This is the only Calvin Beal 36 walkaround sportfishing boat, which is being built for a customer from Massachusetts by SW Boatworks in Lamoine. She has full accommodations below and is powered with a 750-hp John Deere. She is scheduled to be launched in a few weeks.
LAMOINE – Life is full of opportunities and when you are young, some jump at an opportunity and make the best of it. Sometimes that opportunity becomes a monster and it controls everything you do. As time passes you might realize that if you do not make a change, you may miss out on other opportunities life has to offer. Alice and Stewart Workman, owners of SW Boatworks in Lamoine, have reached a difficult decision, they have put all the Calvin Beal and Young Brothers moulds up for sale, but will retain SW Boatworks.
Stewart explained, “We bought these moulds back in 2007 or 2008 and we have been just humping and bumping right steady. We didn’t plan on doing this for the rest of our lives. It was kind of a business venture. As we get older, we lose some of our ambition, plus we have a bunch of other things going on and these hulls have so much potential. When we got them, they were basically just set up for lobster fishing, that was basically all Calvin wanted to do with them. I introduced them into the sportfishing market and yachts and my goodness, it has taken off. They make an awesome boat for cruising, they are so stable, fuel-efficient, gorgeous looking boats and my favorite boat of course. We have done a lot of work in building them up and yeah, we have created a monster.
“To honor the boats, they need to have someone that is a little younger that can take the reins and come up with some other ideas,” continued Stewart. “I have customers calling all the time that want me to stretch one of them. We have already done the 38 to the 42. The 38 was the second one we stretched. That turned into a big project and everyone wants to know when’s it going to be done. The physical stretching part of it wasn’t so bad. You cut them apart and move them ahead four feet and then you have got to tie that whole bilge together then you have got to fair it and make it look like it is a fair transition. It can get challenging and it can get tiring and they call those long boards ‘agony boards’ for a reason. It is hard on the crew to do that. When you are all done, you look at it in the sun and ‘Oh now I see that.’ Then you got to re-sand that. It made it a better boat and created a new model all together. Calvin loves that boat. We stretched a 44 to a 50 and it came out gorgeous. I almost took a mold off that, but I was hesitant as it is a lot of money. If I’d done that maybe 10 years ago it would have paid off, but it takes a fair amount of hulls to break even. In my eyes to stretch a hull, you really need to do it in the middle of the boat. That is what the design demands. I don’t like to add on to the stern of a boat. There’s been a couple people that’s made it work, but the transom of your boat is so much further behind your rudder. I don’t like changing the bottom of the boat on the Calvin Beal hulls and when you get into stretching, it is a lot of work. I have always brought Calvin in to give his okay. He is a very smart man and I think the world of him. You have also got to have a big and good crew to pull all of this stuff together.”
For a time in the height of the boatbuilding frenzy they were up to 23 crew members. “We were finishing four or five, to seven boats at a time,” said Stewart. “We were finishing four boats here and a couple more at Able’s. We had to do that to keep up with the demand. Sportfish boat after sportfish boat, lobster boat after lobster boat, hull after hull, it was a lot of work.”
When you want a good hull finish you start with a good mould and Stewart and his crew make sure that they keep up the moulds they are using. He added, “We are constantly doing work on the moulds, trying to keep them all clean and fresh. The Calvin Beal moulds are all in good shape and we have got a couple of the Young Brothers that are in really good shape. The other ones we haven’t been using need a little attention, but you could get parts out of them. There is demand for all the hulls.”
They have done an excellent job marketing these boats all over the world. “It is very seldom that we would sell a boat overseas because it just gets so involved,” said Stewart. “I spent hours and hours trying to coordinate trucking and shipping and all of that stuff and nine times out of ten, the deal never goes through. If I have someone that is out of the country, I will say we are in the boatbuilding business, we will build you the most beautiful boat that there is and if you can coordinate getting it there, we will build it for you.”
“The idea of selling the moulds has been coming along for a couple of years,” said Stewart. “I am getting up towards 60 and Alice is the business end of this and still quite involved. She told me, ‘I don’t want to be doing this when I am 80 years old.’ There are other things that we want to do and these boats need to be built and they need someone with a little more ambition. I ran with the flag as fast as I could for quite a long while but there is just so much demand for these boats. The 30, we haven’t built that many of them, because we got so busy building the bigger boats. I have got people calling up wanting to make outboard boats out of them. Jeff Eaton is finishing one right now and it is coming out gorgeous. That 30 has so much potential as a center console. In the shop right now, I have got a 36 Calvin walkaround and as far as I know it is the first and only one in existence. Walt Hansel did the architect work for me and there is only one thing I did different; I raised the shear two more inches just for insurance. It had a big 750 hp engine in there and I wanted to make sure that I had some engine room. Everything just fit in that boat, but it was a challenge. The owner still has a standup shower down forward and that is because of the width of the boat and that is what makes these Calvin Beal’s so nice, is the width and the ability to get that stuff in.”
“We are going to downsize a little bit,” added Stewart. “I am done building four boats at once and that is what we have on deck now. We have got the 36 Calvin walkaround ready to go in the water in a couple weeks. We have got a 42-foot sportfish yacht cruiser that is loaded, gorgeous boat. She is going in the water probably June. We have another 42-foot sportfish cruiser which is going to be almost equivalent to the other one going in the water this fall. About a month ago, we started another 42-foot yacht that is going to be for next year.”
When these are finished, Stewart wants to do simpler projects. He is keeping SW Boatworks, the crew and all the buildings that comprise it. He added, “We will be building the hulls and tops while we are waiting for them to get sold and we may do some engine installs. We are just going to simplify things a little bit. I have my own lobster boat which I bought off Calvin’s son, because I didn’t have time to build one for myself. So now I may be building a 34 for myself. I grew up lobster fishing and I will end lobster fishing. I have been lobster fishing in Gouldsboro Bay for the past three or four years. Alice and I have a place in Corea where we go to get away from it all. About four years ago, we were down on the beach in front of our place having a lobster cookout. She said, ‘How much did you have to pay for those lobsters?’ I said, ‘I don’t know what it was, probably $7 or $8 a pound.’ Then I said, ‘Why am I buying lobsters? I got my tags up there and it is part of my retirement plan, why don’t I just start setting a few traps.’ She looked at me and said, ‘Don’t make another job out of this.’ I said, ‘I would never do that.’ That year, I set 40 traps and in about 15 minutes I hauled them all and it is like, ‘Now what am I going to do?’ I created another job.”
Alice has been running rental properties and that has added more work to their already busy schedule. “We are going to be moving on to some other things and I am looking forward to someone that’s got some motivation to pick up the pace and get these things rolling again,” said Stewart. “Like I said, there is just so much potential in them. I am willing to work with the new owner to help for a while to get that rolling and going. We are kind of looking forward to it and we will see what happens, but meanwhile we are still in business and we are still building hulls and tops and still finishing boats.”
Interested in the Calvin Beal and Young Brothers moulds? Reach out to Doug Erickson at (833) 746-6479 or email at: doug.erickson@svn.com. He is the broker managing the sale.
