Bruce A. Farrin & Sons
by Brenda Tredwell

Bruce Farrin, far right, with the crew outside the Walpole boat shop. Farrin’s deep roots in the South Bristol area include having cut his boatbuilding teeth at the Gamage Shipyard. Bruce sees upgrading and repowering as a part of the ongoing reconfiguration of the boat market. Brenda Tredwell photo

It’s late Friday afternoon, and builders at Farrin’s Boatshop in Walpole are putting Richard Noonan’s RHIANNON back into trim. “This is a 10-year-old boat,” says Noonan. “The first one Bruce built for me came out so nice—the second was even nicer.” RHIANNON is in the shop for a touch up—the summer will be busy when Noonan’s Lobster Shack opens for the season in Cape Porpoise, a business owned by his family since 1953. “Farrin’s workmanship is outstanding,” says Noonan, running his hand over the finish work of his lobster boat, a Mitchell Cove 35’. “This is a real good sea boat. I’ve had real good luck in this one.” Noonan lobsters in Zone G. His oldest is an outboard mechanic, the youngest plans to be a lobsterman—Farrin’s built him an 18’ skiff. “I can tell you, after two boats, there is no place else to go.”

“The times are so, that fishermen might want to think about keeping their older boats,” said Bruce Farrin, whose common sense approach has kept older boats—like Noonan’s—looking and running like new. Farrin’s re-powers and restores workboats, going through all the systems, saving those who choose to do so from more expensive options.

The Boatshop’s story is outlined in a glossy catalog Bruce slides across his desk. Hull No. 1 was the 36’ BEVERLY ANN, built in 1973 on Rutherford Island where Farrin established a shop after working alongside traditional wooden boatbuilders at Gamage’s Yard. He learned metal fabrication working with Ed Gamage, building the 120’ steel seiner, Crystal S.

After the blizzard of ‘78 leveled the island shop, The Farrins resettled in Walpole, where Bruce launched his first fiberglass boat, LISA MARIE (Repco 37’, b. 1979 ), only months after the February storm washed his first shop—and the boat he was building—out to sea. While Bruce A. Farrin & Sons build top shelf jet boats—with custom yacht finish work, workboats with a custom built decks and houses, cedar work platforms, and attention to detail are durable, say the lobstermen who haul in them.

Afton Farrin had the first lobster pound in South Bristol, and Bruce Farrin’s grandmother was a Gamage—family ties to the working waterfront are strong. One of Bruce’s sons is restoring a wooden lobster boat he bought from Thomas Moody, built by Sumner MacFarland for Irving Foster in 1960. Outside the shop, Leonard Eugley works on PRETTY WOMAN, a fiberglass lobster boat built by Bruce & crew in December of 1995. The hull was designed on Mount Desert, said Eugley, whose son just bought Eugley’s Wharf, a former pound currently used by 8-10 lobstermen

In 2007, Farrin’s finished MISS SUNSHINE, a Mitchell Cove 35’ (Calvin Beal, Jr. design) for Charlie and Donna Rogers of Matinicus, MYSTIC ROSE, an RP 35’ (Willis Beal design) for Mike Fossett, of Pemaquid, and MAYNIE’S MONEY (Mitchell Cove 35’) for Maynard Prock of Rockland.

Bruce said he’s definitely had to get more diversified in the current boat market. They are doing more sport fishing and pleasure boats. Currently there is a hybrid diesel-electric on the drawing board. It would not do for a commercial boat, but Bruce has a customer in California who wants a 32’ diesel with an electric power option for short hops. Styr makes an electric motor that runs an hour and a half at six knots. Bill Petersen is designing a 37’ shallow draft motor sailor, with diesel electric hybrid, “We’ve got to think of alternate ways. If it floats, we’ll do it ”.