April 2017 MAINE COASTAL NEWS Page 7. K P Y Y M C
ELIOT/KITTERY POINT – The State of Maine is well known for their contribution to the boating industry whether it be boat- building, repairs or service. A number of yards on the coast have a fi ne reputation for what they off er customers and one of these is Kittery Point Yacht Yard in Kittery and Eliot. To stay competitive and off er the best of services one must identify the needs of both the customers and the yard. Last fall Kittery Point Yacht Yard in Kittery had some major work done, which addressed docking and launching needs. With this project com- plete, launching the storage customers will be much easier this Spring and there is now more dockage for the transient boater. Tom Allen, owner of the yard, said, “It
started as a result of an opportunity I saw through the boating infrastructure grant. I became aware of it because Kittery at Pepperell Cove had gotten a boating infra- structure grant for their public dock facility and I wasn’t entirely in support of it because they were putting more infrastructure out in a cove that was unprotected. At a meeting the head of the DOT at that time, said, ‘by the way if there are any marina operators out there, this is a grant that you could pursue.’ So a long story short, I had less than 30 days to put the application together with the drawings and get support letters from other entities. This was a two part project, one was to establish more fl oats for transient boats. We only had so many slips at that yard and because so much of our business is service, I really didn’t have berthing space for tran- sients. I only had the transient moorings. I was also interested in fi guring out a solution to access more water, because our railway situation was tidal limited. Cribbing just isn’t cost eff ective anymore and you lose a lot of water depths. The heart of the project
was what I was going to have to deal with: ledge. When you are drilling in to ledge to set piles, there is really only one operation in town that does that and it is not inexpensive, and that is Prock. However, the bid was won by Maritime Construction and Engineering and they did a fantastic job. They did sub- contract out to Prock to do the drilling. The bottom line is this opportunity allowed me to build a fi nancial bridge to get me there. Now, if I knew how long it would take to get through all of the paperwork, I don’t know if I honestly would have pursued it because it was a four-year project. In the end, I am glad it is done.” “Now we have water and we can even
haul and launch moderate draft boats at low tide,” said Tom, “which is unheard of at that yard. We now have berthing capacity for transients so one side is set up specifi cally for that. The other side was set up for our service slips. That is going to work out slick.” The evolution of Kittery Point Yacht
Yard is interesting. Tom originally pur- chased Kittery Point Yacht Yard in Kittery and then purchased Patten’s Yacht Yard in Eliot in October 2007. Both yards remained separate entities. Unfortunately, while at the Maine Boatbuilder’s Show in 2008 the main shop and offi ce of the Patten’s Yacht Yard burned on St. Patrick's Day. Tom added, “The acquisition was exciting, it brought a lot of people who hadn’t seen each other in a long time back together and it gave me the opportunity to get to know George Patten. When it was acquired, they were really run as two separate yards that would share re- sources. The Patten facility was three times larger and it started to over shadow Kittery in terms of operations. Then I changed the structure of the yard so there is no longer the two yard concept, there are two physical
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The new docks and ramp at Kittery Point Yacht Yard in Kittery.
locations, run as one yard. The diff erence between the two yards is Kittery has a marina component, so it is a mix of marina and service. Eliot is 100 percent service. The marriage of the two yards has worked out very well and although we have had our share of setbacks starting with the fi re and then getting into boatbuilding probably at the worst time in the economy we have still been able to invest in ourselves and grow.” The Eliot site has changed a lot over the
last ten years. The original structure, which burned, was at the upper yard, which housed an offi ce, stock room, and three bays. Tom said, “When I fi rst walked into this facility I loved it, because you could walk from the offi ce and be anywhere in a minute. When the fi re happened, I changed my mind. When you look at this yard now, there is the upper building facility which is 7,200 square feet, which I built after the fi re. Where we are
sitting now, was an existing two-story fi ber- glass shed that was a chicken barn. Outside here was George’s big wooden shed, which had fi ve storage bays in it. So between the new upper building, the big storage sheds and the repurposed chicken barn we were able to continue operations. The thing that saved us was we still had another yard, Kittery. As the Eliot yard expanded we did a 12,000 square foot modifi cation to George’s wooden barn, which was in steel. Then in 2013, we did a 10,000 square foot rub building. This yard in the 70s was one of the staging areas for the I-95 bridge. It had all overgrown and there was a lot of junk back there, We cleaned it all up and knocked down trees and put up that rub structure.” Tom does not see any changes in the
near-future, however that does not mean Cotinued on Page 22.
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