Maine Lobster Boat Builders Hit By Bad Economy

This is a 35' willis Beal leaving the old Jonesboro Custom Finishing Shop

This is a picture of my boat as it was leaving the shop to be launched. The boat was launched in April of 2002.

It was built at the Jonesboro Custom Finish Shop.  The cabin is a cut down style from Wilbur Yachts, if my memory serves me correctly. I say “old boat shop” as they fairly recently built a new shop. The hull was laid up by RP Boat Shop. I am not sure, but I believe they were also hit by the recent hard times in the economy.

I did remove a small website I had about them, but they might still be willing to finish off a hull for someone. I do know I was told that they are technically out of business. It is a sign of the times. I really don’t know if they would be willing to finish off another hull or not. I do know they haven’t for a while, just how long I don’t know. I do feel very strongly that if you were looking for a boat, I would say that I would recommend them to anyone because of their excellent workmanship and competitive pricing.

I do have pictures of the boat under construction under “Finishing off a fiberglass lobster boat  hull” which is another article on this site.

I have most of the pictures that were taken during the construction or finishing off of this hull.

If you know which shops are still building lobster boats, please feel free to post them in the comments.

I don’t know if many lobstermen are building new boats, but there does seem to be a fairly large amount of used boats for sale. I have heard that some lobstermen either didn’t bother to fish last year, or fished on a much smaller scale.

I did sell some traps, or give them away, as I never got paid for them so if you are selling traps and are in the southern part of the state, I can provide a name. I won’t discredit the man online, as I keep hoping things might get better and he might decide to pay for the traps. Obviously I have little hope that he will, especially if the lobster fishing is like last year.

I personally felt that there were adequate amounts of lobsters, but not adequate to support all of the increases in the cost of everything associated with the business.

I do know there were boats that had a very good year, even with the low prices for lobster and the increase in bait costs.

I do know that with the increases in so many things I can’t say it was a great year. Just about everything in the economy is rising at a rate that is quite incredible. Obviously the economy is changing. The lobster boat builders for the most part took a massive hit.

I can’t speak for others but I haven’t bought any new traps for a few years. I do know there are people that find this site looking for used traps on a daily basis. This is something that is relatively new as the site has been up for a while, and there appears to be a good amount of lobstermen looking for used lobster traps.

I do plan to sell some this year, but because I didn’t get paid for some I sold last year, I will naturally handle the financial end of the sale in a different manner. I will give the name to anyone selling traps in the southern Maine area so that they don’t get hurt financially like I did. All that is needed is to contact me with the contact link on the upper left side of this page, or leave a comment, and I will provide the name.

I prefer to give the benefit of the doubt and feel it was a bad year and something came up that made him feel that he just couldn’t pay me. The sad part is that a couple days of fishing would have paid for the traps I sold to him.

Tags: boat builders, economy, maine