about 160 boats. We have Spartan Marine Hardware and all the machining work is done here and it get shipped out all over the world. We have the Riggs Cove Rental program which consists of three 40 foot houseboats that the yard built several years ago. They sit out on moorings in the harbor and people rent them and stay out there sometimes for a week or more. They have been wildly popular. I have had more people talk to me about how great they think that is.” There is also a restaurant onsite, which
is leased. The restaurant is open during the summer months and is a great place to have lunch or dinner. For years, Robinhood was well-known
for new boat construction and when asked if they had plans to do this, Neil said it is a pos- sibility. He added, “Paul and John designed a 30 foot boat, the prototype of which we are going to sail this summer. If we had an order
for something we would fi gure how to build it. The 36 and 40 foot moulds were not in- cluded in the sale, however, they have made them available if we want them. I would look at any proposal that came through.” When asked about his background Neil
said, “For the last ten years I was at Maine Yacht Center and previous to that I, along with my wife and daughter, was on a two- plus year sailing trip to South America.” They left Maine and sailed down the
East Coast winding up in the Bahamas. Neil added, “We headed off to the Eastern Carib- bean and didn’t fi nd that to be everything we hoped. We then started going across the top
of South America and the outer islands of Venezuela. When we were sailing to Pana- ma we had an engine failure and hurricane Wilma formed in our path. We talked to a weather router and he told us to go left and we wound up on the coast of Colombia. We wound up in Cartagena, which was great. We fi xed the engine and stayed a while. Then we went over to the islands in Panama, backup to Belize, then Mexico, Florida, Bahamas and back to Maine.” Neil had not discovered boating until
later in life when he met his wife, whose Continued on Page 21.
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