Reflections on 45 years of boatbuilding and what the future holds.
Drew Lyman has his hands full. In addition to running Lyman-Morse—Maine’s leading boatbuilding and technology company with worldwide clients in the private, commercial and public sectors—he’s got a brand new, modern waterfront marina facility in the port town of Camden, sponsors and organizes a summer regatta for some of the world’s finest classic yachts, and oversees not only the Lyman-Morse’s state-of-the-art boatbuilding facilities, but also their cutting-edge fabrication, composite and technology division’s at the company’s headquarters in Thomaston, Maine.
Recently awarded CEO of the Year by Mainebiz Magazine, we caught Drew in the Bahamas, just before he jumped aboard his award-winning LM46 Hopgrasser for some winter cruising, to talk about an extraordinary upbringing in a globe-girdling bluewater sailing family, sources of inspiration, and the business he’s always known—and has run since 2014.
Q: You spent 1987 to 1990 circumnavigating with your parents, Cabot and Heidi, and your bothers, Alex and Zach, aboard the Ted Hood-designed Seguin 49, Chewink. What kind of memories do you have from that trip?
Drew Lyman: It’s always fascinating to look back on those years. When I was 8, it seemed so routine. ‘Oh, we’re going around the world on a sailboat for two or three years!’ Now I’m 44, which is about the age my parents were when they did it, and I have young children of my own, and there is no way I could do that.
There are smells that trigger memories. I think of the smell of Richards Bay in South Africa, a day and a half out. I couldn’t see land. It was 2 or 3 in the morning when I woke up. We didn’t do watches; we were too young. My dad or mom was at the helm, or my older brother. I remember looking out and seeing the glow of towns and cities. That’s the stuff that’s still intense for me.
I remember going to school in the Tuamotus, New Zealand, and South Africa. Doing short stints of schoolwork in these random, beautiful, crazy locations. We sailed into the San Blas islands, with thatched roof huts and no roads at that point, TVs were just being introduced.
Anybody who travels has a different perspective—it reshapes what you think your life should be, because you see firsthand the experiences of others, and sometimes those experiences are nowhere near your own. I think it helped me become a more well-rounded person—understanding other cultures can help you rethink how your kids are raised, how you treat other people, how you view life.
Q: Your father, Cabot Lyman, created Lyman-Morse in 1978 after Roger Morse couldn’t fulfill boatbuilding contracts. How did Cabot teach you to grab opportunity at Lyman-Morse? What do you think he saw in you that made him feel comfortable turning the business over to you?
DL: I think one of the most important things a parent can tell their children is don’t be afraid to fail. That way, you can grab opportunity. If you’re scared of failing, you’re never going to go after stuff, take risks, step outside your comfort zone. When I was younger, that’s exactly how I was. I’d sit there and ask my father advice, and he would always say ‘You can always figure out a solution to fix a problem.’ The point is failure is just another opportunity to succeed. It resonates a lot with me.
Q: The business strategy at Lyman-Morse is one that includes diversified marine-related business activities and broad technology-driven. To date, Lyman-Morse is associated with projects as diverse as solar-powered beach totes to composite clock hands to, of course, award-winning custom-built boats. You’re credited as the driving force behind this emphasis on technology in all aspects of the business. How did you find yourself driving this bus, and where is it heading?
DL: It’s never about one person. I took inspiration from my father and my older brother, Zach. Zach started a company that was developing solar-powered generators—he called them Power Cubes—and the idea was to ship them to atolls in the Tuamotus, where they’re running everything off noisy, fossil-fuel powered generators, and allow the people to utilize renewable energy. (We’re actually in discussion with a group right now about doing a new version of that program.)
What that taught me was that we needed to diversify the company, so that we could support the boatbuilding crew when there wasn’t as much boat building happening. The marine industry is notoriously up and down—you ramp up for a new, big, labor-intensive build and then next thing you know, everyone’s asking ‘what’s next?’ So, Lyman-Morse Technologies was created. It allows us to even out the revenue curve and the workload balance.
That’s the biggest advantage I’ve seen with this: We have our hands in projects that are fantastic to talk about and see, whether they’re ultra-high-tech or some are really basic. We’ve done composite display cases for Chanel in Italy; bid on composite bus structures for India and worked with the Department of Defense. Our experience with composites and how they can relate to other projects allows us to really shine and help people. For instance, we might say to the Department of Defense, ‘listen, you don’t need to do an aerospace-type laminate schedule on this project, just do a boat laminate. Let’s value engineer this stuff.’
Q: So, your core boatbuilding knowledge was a springboard to other tech knowledge?
DL: Absolutely. Think about sitting on a boat. It’s resting in saltwater, in the hot sun, completely disconnected from the grid. You immediately have so many issues and so many problems you must solve for when building boats. It’s not always the most high-tech, but typically the hardest projects to do are the ones disconnected from the grid.
The Lyman-Morse technology division is headed by Samir Gupta is running the division, and we’re doing lots of cool stuff—we’ve got some military contracts, we’re developing more product-driven work that we can continuously build, and we just delivered the canopy for the Kendall Square MBTA store in Cambridge, MA. That was a very successful project—took us about two and a half years to complete it, it was very large-scale. Bottom line is, we can do that most shops can’t.
Q: Your father, Cabot, was quoted saying, “We had a lot of miles on the ocean. That really helped sell our boats to customers. We could guide them as to what was right and what was wrong.” Since you’ve taken over as president, how does this ability to “walk the walk”—getting out there, going sailing, learning from mistakes and breakdowns—apply to Lyman-Morse relationships with marine customers?
A: This is the case for any industry—the moment you’re not involved in the activities of your industry is the moment you’ve lost touch. If you know the lead for the halyard should have been three inches to the right or left because you see the chafe on your own halyard, when you set up the deck hardware for another boat, you’re going to put it in the right place.
Boats aren’t perfect, and you learn from what breaks, what goes wrong. When you’re sailing off Hatteras, North Carolina, like we were just a couple of weeks ago, and something breaks, you can immediately give feedback to the crew in the yard, so they learn from the things they don’t see, things that happen offshore.
Take the LM46 program. We built the first one for ourselves, that’s what my family and l use, because we wanted to prove a concept. And I think it’s going to be quite successful. We simplified the heck out of that boat—there’s no a/c, no generator, we even went to canvas totes in lieu of doors and drawers. I took that from Illusion, Stan and Sally Honey’s boat. I went onboard and saw the canvas storage units they were using, and I said, ‘Ooh, Stan, I’m going to borrow that.’ So, I put a similar system on the LM46. That’s the kind of stuff I love doing—using a boat, going on other people’s boats, and seeing what works and what doesn’t. Because one thing I’ve learned, there’s somebody else out there with a great idea for how they do something.
Q: How does “walking the walk” help you in your service to non-marine customers?
DL: That’s the best part of having varied clientele. I met with a Department of Defense group in Baltimore, pitching our capabilities. About 12 people showed up in this huge conference room, and we have our power point ready to go. We’re not there to talk about boats—we’re there to pitch various aerospace-type projects and our technical capabilities developing laminates. Nothing to do with boats. And the first question out of their mouths? Let’s talk about the boats you’re building. A lot of people want to live vicariously in the boat world. It opens doors, it breaks the ice so easily. The boating world is a passionate world, but also a very small world People look at some of the beautiful boats we’ve launched and all they want to do it talk about the boats, regardless of what the meeting was supposed to be about.
Q: Several years back in an interview you predicted that the semi-custom boat is the direction the industry is heading. Both the LM46 and the Hood 35 LM fall into this group. Do you prefer series-built boats (modifications of a design) versus full custom projects?
DL: I don’t prefer one over the other. The Hopgrasser program was born in my father’s mind. When the pandemic hit, a couple other projects were stalled, and I called him up and said, ‘let’s build this thing.’
What dad always talks about—and this happened with the Seguin 44 series he did with Sparkman & Stephens back in the ‘80s—was there were a lot of non-offshore production boats without any soul. You’d go onto some of these boats and think ‘these things are going to be put in a dumpster in 10 years or sold 15 to 20 times.’ There was no connection to the boat. My father and the naval architect Mitch Neff developed the Seguin 44 series because they wanted to create something people would care about and take ownership of, as well as a boat that takes care of the owner. That’s why the LM46 project came to fruition.
And the semi-custom world, with the Hood 35 LM series, is a nice addition to custom boatbuilding. It keeps you grounded. If you keep doing ultra-high-end or high-end custom, you focus on the best of the best, whereas if you go to semi-custom, you reassess: You ask: ‘Do we really have to do that? Can we just do this?’ You become well-rounded boatbuilders at that point.
Q: If someone wants to add amenities to a semi-custom build, they can, right?
DL: That’s the beauty—we can do anything so long as it works for somebody’s budget. The Hood 35 LM is a classic case. Rich Miner, the owner of hull number one, had a blast putting a lot of technology into that boat. The next hull in the series is going to be very simple. That’s our advantage, we can adapt.
Q: What constitutes a “series” for you?
DL: We did 15 Seguin 44s—that’s a nice run for a semi-custom model over the course of five or six years. We’d call that a huge success. That being said, we’d be happy with to build six to eight of these boats, that’s a win, too. For us, a “series” means you had a good boat, and people latched onto it.
Q: Shifting gears, let’s talk about the Camden expansion.
DL: We bought Wayfarer in 2015, and the fire there was three years ago. It was small, but the smoke damage went through every structure of the lower yard. The upper yard was fine. The buildings were really old, and not worth repairing. Then you drop the pandemic into the mix, and I asked myself, ‘What am I doing?’ This is crazy.
In the end it worked out pretty well because nobody was coming through that facility anyway, so we built a brand-new facility and opened it up when things calmed down a bit and people were socializing again in some ways, and the timing was great. The whole project represents a goal of mine—it’s a modern working waterfront. It’s not all revolving around industrial warehouse sheds. We have the sheds, the storage, the workshops, which are all new; the rigging shop is probably the best on the East Coast. We have carpentry, electronics, mechanical shops. All those spaces were in bad shape before and now we’ve modernized the facilities. Then you add on a couple of restaurants, some retail space. Now you’ve got this great mix. Our crew goes and sits at the bar at the end of the day, people are walking through. I love that, it’s a real community kind of area.
Q: How does the Camden expansion reflect your attitude about community?
DL: It’s a goal of mine to bring more community into an industry that’s been notoriously hard to access. One boatyard that’s done this really well is the Newport Shipyard in Rhode Island, formerly owned by the Dana family. They did a great job of bringing the crowds into Belle’s Café. It’s a scene, and I always admired that. And it’s fun to go see the huge boats. And Rybovich in Florida, they have a whole crew area and restaurants.
I said ‘let’s do a Maine version of those two. Let’s bring people together and not just be an industrial boatyard.’ The work sheds are there, exactly where they were. We just added more. I use the term modern boatyard now. You want lifestyle, energy, and community around servicing and building boats. I think that’s a nice combination.
I also get asked about the working waterfront. People ask me if we’re losing it. I actually think we’re adding to the working waterfront by combining different industries. If we put condos there it would have destroyed an industry and that would have been awful for the harbor. I had no interest in that. That’s the key: The working waterfront should be a term that’s not just fishing boats and yachts, it’s all things that feed off the beauty of a harbor.
Q: Tell us a bit about the Camden Classics Cup. What led you to start that event?
DL: Part of the reason we launched it is the joy of seeing these beautiful wooden boats—whether on the docks and under sail. I looked at Camden Harbor and thought, we have to push more sailing in this harbor. And Penobscot Bay is such a breathtaking setting and it’s so easy to sail. So, the idea was born to bring more world-class sailing to the community, and to have more of the community involved. The Camden Classics Cup is the perfect example of community involvement with high-end yachts where that connection sometimes fails.
Q: 160 employees. 44 years in business. Does this company ever keep you up at night?
DL: Yes, it does. It certainly does. If I didn’t have our team, there’s no way I could do this. We’ve grown this thing; we’ve added some very modern facilities. I love where we’re at. There are challenges, sure, but I like the challenge of running a business, and I love talking boats.