The South Bristol area has quite a few well-known yards where big trawlers, draggers and schooners have been built. One of the biggest boatbuilding names there is the Gamage Shipyard. While the Gamages have been out of the boatbuilding business for the last decade, they once built big boats and small, fishing schooners and yachts. Harvey Gamage started the famed shipyard after leaving Hodgdon Bros., in the 1920’s. In the tradition of producing, teaching and passing on boatbuilding skills, the Gamage yard did just that. In 1963, one seeker and recipient of that tradition was Bruce Farrin. Shortly after high school, the South Bristol native got a job at Harvey Gamage’s shop, working with some of the most skilled boatbuilders on the most boatbuilding stretch of coast in America.
   He worked alongside older craftsmen from boatbuilding families long associated with boat and shipbuilding on the Maine coast. These were the last days of this kind of workplace. Some had worked at no other occupation and a few were employed exclusively by the Gamage yard their entire careers. The level of skill, knowledge and facility some developed becomes more awesome as the era recedes into history. Harvey was around the yard then, but Bruce worked more often with Harvey’s nephew, Ed Gamage.
   Bruce recalled some of the boatbuilders there from whom he learned the skills. The long working life of some, indirectly describes what the work was then and what it meant to some who did it. Until he was 88 years, Merck Staples laid out planks, making them ready for fastening to the hull. Earl Haley worked at Gamages all his working life. Clifton Poole worked at the shop until he was 86. Today, Gamage would probably be busted for elder abuse and his master craftsmen dragged kicking and screaming from their work to the shuffleboard.
   While at Gamages, Bruce helped build the 125' schooner Bill of Rights, the topsail Shenandoah and the Hudson River sloop Clearwater. All of these, and many others he helped build, were traditionally-built wood vessels. He also worked on the Crystal S, a 120' steel seiner learning to cut and shape steel from Ed Gamage.
   After nine years, Bruce decided to open his own shop. He didn’t go far away to do it, just across the gut to a relative’s property that faced the Gamage shed. He started out in a rented shop on the end of a wharf. Here, as boatbuilders do, he began with small jobs, working up to larger projects. The 36' lobster boat Beverly Ann 2 was the first boat out of his own shop. Farrin fairly quickly gained a reputation building lobster boats and yachts.
   It was while he was building a 36' lobster boat, in February, 1978, that a fierce storm hit the Maine coast. The weather had been so cold that the bay was frozen and filled with great chunks of ice. The storm created a tidal surge that threw the ice up, tearing Farrin’s shop off the wharf pilings, then dragging it out into the middle of the bay. The shop, the sloop and his tools were lost. The shop, which did not belong to him, and the boat were insured, but his tools were not.
   Farrin was faced with the prospect of starting over from scratch. Though he may not have thought about it at the time, determination may have been his trump card, as a family story hints at. The story is told that his grandfather, who taught school in Boothbay, used to row across from South Bristol to East Boothbay, then walk to Boothbay, where he taught. He also ran a general store and lobster pound in South Bristol. Bruce told of his grandfather rowing the doctor over from East Boothbay, where his grandmother was having a difficult birth.
   After the storm, he took his experience and reputation to the bank, where he got the financing to rebuild. He also had his wife, Judy, to help rebuild the shop. They found an inland property in Walpole, that spring, and with hammers and saws in hand, put up a 30' x 42' shop. Judy recalled the building project and said the two of them put it up so fast, people thought it was pre-fabricated.
   Bruce Farrin is one of many Maine boatbuilders who has bridged the transition from wood to glass. He was trained in the hundreds-of-years old traditions of wood construction, and later was drawn into the technological evolution of glass construction, a craft that had no past.
   Fiberglass appeared as a product, and lobster-boat builders were, for the most part, left to figure out how to build boats with the stuff. Pleasure-boat builders in New Jersey had used it earlier, but fishing-boat builders first used it in the mid 1970’s in Maine. It became immediately popular with builders, but older fishermen were slow to accept it.
   The confluence of the increased scarcity of good building wood, the “miracle” of “better living through chemistry” in the form of fiberglass, and pressure for reduced labor, all added up to inevitable changes in the industry. Building in fiberglass took right off transforming the way boats were built. Farrin’s last wood boat was the 40' coastal cruiser Red Jacket. His first fiberglass boat was the Melissa, built in 1979 for Brian Sawyer.
   As for Bruce, he can and will build in either material. In fact, he recently developed a method for finishing a glass hull with wood covered in glass. The process, which is less expensive than using cored materials, vinyl esters and aluminum stringers, uses more affordable and available materials.
   The Farrins have recently had an arrangement with a British company to finish their 31' and 24' pilot-boat hulls with an assortment of options, which include twin jet drives or props, twin Steyr engines, a cruising speed of 27 knots and a list of high-tech equipment below. The heavily-built boats are shipped here in two parts, hull and cabin top, with specs for completion. They have the look of a pilot boat, with features like a thick rub rail, designed for use against large ships.
    Flexibility and adaptability have served the yard well over the years. Bruce is aware of this and remains open to new projects, possibilities and technologies. They also do repairs and lots of re-power jobs.
   The Farrins have built through technological changes, from wood to glass to glass over plywood, to composites with cored materials to the use of high-end adhesives like Plexus. Plexus adhesive is used to build 120 MPH cigarette boats, nearly eliminating the need for metal fasteners. The Farrins use it in some areas of construction; it’s used, for example, to attach lift strips on racing-boat hulls. The adhesive doesn’t work well on wood, but Bruce says it “welds” together materials like aluminum and plastics. Is there a 75 MPH, 60' offshore lobster boat built with glued together pre-fabricated parts in the wings at Bruce Farrin and Sons?