Entering the wheelhouse on My Diva with second wheel indicated by roll of masking tape. Mahogany is used in the wheelhouse for its stability, ability to hold coatings and looks. The details and full bench seat in addition to the bulkhead mounted seat make it a good place to ride out a blow. The owner, 22-year old Joe Billings, will fish inshore and off, in this, his third boat.

process. For now, he’ll stay with the crew he has, which works well producing a few less boats. However, the difficulty in finding skilled help has not kept him from producing boats his customers rave about.
   A few years ago, a group of them started an annual race of just John’s Bay-built boats at the lobster boat races in Stonington. Kass says he regularly hears customers say that they are asked by other boat owners, “if they have got the bugs worked out” of their new boat. That is, have they got all the systems to work properly yet, etc. And they respond, “there are no bugs, the boat just goes.”
   Kass is not from a boatbuilding family, and although he grew up near a lake where he messed around with boats, he was not surrounded by them. He said it would be a stretch to call his boyhood boatbuilding projects boats, but it is true that he grew up with tools in his hands. He says he never had much interest in school, and after high school went to Virginia to work in a boatyard. Shortly after that, he came to the boatbuilding state of Maine and worked at the Harvey Gamage Shipyard in South Bristol, where his boat building training really began. At Gamage’s, he worked under seasoned builders learning how to make the parts of a wooden boat and to make a precise cut the first time. This, he said, is important to his being able to build the high quality he and his crew want to build and remain competitive on cost.
   The Gamage Yard was for years an “Ivy League” of yards to work in for learning wood boat building. When Kass arrived, it was one of the last of its kind in its last years of production. It was a yard with many highly-skilled boatbuilders with several decades of experience. Some of the older builders had worked their whole life at the Gamage yard and could perfectly shape and bend a plank as easily as pouring a cup of coffee, a task many woodworkers can barely imagine, never mind attempt.
   Kass has respect for and remembrance of their having taught him boatbuilding skills. In particular, he recently recalled Jimmy MacFarland, who taught him planking. When the Gamage yard began building more steel vessels, Kass went to Goudy and Stevens, where he learned a lot from Royal Dodge, building mostly fishing boats. After Goudy and Stevens, he worked with Bruce Cunningham, lured there by a 31' Atkin cutter they were building. After being laid off at Cunningham’s he got an offer to build 4 peapods and this led to other small jobs. He put up his shop in 1981 and built an 18' outboard, stored boats, and did repairs. Then, in 1986, he built his first big boat, a 42' Carroll Lowell boat.
   Kass early on went to Lowell on the suggestion of one of his customers, Ed Driscoll. He visited Lowell’s shop and eventually went to him for hull designs, another mix of tradition and high standards.
   Carroll Lowell’s design work, well known to builders along this and other coasts, has roots in the work of his father, Riley Lowell, and Carroll’s grandfather Will Frost (1874-1967). Frost is considered the father of the modern Maine lobster boat, and in 1904, was among the earliest builders to put gasoline engines in lobster boats. Over the course of his long working life Frost’s greatest achievements were below the waterline hull design. Carroll grew up on the shop floor with his father and grandfather and later focused on design.
   Carroll Lowell didn’t want to build a 42' boat at the time and eventually told the customer Kass could do the job. He went into debt $13,000 building that boat, but it turned out to be a school of hard knocks that launched him into building the kind of boats he builds today.
   The skills learned at the yards were combined with the reality that these skills had to be used effectively and efficiently to compete in the boat building business.
   He doesn’t mince words about high standards and says, “we care about what we do, this is not just a job. You have to love this work. The boat trade never pays well. But it is very interesting work and tremendously satisfying.”
   High standards for Kass includes perfectly cut and fitted wood joints, sealed end grain, select woods, designing out typical problem areas for wear or deterioration, properly-engineered hulls and proven hull designs. He built the designs of Carroll Lowell in earlier years but now builds mostly his own designs, which have changed to carry the larger engines, gear and systems fishermen want today. The more recent designs are fuller forward for bouyancy, wider aft and generally heavier.
   One of the things Kass has changed in his boats is the more visible attention to detail, generally around the wheelhouse, but also topsides and below. This detailing is not gobs of geegaws and doodads, but a grip rail, a varnished instrument panel, paneled lockers, a usefully-located light, a comfortable seat in an enclosed wheelhouse, easy access to the control panel, Douglas Fir decks and other custom features.
   There are more details in the pleasure boats or lobster yachts Kass builds. The basic boat, the hull, deck and wheelhouse are the same, but detailing above and below are often increased. About 80 percent of his boats are work boats.
   Over the years, John’s Bay has improved their boats by incorporating modern adhesives, sealants and coatings in places that had historically been problem areas, and changed the potential life span of the boats. All joints are epoxied or bedded. Some hulls get ice sheathing, guards are PVC, the wash rails and trunk are glassed for wear, and there is teak around the windows because it doesn’t have to be painted. Says Kass, “We have not run into a refinish job on our boats”. Sanding off a coat before adding a new one helps avoid having thick sheets of paint peeling off. “Maintenance”, said Kass, is like it is on any boat, as it has been for 200 years, it has to be done. If a wood boat is properly painted and properly repainted it lasts a long time.”
   Boats are more complicated now, they have bigger engines, sophisticated electrical systems, hydraulics, electronics, navigation gear, etc. This part of the building process extends beyond the shop. John’s Bay has developed subcontractors who specialize in these individual systems and get them right—no bugs. Below, these boats look and feel more like a place to kick back than a place to throw stuff out of the way. By trimming it out and building in a few amenities, a stove, sink, lockers, seats and bunks, it becomes a usable space more than a storage area.
   When glass boats first appeared in the mid 1970’s, older fishermen often preferred wood boats. Kass has customers of all ages. The rugged stability appeals to them. The effort that goes into the joinery, the thought that goes into the layout of the wheelhouse, the generally comfortable feel of the place where they spend the better part of their workday has another appeal.
   As for Peter Kass, he’s building what he wants to build, the way he thinks it should be built, has plenty of satisfied customers and finds his work tremendously satisfying after 25 years and 55 boats. Running against the current, but going with the flow.