by In his 1970s boat guide, “The Proper Yacht,” physicist-turned-yachting expert Arthur Beiser declared that, “no object created by man is as satisfying to his body and soul as a proper sailing yacht.” Exactly what constitutes a proper sailing yacht is a matter of personal preference. Today’s elites are clearly smitten with gleaming superyachts with onboard theaters and helipads. But others feel the call of the sea is best answered by a boat of an earlier vintage. What they lack in modern glitz, classic wooden vessels more than make up for in elegance and style. The challenge is ensuring that such boats are still fit for traversing the waves. That’s where William Morong of Rockport, Maine comes in. Morong’s Yachting Solutions sells new yachts, but he and his crew are most passionate about finding and restoring decades-old classic yachts—projects that can take months or sometimes years to complete. Though Morong sometimes performs museum-quality “Concours” restorations, his work typically includes the addition of more modern performance and safety features that don’t detract from a boat’s classic aesthetic. Morong recently sat down with The Financialist to talk about life in the old boat business. TF: How did you get into the classic boat business? WM: Growing up in Maine, I always had an affinity for classic yachts, and wooden boats in particular.
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Alice Gomstyn considers the following as important: classic wooden boats, classic wooden yachts, classic yachts, Living Well: Features, Resto-Mod, yacht, yachts
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In his 1970s boat guide, “The Proper Yacht,” physicist-turned-yachting expert Arthur Beiser declared that, “no object created by man is as satisfying to his body and soul as a proper sailing yacht.” Exactly what constitutes a proper sailing yacht is a matter of personal preference. Today’s elites are clearly smitten with gleaming superyachts with onboard theaters and helipads. But others feel the call of the sea is best answered by a boat of an earlier vintage. What they lack in modern glitz, classic wooden vessels more than make up for in elegance and style. The challenge is ensuring that such boats are still fit for traversing the waves. That’s where William Morong of Rockport, Maine comes in.
Morong’s Yachting Solutions sells new yachts, but he and his crew are most passionate about finding and restoring decades-old classic yachts—projects that can take months or sometimes years to complete. Though Morong sometimes performs museum-quality “Concours” restorations, his work typically includes the addition of more modern performance and safety features that don’t detract from a boat’s classic aesthetic. Morong recently sat down with The Financialist to talk about life in the old boat business.
TF: How did you get into the classic boat business?
WM: Growing up in Maine, I always had an affinity for classic yachts, and wooden boats in particular. Maine has always been a wooden boat mecca. You’ll find more yards building and restoring wooden boats in Maine than anywhere else in the world, with the possible exception of the Pacific Northwest.
TF: What’s the appeal of wooden yachts?
WM: A lot of people say that wooden boats ride better, sail better, and feel different because they were built out of what was once a living thing – wood. There’s a little bit more soul and authenticity to it. And I think people are attracted to restoring vintage craft because it speaks to them. They want something that’s unique, something they think should be preserved. I had one client tell me that he almost feels like a patron of the arts.
TF: What does restoration entail?
WM: We call it Resto-Mod work, which is short for restoration modification. It’s similar to the car business. When I was a kid, my father was into collecting classic cars. Cars that hadn’t been hot-rodded (today we call it Resto-Mod)– hadn’t been outfitted with modern equipment – were the most valuable. You couldn’t really sell a car that had been hot-rodded. It wasn’t worth much, or not nearly as much as the same car that was a perfect “matching numbers” restoration.
Nowadays, it’s different. Say you take a ’68 Mustang (or any vintage car with a design people are drawn to) and put in a current motor, current suspension, current braking, current interior, and power-steering. Make it into a modern vehicle, those cars become extremely valuable in the auction market today.
People are doing the same thing now with boats. We use the older boat as a shell for the look, the feel, and the personality of the vessel, but install safety features and amenities of newer boats, such as current hull construction, engines and drive systems electronics, new stabilization systems, and upgraded interiors.
TF: What are the biggest design differences between new yachts and vintage yachts, the construction materials aside?
WM: Newer yachts are designed to win over a couple at a boat show. When they go down below, they can’t believe the amenities in the boat’s interior. But the focus on the interior often happens at the expense of profile aesthetics, hull design, and performance. By performance, I mean the dryness of the ride, the performance downwind, the performance in a turn, how a boat handles and how it makes you feel safe, dry, and comfortable while you’re underway. Whereas more and more newer boats are designed from the inside out, older yachts were typically designed from the outside in.
TF: What was your most memorable project?
WM: We really covered some new territory with a 1954, 45-foot Huckins boat a number of years ago. Volvo had just come out with a new propulsion system called an IPS and we built it into a wooden boat, which had never been done. In fact, at the time an IPS re-power had never been done period! IPS had really been geared around fiberglass production boats and new construction, but the customer wanted this type of propulsion system, so we had to find a way to adapt. The original builder could have never dreamed of the propulsion system that we were trying to retrofit to his design. It was hugely successful.
Yachting Solutions installed a modern propulsion system into a 1954 boat.
TF: What are the challenges of maintaining a classic yacht?
WM: When we build a new boat from an old shell, there aren’t any more challenges to maintaining it or owning it (once completed) than there are to owning something fresh off the production line. It’s essentially a new boat. Although Resto-Mod projects typically come with more wood accents or structure in them so you will likely have a higher maintenance budget on finishes than you would on a boat that would be built today. Also, classic yachts want to be stored differently. Temperature and humidity control are very important in off season storage. This is often more expensive than outdoor shrinkwrap storage and it can be difficult to find boat yards with the proper facilities.
TF: What about classic wooden boats that haven’t been restored?
WM: Boats have to be kept in stasis so they don’t degrade any further. Wooden boats, especially, want to be wet. It’s important to store them in environments where the moisture and the hull don’t dry out. If storing out of the water, they want to be on dirt floors, never concrete. If the framing structure degrades to a certain point, the boats will start to lose their shape, just like if we have osteoporosis in our bones, we don’t stand up the same way we used to. Identifying a boat’s original shape is the first place we start.
TF: Where do you see classic boat demand going from here?
WM: I think more and more people are finding the value in classic fiberglass boats. There are a ton of those sitting in boatyards and marinas that people haven’t discovered yet. They’re going to be the classics of the next generation.
Photos by Langley Photography.