Saturday, July 25, 2009

Lady Debbie





Lyman Morse Boatbuilding, f/k/a Morse Boatbuilding is a builder of fine boats, and service yard for anybody who comes by with a boat - like Lady Debbie- a working dragger, one of the few on the Mid-Coast. Wood is good. It lasts a long time and if something breaks you just lay in another piece of wood.

Click on photos to enlarge thumbnails.

90th birthday/retirement party for Thomaston boat builder

"It's the excitement and the honor of seeing one after it's built in the water floating away," he said. "You see them from the time they lay the keel till they are finished and sailing away."

When asked if he will miss it, he nodded.

That's Richard Benner on the occasion of his 90th birthday/retirement party at Lyman Morse Boatbuilding Co., the brilliant yard that dominates the harbor in the town where an Englishman first staked a claim of right to New England (first possession was the flawed theory).


Lyman Morse does it all. Most of the work is building and servicing rich men's sailboats - but it is a full service boat yard that takes all the work they can get, as the post above this one shows.

Benner is profiled in the Herald Gazette, here.

But this is Richard Benner's day and here he is with Cabot Lyman who bought Morse boatbuilding 32 years ago and has made it thrive - while doing a lot of sailing, including a circumnavigation.

Daniel Dunkle