Richard Young next to one to the yachts he captained for the Dixon family.
GOULDSBORO – My first assignment as a marine reporter was covering the America’s Cup races in Newport, Rhode Island for the Bangor Daily News in 1982. When covering the actual races in 1983 I would walk around the docks and I noticed a boat from Winter Harbor, Maine tied up on one of them. I went over and introduced myself and that was the first time I met Keith Young of Winter Harbor. He said that they were going out to follow the next race and asked if I would like to join them. Well, of course. So, he went and asked permission from his brother, Richard, if I could join them. That was 42 years ago. Keith and I became good friends due to our involvement in the lobster boat races and every once in a while, I would see Dick at the races, and we would talk about what he was doing.
The State of Maine has a great history in yachting, but many do not know much about it. The most memorable were the Deer Isle Boys crewing the defenders at the America’s Cup in 1895 and 1899. Others from the coast made their living as captain or crew on big yachts, which is exactly what Dick did.
Dick was born in 1945 and grew up on the Guzzle Road in West Bay in Gouldsboro. He was one of four children, his brother Keith was five years younger, and he had two sisters, one older and one younger. His father Charles ran a filling station on Route 1 in West Bay for 17 years. He would later go to work for Cal Stinson at the sardine factory in Prospect Harbor where he worked as a machinist in the can plant. Previous to this Dick said that he worked for Sikorsky during World War II building fighters and helicopters. He would move back to Maine in 1945 when the war was over.
Dick graduated from high school in 1963 and went to Point Francis in Gouldsboro to help with his father’s sardine weir. The family moved, along with all the animals, to Point Francis in the summer to tend the weir. His grandfather Frank lived there too and went lobstering. Dick also had 150 lobster traps with an 18-foot skiff with an 18-hp Evinrude outboard that he fished in that summer. He said, “I hauled them by hand, and I had to haul around working on the weir. When the fish were running and the tide was right you had to fish the weir. So, I might haul half of my traps in the morning early and then come back in and work the weir. It was about three or four hours depending on how many fish you had. Then I would come back in, and I would take off and haul the other half of my traps.”
That summer they made more than they had in the last five years. They were getting anywhere from $25 to $40 a hogshead, which is equal to 17½ bushels. Dick added, “My grandfather could crawl up on the pound on the ladder and look at the fish circling and he could tell within four or five hogsheads how many fish he had in that weir before we ever seined it. There are times when you might only get six or seven hogsheads, so you put them in the pocket. The next tide you might get another 7, 8, 10 hogsheads. Then I would go out to the factory and tell Daddy, and he’d tell Cal or Dana and that we had fish in the pocket so they would send the boat up. Usually it was the IDA MAY, Uncle Ernest’s boat.”
Ernest Woodward was a lobster fisherman from Corea and in his spare time would run the carrier IDA MAY. Dick said, “He ran her as long as I can remember. He would come up the night before and we would play cribbage. Then we would go out at first light and pull the pocket and pump them out. Of course he would always have to check them. He’d dip a bucket in the herring before he started pumping, take two or three and run it along their belly and if they squirted red, you couldn’t take them. You had to leave them, let’s them stay and clean out for 12 or 24 hours. Usually, they were clean. The only time we lost some was we had 83 hogsheads in that pocket. The boat came up the night before and we got a thunderstorm that night and they dove. They are very skittish to the light and the thunder and lightning drove them. There were so many herring in there at low tide that when they went down, they drowned. They used up the oxygen. Well, to keep from spoiling the fishery in the weir you had to take them away. We bailed them into a scow and took them down outside Sally Island, which is at the mouth of Gouldsboro Bay, and dumped them. Then we would come back and get some more and take them out and dump them. I mean I will tell you what, that was a job.”
Dick already had plans to go to college at SMVTI in South Portland in September 1963. He was going to take the two-year marine program. His father told him that if he helped with the weir, he would pay the tuition and what he made lobstering he could keep for expenses.
Dick added, “We took a training trip. They had a 138-foot minesweeper with 50 students, four officers and a cook. The captain was a fish boat captain out of Portland. The first mate was George Hupper, a retired Coast Guard captain, who had run icebreakers for years. There was a guy from Jonesport, the chief engineer, Dale Lincoln. The second engineer was John Soucy from Saco. They took the reel out of the well in the back for the degaussing wire and put 30 pipe berths down there for the students. The other 20 were up forward for the seniors. George Hupper told the captain that since you are taking all that weight out of the back end, we should put some weight down in the magazine. They had also built a superstructure behind the pilothouse for the four officers. The captain didn’t agree with him, so they had an argument. Then they went to the school superintendent, and he decided to get a naval architect in and see what he says. Well, the naval architect said you need about 14 tons of ballast down in the magazine. Well, me and one other guy were the only two in the freshman and senior classes that knew how to use a cutting torch. We cut steel, chain, and pig iron on the end of that dock with the wind blowing out of the northwest the day Kennedy was assassinated.
“We took off on our training trip,” continued Dick. “We were going to Florida on a 10-week training trip. The freshman year you took everything. Your senior year you got to pick between the deck or the engine room. I took engine room because I figured I knew enough about the deck. We left Portland on our training trip in January of ’64 and this was the first time I had been to sea. Now I am 19 and we got into a little blow or two here and there, but the big one we were on our way into Morehead City. However, we couldn’t find the sea buoy. Then it started getting rougher. They then decided we better go out in deeper water and ride it out. Well, that night our anemometer broke at 115 mph. There were only six of us on board the boat that did not get seasick and I was one. They had a 286-foot Coast Guard cutter called the JONQUIL in Morehead City and they wouldn’t send it out, too rough. So, the Navy sent the aircraft carrier FORRESTAL. Then the captain, he got into his booze and got drunk and passed out on his stateroom floor. That was a big morale booster. One kid, a big guy out of the Navy, fell down some steel stairs and he really screwed his back up. We had him tied to the pipe berth down below, right next to the gyro control room. He was in such pain that Hupper gave him a shot, which put him out. Well, water leaked down through the deck, and something caught on fire. We had to get him out of the bunk and up the stairs. You can imagine in 40-to-60-foot seas, how hard it is to hang on let alone try to get someone like that up a stairway. Well, we did. I ended up in the pilothouse and Hupper was in there too. John Soucy was on one side, and I was on the other and he would tell us to spin to port or starboard trying to stay in the wind. We did that all night. Meanwhile, the flag caught in the radar, so that put that out. The radio was all staticky. About 1 o’clock in the morning we saw lights from another ship. Well, the engineer had rigged up a hotwire up and it had key lights on each side of the bridge. Hupper was the only one on there that knew Morse code. He talked to the tanker that was loaded with naphtha, and they were sweating too. They had good radio equipment, and they radioed Morehead City Coast Guard, but they said they couldn’t send their boat out it as it was too rough. If I knew then what I know now, I would’ve died of a heart attack. I was scared shitless. At daylight we could hear helicopters. The wind had died down, probably to 60 or 70. We felt a lot better now. We looked to the south and there was a stream of black smoke and about 35 minutes later FORRESTAL was right up to us.
“Meanwhile, they got the captain up and he got cleaned up and shaved and got in a new uniform,” said Dick. “Meanwhile we had the radio working and the captain on FORRESTAL said “Well, captain if you want me to, I will pick you up and sit you in the hanger bay.” Well, that put the captain’s nose out of joint a little bit. They did form a lee for us to head back toward Morehead City. Anyway, they sent that JONQUIL out when we got close. Most of the crew on there were sick before they came out to escort us in. Well, when we got tied up at the dock they took five guys off in ambulance, 13 guys had their bags packed and went to the Greyhound bus station. Everybody was ready to quit. Meanwhile, when the tanker radioed the Coast Guard, the Coast Guard got in touch with the school in Maine and somehow the news got to the radio station and a TV station in Portland. My mother used to watch the Today Show mornings with her tea after everybody had gone to school and daddy had gone to work. She is sitting there drinking her tea and all of a sudden on the TV they said, ‘We just got a bulletin and the M/V AQUALAB training vessel for SMVTI school in South Portland has been reported in distress and sinking off Cape Hatteras.’ Well, I guess the saucer went one way and the coffee cup went the other.”
Once in Morehead City and tied to the dock reporters from the local TV station was there and one interview Dick. “They said, ‘Excuse me young fella,’ beckoned me over, ‘Mr. Hupper tells us that you are one of six that didn’t get seasick during this ordeal. What do you attribute that to?’ I looked at him and said, “I was too God damn scared.” Dick added, “That was the night I learned to pray, and I will admit that to this day. We went to a bar that night on Broadway, and I think we drank them out of beer and they sent a pickup and got more.
“Peter Cole, he was a senior,” continued Dick, “we were good friends as he was from Prospect Harbor. He called his mother and father. His mother answered the phone, and she was crying and he wanted to go home and they said, ‘No, you’re going to graduate here in a couple of months, you stick it out.’ I called my mother and father as well, Mama answered the phone, and she just started howling the minute she heard my voice. So, Daddy got on the phone. He was the type of guy just calm, cool, and collected, never heard him swear in his whole life, but when he spoke, you listened. So, he said, “What is going on?’ I said ‘Well, this and that…do you think I ought to come home?’ I was waiting for him to say, “Yep, you get on the bus, and you get home.’ He said, ‘Well son you are 19, so you have got to start making decisions on your own.” You size it up. You see what the Coast Guard says.’ We knew the boat was going to go through some inspections and he said, ‘If you don’t like what is happening, come along on home, but it is up to you.’ Anyway, I stuck it out.”
They went into Wilmington, and the Coast Guard inspected the boat and made them launch the dories and row them around. The dories were stacked on deck and Dick realized that there was no way they would have been able to launch them in those seas and then get into them. The Coast Guard also failed many of their life jackets. When they returned to Portland the students signed a petition and the captain was relieved of his duties with Hupper replacing him. The reason they could get away with some of the safety violations is that she was classed as a research, not a training vessel owned by the state.
They finally made Florida and the Keys where they did perform some training. On the way back north, not yet out of Florida, a fire started on the boat. Dick first wondered what he should save when he jumped out of his berth. Then he realized he should save himself. Once on deck he looked towards shore and noted that it was not that far. The cause of the fire was an air conditioner motor in the wheelhouse. They were able to cut into the wheelhouse and extinguish it, but this time the Coast Guard condemned the vessel.
Dick’s senior year they did not go on a cruise per se, they remained at the dock and were not allowed to go onshore. However, if they needed something for the boat they would run up to the shop in the dark of the night and get what they needed. One time they were playing cribbage, and they smelled smoke and knew something was not right. They opened the hatch in the boiler room and discovered they were on fire. First, they pinned some fire extinguishers open and threw them down into the hold. Dick then ran to the shop and broke open a window so he could call the fire department. He was given a special commendation for saving the boat at graduation.
After graduation in 1965 Dick went to work for Mobil Oil Company to work on their tankers. They were doing away with oilers and since he did not like the job anyways, he left. Dick added, “I was going to Florida and get a job on a yacht. I first called Mr. Dixon and told him what I was going to do. I had been a lifeguard the summer before at his pool. He said, ‘I just bought a two-year old 87-foot Feadship.” She will be up there by the 4th of July. I can introduce you to the captain, maybe he knows someone down there.’ Long story short, she got here and the kid that was the mate engineer got in a real bad accident in Ellsworth. So, Mr. Dixon took me down and introduced me to the captain (Jim Searles) and he hired me and I apprenticed under him for seven years. He was tough. At first, he didn’t like me because I was too friendly with the Dixon’s. My mother worked for them; my sister worked for them and my brother ran the docks at the yacht club. I liked the Dixon’s, and I liked being home during the summer. I also liked the boat; the boat was beautiful.”
This was Mr. Dixon’s first INTENT, which meant that he intended on building a bigger one later. They had her for about a year when Mr. Dixon purchased a 111-foot steel yacht in Myakka, Spain. She had a draft of 10 feet, and this limited them as to where they could go. Mr. Dixon then chartered a 65-foot Chris Craft so he could run up and down the Inland Coastal Waterway. It was not long after that Mr. Dixon built a 121-foot Feadship, that Dick helped deliver across the Atlantic in January 1970. Dick said, “I did go over towards the end of it. We launched on January 5, 1970, and left not long after. We really should have done some more work to it before we left, but we were getting froze in. Of course, my father died the night before we left. He had cancer and had been bedridden for a year. I knew when I left, I would never see him again.”
After leaving they had trouble with the engines and the radar. They headed for Cadiz, Spain as the captain’s wife’s brother was the commander of the Navy base there. They did some more work there making sure everything worked, before heading across the Atlantic. The first night out they had Force 9 winds in the Dover Straits and the next morning the stabilizers were not working. They went into Dover for repairs, then left there for Gibraltar and then down to the Cape Verde Islands. From there across to Barbados, which took seven days and seven nights to complete before ending up in Fort Lauderdale.
In 1973 they were going into Fernandina, but they were having a hard time locating the sea buoy. Dick and gone off watch but was called back by the captain a few hours later. The wind was howling out of the southeast with 10 to 12-foot seas. Dick turned on the fathometer, and it was showing that they were getting into shallow water. They tried to go back out. The captain through the helm hard over with throttles down. The captain was watching the compass, not the land and Dick said, “I looked up and right in front of us was the sea buoy. A wave crested and all I could see was jagged rocks sticking up. The captain reached for the throttles and tried to turn her with the port wheel, but it was too late. You never heard such ungodly squealing in all your life. The rocks against the steel hull. We wiped out 15 feet of the bow. Fortunately, she had watertight bulkheads and was double bottomed, except the engine room. We stopped on the rocks with the bow down, laying over 60 degrees. We went to get the lifeboat and the life jackets out. These were eight-man rafts and they were heavy. It took two of us to pick them up and move them, but that day we picked one up and I swear we threw it halfway to shore. When it reached the end of the 90-foot painter it went ping and as gone. The captain was on the radio to Jacksonville Coast Guard and said we need to get airlifted because we are high and dry on the north jetty. Meanwhile, we washed off and we slid down into deeper water. We realized we were in the channel.”
They were able to get the engines running, but the port engine lost suction. They were able to prime it and get it going again. They put the yacht in gear, and the alarms started to scream. They discovered that they had three holes in the engine room, which they were able to plug with shingles. They then limped into Fernandina and called Jacksonville Shipyard which sent a tug to tow them up. Dick explained, “Finally, just about dark the tug showed up, and the old man ran around. ‘What do you want first? You want the bow line? Two bow lines? They said, ‘We’ve been working all day we want to go up and get a beer and a sandwich.” We will be back in about an hour. Well, I thought he was going to hit the roof. His boat is sinking on him, and they are going out to get a beer and a sandwich. Anyway, they did, they came back down, and we got hooked up.”
They were in the shipyard for three weeks, three shifts around the clock. When done they had 15 feet of bow replaced and new rudder and wheels. What saved them was the stabilizer on the starboard side, which kept them off some of the rocks.
Mr. Dixon had bought a home in Indian Creek in Fort Lauderdale and when they were out of the shipyard they headed there. Mr. Dixon asked to meet with Dick soon after and asked what had happened. Dick did not feel comfortable about telling the story, but Mr. Dixon said that he signed his checks. Mr. Dixon also said that since they now owned a home in Fort Lauderdale, they did not need a big boat, and they were thinking about an 80 or 90-footer and could he run it? The big boat was put on the market, and the captain went with her. The captain did ask Dick if would not stay on with him, but Dick told him that he liked working for the Dixons and loved being home in the summer.
That summer Dick came home and ran the Dixon’s 40-foot Hinckley sailboat. He was later informed by Mr. Dixon that he was interested in purchasing the Trumpy WAYFARER, run by Captain Al Gray. Before the Dixon’s owned her she had hit a ledge off Falmouth and was beached by the marina. Unfortunately, the water got into the engine room and when the cold water got up around the engines they cracked. Mr. Dixon bought her and took her to Florida where she was converted from a DC to AC boat with new generators and totally refurbished.
Next, they purchased a 57-foot Trumpy sportfish boat already outfitted for fishing. For a time, Keith would go south and run this boat, but Keith liked being in Winter Harbor and came back after a few years. This boat was sold, but they kept the Trumpy four years. Next, they went to Broward for an 80-footer in 1976. Dick added, “We left Pier 66 at night, July the 7th at 7:00 PM and I had to be in the Chesapeake in four days to sign papers. We beat feet day and night and we made it. We were the lead boat in Philadelphia the year of the tri-Centennial celebration with all of the tall ships. We were in Penn’s Landing the next day and I had the mayor and Mr. Dixon and a bunch of VIPs, 34 or 35. We had to go down to the anchorage where they were all anchored, circle the bark EAGLE, the Coast Guard training vessel. She was going to be leading them all. We escorted the whole fleet up into Penn’s Landing. It was a nice day, and everybody was on the flybridge. We went down passing port to port, and they gave us a broad side salute, all of the cannons all at once. Well, I looked around to see how many people I lost overboard. I’m surprised it didn’t break the windows. Boy, it was that loud.”
They owned this boat for eight years and then Mr. Dixon went to Burger in Wisconsin for a 110-footer. He owned this boat for 10 years and then went to Dennison for a 122-footer. She went on the market after the passing of Mr. Dixon and sold January 2008.
Dick added, “I came home and I was going to start fishing and hunting, having fun. I even bought a camper. Alan Goldstein owned a Bunker & Ellis at the time and they asked me if I would come run it Wednesdays and Saturdays for the sailboat races. They knew I would not say no to Mrs. Dixon. Before the summer was over, she called me up to the house and said, ‘What would you think if I told you that I would like to buy the OLD FLAME. Then she said, ‘Only if you will run it.’ What could I say? ‘Yeah, sure I will run it.’ So, she bought it from Alan and then we took it to Billings and did a big retrofit on it.
When asked which boat he liked the best Dick was quick to say the 122-footer. There is no question that he really enjoyed working for the Dixons. He began with then in 1966 and retired in 2024, 58 years. He was also probably one of the last real yacht captains. Many today are boat managers and do not really know how to run or take care of the boats they are captain of. Dick is certainly one of the best at running these boats, but that is because of the lessons he learned during his career.
