Hodgdon Shipbuilding began in 1816 in what would become the Boothbay Harbor region of Maine. The state was founded four years later. A century and a half after that, while he was still in high school, Tim Hodgdon started working for the family company in 1971 under the watchful eye of his father, Sonny Hodgdon. They built traditional plank-on-frame wooden boats. The first vessel that Tim worked on was Sea Fever, which was built for Bobby Brown, who owned boats portrayed in the book and movie The Perfect Storm.
Hodgdon got an electrical engineering degree from Wentworth Institute in Boston, graduating in 1975. Instead of jumping into the family business, he spent the next two years as a deckhand on an offshore lobster boat. He later spent another season working on a long-line swordfishing boat.
He rejoined the family company in the early 1980s and, in 1984, became president of Hodgdon Yachts, with a vision of reinventing the business. The company grew to 150 employees and built such well-known custom yachts as the 80-foot commuter Liberty, the 124-foot sloop Antonisa and the 155-foot ketch Scheherazade.
Recently, Hodgdon’s daughter, Audrey, joined the company and quickly worked her way up to managing director. We caught up with Hodgdon at Hodgdon Yacht Services in Southport, Maine. This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and space.
How many generations of the Hodgdon family have worked at or are currently working for the company?
I’m the fifth generation to run the company, and my daughter, Audrey, is sixth generation. She is managing director on the boatbuilding side and manages overall marketing of the companies. She and her husband, Caleb, have a year-old son, Grant, so there is a possibility of a seventh generation.
Did you grow up boating?
Linekin Bay in Boothbay was my playground. I had a Boston Whaler with a 20 on it, and I thought I was going like the devil at the time. I like to sail, and I have a 28-foot Pursuit with a pair of 250s on it. I like to get in that boat at 5 a.m. when the moon is starting to set and go blasting down to Monhegan and back.
Tell us about your experiences in offshore lobstering operations.
The first boat I worked on in 1971 while I was in high school was a 50-foot offshore lobster boat named Sea Fever. We built it for Bobby Brown, from The Perfect Storm, and we built another 50-foot offshore lobster boat named Mistress for a guy named Hugh Bishop. Bobby had already taken Sea Fever and was gone, and I wanted to go try offshore lobstering. Hugh was going 130 miles off Cape Cod on the edge of the continental shelf that swings out off the Gulf of Maine, and there are a series of canyons all the way out to Corsair Canyon, which extends the farthest east. I spent two years offshore lobstering with Hugh Bishop, and it was hard work.
What kind of depths are we talking about?
Right on the edge of the shelf, the water depth was up to 150 fathoms, and anything deeper than that, you would only be catching red crabs. You really had to be right on the edge of the continental shelf. We were in 70 to 100 fathoms of water for the most part. We had hydraulic haulers, and we were using 4-foot-long traps with 25 on a string. We would spend one night running out there, and we would haul the next day, lay out the gear again, and haul the next day. If the weather was bad in the fall, we would go out and haul all the way through. One day, we started hauling at 1 in the morning, and we finished up at 7 a.m. a day later.
How old were you when you were doing this?
I was 24 or 25. It was an incredible life experience. I learned a lot about working hard on the water.
How did the swordfishing come about?
I got done with lobstering and kicked around for a couple of years. I went out to the West Coast to try to get on a merchant boat, but the unions kept that from happening. When I came back, Bobby Brown had retired Sea Fever from lobstering and had built a new steel-hulled 73-foot offshore lobster boat. His son was running that, and Sea Fever was rigged up for swordfishing before he bought the Andrea Gail and the Hannah Boden. He ran out of Boothbay 250 miles to the edge of the continental shelf, and we had 5 miles of long line. We would set out the line at night and harpoon the swordfish during the day after we hauled in the long line at night. That went on for one season, but Sea Fever was too small. You get to fall and the weather deteriorates, and you shouldn’t be out there in a 50-foot boat.
Who was running Hodgdon at the time?
My father, Sonny, was running the yard, and it was a small yard, maybe six people. My father was a traditional plank-on-frame wooden-boat builder. He didn’t like fiberglass, and I learned a lot from his crew.
What was your educational background?
I went to Wentworth Institute in Boston. It’s an engineering school. I graduated in 1975 with an electrical engineering degree.
How did you get your start in the company? What is your earliest memory of being at the shop?
I started here about 1979, officially. I always knew I was going to come back here. I learned an awful lot that is irreplaceable working for my father, crawling around, lofting a boat full size on a factory floor. It gives you a different sense of what a boat is going to look like. I look at the lines of the models hanging here in the office. It gives you a different perspective.
You’ve been president since 1984. When you took over, you said that you wanted to reinvent the company. How did you do that?
I didn’t want to build plank-on-frame wooden boats. I wanted to do something on a higher level, and I was familiar with designer Bruce King at the time. He was designing world-class sailboats, and I wanted to build something world class. We started building cold-molded boats. In 1991, we built a 31-foot speedboat with a cold-molded mahogany hull, so we applied all the techniques associated with vacuum-bagging and cold-molded construction. We also built a 33-foot boat with the same processes.
Were you basically learning the techniques as you went along?
A lot of it was self-taught, but we also worked with the Gougeon brothers at West System. Plus, many traditional boatbuilding skills are transferable. A lot of what we’ve done over the years has been self-taught.
You’ve built some famous boats. What was the earliest one that helped spread the word about the new iteration of Hodgdon Yachts?
The first one was Liberty in 1996. She was an 80-foot, commuter-style boat with a traditional appearance, but she’s sort of a wolf in sheep’s clothing. She’s cold-molded, but we used advanced composite materials in a lot of different areas, like honeycomb and carbon fiber. We were vacuum-bagging e-glass and carbon, and were using more advanced composite materials.
How important was the success of boats like Comanche, Liberty and Scheherazade to Hodgdon Yachts?
They were incredibly important. Comanche was a 100-foot maxi yacht designed for long-range sailboat racing. She was built with all preimpregnated composite materials, and she broke the trans-Atlantic crossing record, cutting 27 hours off a six-day record.
What was it like working with the U.S. Navy on the Kevlar vessels?
We built a technology demonstrator working with the University of Maine, U.S. Special Operations Command, the Office of Naval Research and others. We received tremendous support from Maine’s veteran senator, Susan Collins, and our state’s federal delegation to secure the contract. We eventually built a number of air-deployable rescue vessels known as GARCs, which means Greenough Advanced Rescue Craft.
Did you bring in consultants to help navigate the proposal process?
I put together a strong defense board, which included Bill Haggett, former CEO of Bath Iron Works; Greg “Grogg” Johnson, a retired four-star admiral living in Maine; and Will Ball, former secretary of the Navy under Ronald Regan and George H.W. Bush. We had a relationship with the University of Maine and put together a program to build a technology demonstrator for the Office of Naval Research, and built an 80-foot advanced composite technology demonstrator called Mako in an effort to position ourselves solidly to bid on the next-generation patrol boat for U.S. Special Operations Command.
What was the result of the Navy project?
We put together a terrific proposal and were one of the top three candidates to win the project. At the 11th hour, the Navy came back and said it didn’t meet their mission requirements. There had been a turnover in the upper echelon of the Navy, and they wanted a different boat. At that point, we were done. We had spent too much money.
Do you still have a relationship with the University of Maine?
We have a strong relationship with Habib Dagher, director of The Advanced Structures and Composites Center at UMaine, and we appreciate that relationship and the university’s capabilities.
Do you think people are surprised at the level of sophistication of the materials and techniques that Hodgdon utilizes?
I don’t think many people realize the stuff we’ve done and others have done. They know the quality of Hodgdon. Everybody here locally knows who I am, and they know what goes on in the company. Some of it is constrained by nondisclosure agreements.
Are nondisclosure agreements a blessing and a curse?
It’s mostly a curse because we get these contracts with an agreement not to disclose the owner, the technology or the performance of a boat. A lot of these guys take pride in their anonymity. These superyacht tenders that we’re building, they are all for billionaires. The yachts have gotten so big in the world.
When did your daughter, Audrey, join the company? Is it important to you to have a successor in place?
She joined the company in 2014, and she’s 39. I’ve got a son and a daughter, and this is a complicated company to run and an important legacy. It’s a lot of bricks to put on your shoulders. I tried hard not to put pressure on my children. Deep down inside, I’m really proud of the fact that she’s involved in the company and that he chose to do something else. Along those lines, I didn’t want her to feel pressured to join. It had to be her idea.
What was Audrey’s background before joining the company?
She went to James Madison University and got a degree in marketing. After she graduated, she said, “Now I need to get a job.” I gave her a number of my contacts, like Paul McDonald at Martin Spars in New Zealand and Richard Downs Honey at High Modulus. He did all the engineering for Martin Spars at the time. She landed a job at High Modulus in New Zealand and went down there and worked for nine months. Then she came back here and went back to Australia. She traveled around a bit and got her feet kind of wet in the industry and realized that she liked being in there. She came back here and got married, and she and her husband came to work for Hodgdon in 2014. She wanted to be part of the company, and her husband is working in the engineering department. She’s good at what she does. I’m really proud of her.
What is your management style? Do you run the show yourself or prefer to collaborate?
The top management of the company would be Audrey, our CFO Don O’Grady, myself and a couple of business advisers. Sandy Spaulding was the CEO of The Hinckley Co. and worked for me for 15 years, and Colleen McCracken is a strategic business adviser. I have a production manager at the tender operation, Robbie Ham, who has been with me for 29 years, and a design manager, Nate Thompson.
What is the culture at Hodgdon Yachts?
I like to think of the culture here as quality and innovation. It’s different at the service yard than it is at the tender operation. This is more of a customer-facing operation here, and the dedication of the staff here deals with the customers.
Are you facing the same challenges finding help that others in the industry are experiencing?
I could talk about this company and the stuff we’ve done at length. We have some talented people working here, dedicated people who are innovative and care about quality. It’s getting more and more difficult to find employees.
In 2018, you decided to downsize. What prompted that?
We had five divisions, and we had 150 employees. We were working on some sophisticated projects. We sold the shipyard in East Boothbay, and now we have between 67 and 70 employees here at Hodgdon Yacht Services in Southport, Maine, and at a marina we bought in 2014 in Boothbay Harbor. The tenders are built at a facility in Damariscotta, Maine.
When I was here around 2018, you were building the first of your limousine tenders designed by Michael Peters. How did they contribute to the bottom line?
They’re 50% of our business. We’re building Beachlanders, forward- and aft-helm limousines, and open boats that range from 9 meters to 12 meters [about 30 to 40 feet]. We’re also building three 12-meter boats for a Lurssen superyacht.
I understand there’s a potential new partnership, as well?
We’re also building a carbon-infused recreational boat that is under the Maserati brand. One of the leading companies in electric propulsion, Vita, asked us to build a recreational electric boat out of carbon for their propulsion system. During that process, they said, “We have a relationship with Maserati, and we think Maserati is interested in branding it Maserati and using that to help introduce electric automobiles.” These may be promoted under the Maserati brand. The first one is at Maserati, and they are using the boat. It performs well, it’s cool, but there’s the range issue.
Are you surprised by the size of high-horspower outboards?
A 600-hp outboard, and some people are putting six of them on the back of a boat. I’m glad I don’t have to pay the fuel bill. My Pursuit gets 0.9 mpg at wide open throttle, and that’s just two measly 250s.
What do you think is the future of marine propulsion?
I think electric is the wave of the future, but it’s not ready for prime time. It’s a function of how quickly the batteries evolve. They’re changing on a daily basis. There are companies building foiling electric boats, and we’re talking with some of them. The reason I say it’s not ready for prime time is because of range. For the foiling electric boat, range isn’t the issue, but there are others. So I think with electric propulsion, it remains to be seen.
Are you looking at recyclable materials for construction? What are some interesting materials coming down the pike?
I think it’s still a ways off. Richard Downs-Honey from High Modulus and I talk from time to time, and he’s a big thinker. Right now, everything we’re doing is E-glass, carbon and epoxy. One of our customers had a big boat with gas turbines in it and kept burning up the transom bay door. He asked us to build him a hatch out of a resin system called cyanate ester that had to be cooked at about 392 degrees Fahrenheit.
Do you have a favorite boat that Hodgdon Yachts built?
They’re all so unique and so different, it’s really hard to pick one. There are many that I really like. They’re all like your children. I’m fortunate that I’ve steered and operated all of them myself. On one voyage that I can’t give more details about, we left Damariscotta and we were in Portland an hour later.
This article was originally published in the August 2024 issue.
