Published: April 20, 2006 04:55 am            

Vessel’s designers fill a niche

Keeping boatbuilding afloat

NEWBURYPORT, Mass. — Tearing ahead at about 20 knots, the Invictus bounces over waves just beyond the mouth of the Merrimack River, forcing standing passengers to clutch onto a rail along the roof.

Most of the passengers on this test run on Tuesday had a hand in either designing the boat or welding together its aluminum pieces. They joke or chat about new houses going up along the river and who’s selling what boat while a reporter struggles to keep his feet from flying off the floor.

“You can see it can handle some rough water,” says Don Johnson, one of the boat’s makers.

But soon the 29-foot aluminum landing craft will be making slow runs over the relatively smooth waters of Boston Harbor, between the city and an Outward Bound education center on Thompson Island. The center, home to a middle school and Outward Bound courses for youths and professional adults, needs a backup to its larger ferry.

The Invictus, named after a William Ernest Henley poem, is not the type of boat you could order off the shelf, its designer, Newburyport resident Bill Lincoln, said.

For starters, it’s made entirely of aluminum, a material more expensive than fiberglass, but more durable. It should be able to withstand about 20 years of heavy-duty use.

Lincoln, owner of designer Response Marine, and Seabrook-based Viking Welding, which put together the boat, have no plans to paint it, so it gleams silvery inside and out.

Its cabin, big enough for 25 passengers and a two-person crew, is off to one side, leaving room for a corridor on the deck. It also features a gate at its bow, allowing it to land small vehicles such as tractors directly on the beach.

Invictus is an example of a product for a “niche” market, Lincoln said. Customers will tell him their needs and budget. Lincoln works with them on the design.

In separate and joint projects, Response and Viking have designed or built a canoe for the Amazon River, small work boats for the Army Corps of Engineers, a 60-mph law enforcement boat and several fire/rescue boats with water pumps and gates that open on the side so that divers can get in and out.

Their next project will be a 30-foot fire/police boat for the town of Somerset.

Lincoln said only four companies in North America (including one in Rowley) can build a boat like Invictus, which will sell for approximately $140,000. He and Viking tap into the demand for custom-designed boats, rather than taking on larger boatbuilders with standardized products.

“We lose to anything that can be a production boat,” he said.

Johnson, who owns and runs Viking Welding with his son Errick, made 50- to 70-foot steel fishing boats in the late 1970s. But he said the end of a subsidy helping fishermen finance boat purchases stopped his and several other small shipyards in the area.

“Before that, there were a bunch of small yards,” Johnson said. He points to the site of Stripers Grille on the Salisbury side of the river, saying he used to work at what was then a one-story shop there.

Viking has about eight employees, and Lincoln works on his own.

“I’ve had fire pumps in my kitchen,” he said.

In a waterfront that has shifted from a work place to a recreation spot, the local boatbuilders’ operation is a far cry in scope from the shipbuilding of centuries past, but it is a continuation of Newburyport’s historical legacy.

“We putter out past the downtown and you sort of think about it,” Lincoln said.

The boats are all launched and tested in Newburyport. The Invictus was launched at Cashman Park last week and docked in the Merri-Mar Yacht Basin between test runs. It was slated for shipment to Boston.





David Colbert writes for The Daily News of Newburyport, Mass.

        

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