Art as an escape - for Stephen Florimbi, painting has always been a means “a process” to fill a certain need in his life. Over the years, he has turned to brush and canvas as a release from stress and as a balance to the sometimes repetitive and planned woodworking he has been involved in for much of his life. In recent years, Florimbi has become a devoted plein air painter. Searching for the next motif gets him out of the studio and into the world. Outdoor painting also provides a community: No longer surrounded by 60 people every day at the boatyard—he retired from Rockport Marine in 2022—he welcomes working alongside other local painters and attending plein air events. Florimbi enjoys dealing with the elements: wind, rain, sun, snow. He also welcomes the opportunity to slow down to observe his surroundings, to be able to notice the changes in the light, the weather—“the whole energy of the place,” he says. Such immersion can affect him deeply. He hopes his paintings reflect his sense of a place.
Read the full article and see more of his work at the MaineBoats link in our bio.
Photo 1: Florimbi painted Queen of Peace, the lobsterboat in the foreground, during the Perkins Cove Plein Air Painting Festival in Ogunquit. It won the award for “Quintessential Perkins Cove.” Queen of Peace, 2025, oil on canvas, 16 x 20 inches.
Photo 2: Florimbi set up for a plein air painting session in Rockport Harbor. “Just another day at work,” he writes.
Here in New England, most of us water people have two seasons. There’s summer, when we can use our boats, and the rest of the year, when we can’t.
Editor Mark Pillsbury likes summer best... This past January, a business trip to Portland was made all the better by his visit to a still-expanding yard. Nestled well inside the city’s natural harbor is Portland Yacht Services, run by Phin Sprague and his crew. He’s a well-known figure to anyone who ever used to attend the much-missed Maine Boat Builders Show, held in an old Portland locomotive factory, the site of Sprague’s previous boatyard. Sprague closed the old shop due to city regulations; after procuring a new lease PYS’s first structure, Building A, went up in 2012. Several more quickly followed, with buildings H and I coming online just this year. It was projected that it would take perhaps three years to fully utilize these latter two, Sprague said, but on Pillsbury's visit they were already mostly packed with vessels in for repairs.
Read our full story about this local boatyard and its varied projects at the link in our bio.
Photo: By Mark Pillsbury - On a tour of Portland Yacht Services with Phin Sprague, left, there’s no telling what sorts of vessels you’ll encounter.
Our continuing photographic series - The Maine I Love - looks through the lens of midcoast artist Peggy Fitzgerald in our recent issue. From a visit to Rangeley, Maine, Fitzgerald reminds us that the late-March local climate is unique and comes with its own set of challenges. We are collectively anxious to return to a busier pace after the months of quiet spent inside—and limited to the activities we manage to cook up for ourselves. While we know we will eventually return to Vacationland, we also know it can be a long runway before it lands. This year Peggy and her husband decided a “spring-break” trip to the beach would provide a distraction, and so they headed from the midcoast toward the beaches of the Rangeley Lakes. The getaway trip was a great chance to soak up the landscape in a leisurely fashion, with the roads pretty much to themselves and no snow cover in sight until they reached Saddleback Mountain. Perhaps their one reminder of the season was in Farmington, where the products displayed along the sidewalk in front of Reny’s were still a full choice of snow shovels. In the end, they embarked on a loop of about 120 miles from Rangeley to Rumford, across to Errol, New Hampshire, through Grafton Notch, and back to Rangeley. Every bit of the way reminded them just how beautiful and diverse Maine is, whatever the season.
Take a look for yourself, all photos can be viewed via the link in bio
Today's Way Back Wednesday takes us to 2013. As anyone who's spent a winter in Maine knows, February offers ample opportunities to sit around the woodstove cooking up fun things to do once the mud's done, and coastal waters are a bit more inviting. We can only imagine it was on a cold, frosty night that plans were made for the first Stand-up Paddleboard Jousting Tournament, held during the Maine Boat & Home Show in 2013. While jousting probably won't be on the agenda for the 2026 show, set for Aug. 7-9 on the Rockland Waterfront, you can be sure the show team is thinking up lots of other good fun. Watch for announcements at https://buff.ly/z0VgpPi.
Read more about the jousting here: https://buff.ly/414V5Ic
There is perhaps no more quintessential line of Maine-built production boats than those designed and conceived by @hinckleyyachts , the eponymous brand founded by Henry R. Hinckley in Southwest Harbor in 1928. In the ensuing decades, Hinckley was primarily known for their prodigious output of cruising and racing sailboats, including the graceful and iconic Bermuda 40 that made its debut in 1960. It has one of the most distinctive profiles on the water. Taking a Picnic Boat for a spin is something like setting out for an excursion on a high-end condominium, if the condo just happened to be a proper sea boat. It’s all a bit otherworldly.
Read our feature on the newest iteration in the Picnic Boat Line at the 🔗 in bio
Photo 1: By design, the Hinckley Picnic Boat 39 features graceful curves everywhere you look.
Photo 2: The forward cockpit is a first for the Picnic Boat Line. Besides comfortable seating, it provides quick access to anchor rode and dock lines.
There were 11 women who gathered last spring in Port Clyde to be ferried by lobsterboat out to McGee Island, 3 miles off Maine’s Midcoast, for the 10th annual The Salty Quill Writers Retreat for Women. Small groups of women tend to tune in to each other. Island life, for a week at a time, makes sense. The Salty Quills - creative writing feeds the spirits of these authors. At the close of the idyllic week, they returned to their quotidian routines, somewhat reluctantly, having made substantial progress with various written projects, stronger from having forged bonds with fellow women, and with an anticipation of seasoning their quills for a future shared retreat on McGee.
McGee as a VRBO and Salty Quill as a retreat offering both can be accessed online.
Read our full story at the link in our bio.
Photo 1: On McGee Island, off Port Clyde, even a misty day offers the writers inspiration. Photo courtesy Patricia Riddle
Photo 2: The great house and its furnishings allow visitors a step back in island-life time. Photo courtesy Patricia Riddle
Ready! Aim! Fire Boat!
The top brass of a coastal Connecticut fire department didn’t know anything about Lyman-Morse Boatbuilding when they went looking for somebody to build a high-powered, high-tech fire boat. They do now.
The fire department in Clinton, Connecticut, turned to Lyman-Morse Boatbuilding for a 32-foot aluminum boat packed with speed, high-pressure water cannons, and the durability to withstand rough conditions in Long Island Sound. The boat has delivered on all its promises since the town took possession last June, said Michael Neff, deputy chief of the Clinton Volunteer Fire Department.
“We were looking for something that checked all the boxes—relatively fast for its size, the ability to pump significant amounts of water, and the ability to handle significant seas,” Neff said. “Lyman-Morse checked all the boxes.”
Read the full story on this unique Lyman-Morse build via the link in bio.
Photo 1: Powered by twin 350-hp engines, the Clinton, Connecticut, fire boat has a cruising speed of 30 knots and a top speed of up to 44 knots.
Photo 2: Just off Curtis Island, outside of Camden Harbor, the latest Lyman-Morse fire boat employs a V-8 inboard engine that drives four high-capacity water pumps that can deliver up to 1,000 gallons of water per minute to its water cannons.
Moments in time caught on the fly. 🪶
These photographs by Duane Lowe capture the dynamic movement of his signature moment-in-time action images. Living on Damariscotta Lake, near the famous Damariscotta Mills fish ladder, provided Lowe with a ticket to break away from traditional nature photography. Over time, shooting nature, Lowe realized it’s not the camera and it’s not the lens. “It’s about learning the art of identifying and capturing an image that’s unique. If I can catch piping plovers at sunset and they are front-lit , I’ll have a nice image. But, if I’m shooting into the light at sunset and the plover is back-lit, I’m going to see great reflections on the water, and I can pick up details and highlights that make the difference between a good image and a spectacular image.”
Enjoy his spectacular images and read more about his technique and style at the link in our bio.
Last fall, @backcoveyachts debuted its latest flagship, the Back Cove 412. This new 41-footer is almost the ideal sailor’s powerboat, and that's a high compliment. It’s a rangy, dependable, well-appointed cruising boat. Yes, it’s built in Maine, but this is a vessel that will take you anywhere you wish to go. A winter cruising down the Intracoastal Waterway to Florida and the Bahamas? A spin around the Great Loop waterways from the Gulf of Mexico to the Great Lakes? Absolutely. Hop aboard.
Read more in our feature at the link in bio
Photo 1: With places to lounge indoors and out, plus a pair of cabins below, the Back Cove 412 provides long-range cruising capabilities.
Photo 2: The 412’s helm stations offers both comfort and all-around visibilty.
Photo 3: A door by the wheel provides both good ventilation and quick access to the side deck.
📰 News from the Town Dock - Coast Guard delays buoy removal
Thousands of New England mariners spoke, and at least for now, the Coast Guard seems to have listened. The federal agency abruptly announced in October that it had suspended a controversial plan to remove hundreds of navigational buoys and markers along the Northeast coast.
The Coast Guard first announced the plan last spring, and after receiving over 3,000 comments—mostly in opposition—released a revised plan in September listing some changes and asking for new comments by a November 15 deadline. But on Oct. 21, the agency issued a press release saying that the comment period had been closed, and the project had been suspended.
“After receiving over 3,200 public comments, the Coast Guard will be conducting further analysis of the aids to navigation (ATON) system. There will be no changes to ATON in relation to the proposal until further analysis is complete,” the release said. “The Coast Guard will continue assessing waterways and provide the most effective changes to support a resilient marine transportation system.”
It is unclear what happens next. But this delay seems to meet what everyone from recreational boaters to harbormasters to elected officials was requesting. Boaters opposing the proposal, which initially called for removing more than 300 buoys, noted that not everyone has a GPS device on their vessel, and marine electronics can fail.
Photo: Credit: Sean D. Elliot / The Day via AP
You know what time it is! It's mud time. Maine is the lucky recipient of one extra season- sandwiched between winter and spring- we get the gooey season that really makes you rethink that trip to a friend's house down a dirt road. A trip to the woodshed across the sticky stuff becomes an epic journey plastering the soles of our shoes so resolutely that when you’re back at the house with an armload of firewood, you’re taller than when you went out in the first place. LL Bean has made mud season its bread and butter with their indestructible boots, built for battle with this particular season.
Read our full story Mud Time: A Meditation 🔗 at Maineboats.com
Photo by Mark Pillsbury- After a winter spent cooped-up indoors, walking down a road—even a muddy and rutted one—can have surprising appeal.
Solar-powered ferry
@lyman_morse which has a division that produces metal-hulled workboats, has won a contract to design and build three solar-powered, aluminum ferries that will run on the Merrimack River in Massachusetts.
The ferries will provide passenger service back and forth on the river for the first time in nearly a century, according to a story in the Midcoast Villager. The project is funded by a $4.2 million federal grant, according to the news story.
Lyman-Morse’s Workboats division in Thomaston is partnering with Newburyport naval designer William Lincoln of Response Marine, while Norwegian firm Evoy Vita Power will supply the electric propulsion systems, the Villager reported.
The 33-foot long catamarans will be powered by twin 120-hp electric outboard motors. They will be able to carry up to 22 passengers and cruise at up to 12 knots, according to the news story.
Onboard batteries will be supplemented by solar panels on the roof. Demonstration runs are expected to begin in 2026, with full service projected for 2027, connecting Haverhill, Amesbury and Newburyport.
Photo: Lyman-Morse
