Basic Boat Info
Dimensions
Other
LENGTH 45' BEAM 15' - TRAMSOM BEAM 14' DRAFT 5'6" PROPELLER 36"
There are 43 of these boats which have been built for off-shore commercial and pleasure use. USCG Inspected Passenger boat capacity and economical fuel burn above average.
LENGTH 42' BEAM 15' 8" TRAMSOM BEAM 14' 6" DRAFT 5' PROPELLER 36"
There are currently 13 of this new design that when build-out weight is properly placed they retain all the traits of YOUNG BROTHERS hulls; "easy sailing and enjoyed by the toughest of Maine fisherman".
LENGTH 39'11" BEAM 13'6" - TRAMSOM BEAM 12' DRAFT 4'6" PROPELLER 32"
125 of these boats have been built. WORLDS FASTEST LOBSTER BOAT is the moniker attached to this hull for many years. Cruising, Commercial fishing, recreational fishing, USCG Inspected Passenger work, research are some of the uses these 40' YOUNG BROTHERS hulls are engaged in.
LENGTH 33' BEAM 11' - TRAMSOM BEAM 10' DRAFT 38"
There are of these hulls that are used in-shore. This hull makes for a stout sea keeping center-console with an in-board or with outboard(s).
Founded in 1976, Young Brothers was famous for its fast, sea-kindly boats that could handle the rigors of lobster fishing in the Bay of Fundy, take a couple cruising on the Chesapeake or ferry hotel guests in the islands.
With Colby Young and his younger brothers, twins Arvin and Arvid, at the helm the company built more than 550 hulls ranging in size from 30 to 45 feet before closing the doors of its Corea boat shop a few months after Arvin’s death in 2008.
Without interruption S.W.Boatworks has carried on the brand and reputation of building Young Brothers boats.
Fishermen's Voice file
Earnest Libby grew up looking at these boats in the water, the boat shops and backyards of Beals. He now builds fiberglass lobster boats with his four sons from the forms he designed. Designing boats has not only been an interest, it may be one of Earnest's most significant contributions to modern hull development. His hull designs are highly regarded from Canada to Alabama and have been used by Young Brothers in a lot of their boats.
He traces his interest in design back to the toy boats he played with as a kid. Kids played along the shore with toy boats, some good ones built by boatbuilder parents, others not as good. Earnest built his own and has said at that early age he saw himself as a boatbuilder some day.
Growing up he hung around boat shops watching boats being built. His relatives who fished, often built their own boats, a more common practice when all the boats were wood. The Libbys have been from Bucks Harbor, East Machias, for generations. Libby Island, and the Libby Island Lighthouse, got their name from his family. His grandfather while moving his family back to Beals from Winter Harbor, was lost at sea, washed off his sloop boat off Dog Fish Ledges.
Earnest's first boat was a small clamming rowboat he built at seventeen. At the time there was no bridge to Beals, very few cars on the island and no car ferry to Jonesport, so Earnest rowed across the Jonesport Reach and hiked the 10 miles to Addison to order boat lumber. His father brought the lumber over in his lobster boat and Earnest sawed it up with a handsaw. His girlfriend helped him clench the nails. She was so good at it he later married her.
His first job was on the crew building the sardine carrier Bofisco for the Boothbay Fishing Company. His job was sawing the 4" oak sharprisers and 20' long, 5" oak deckbeam stock with a conventional handsaw. He then worked in his uncle Clinton Beal's shop where he built about twenty boats. Before building his own shop in 1964 at the age of 29, he built three lobster boats outside in a field.
When he started building, he fished in the fall and built boats in the winter. They were 30' to 34' boats for a long time. In all he guessed he built about 100 boats, all fishing boats.
Until about 1991 Earnest built wooden boats. Beginning with his first lobster boat he started by making a wood half model at about 3/4" to the foot scale. He carved the lines he had seen over the years into the hull model. With exception of the model he made for the Army Corps of Engineers, which they used in a water tank experiment, he has kept all the models he has made. He said, "I always looked at the bottom. People say that boats today all look the same. But they're not all the same. The bottoms are different, but they're not looking at the bottom, under water."
Over the years he watched how his boats went through the water and built in improvements in his next boat. If a boat plowed or threw water high he would make hull design changes. When Earnest built wood boats he would regularly suggest to a customer changes in the hull he thought would improve performance. Most would leave it up to him and he was able to make changes. Beals was known as boatbuilding town and people came from all over to have boats built there. He was soon building three wooden boats a year, sometimes four.
The most interesting part of boatbuilding for Earnest is "making the model, transferring that to paper, then bringing that into the three dimensional molds, the forms that the wood is bent around. Seeing it come together." The flexibility of the wood boatbuilding process made it possible for Earnest to experiment with changes. The width of the stern, turn of the bilge, depth of the keel, shape of the bottom or length of the boat could be changed in the next boat. The bottom has to be designed so that the boat "swings good, gets underway quick, is fast and stable with some roll, steady without throwing too much water;" is the way Earnest describes some of the things he considers in designing the business side of a boat. These experiments led him to produce fast hulls that came to the attention of the Young brothers of Corea, who began building fiberglass boats in the mid-1970s.
Earnest had known the Young brothers as kids when they came to Beals with their parents. He also knew them later when they were in the Coast Guard. When the Marguerite G, which he built for James Preston, was winning races, the speed appealed to the Young brothers. As a result they asked Earnest to build them a hull. This led to five more from which they built plugs for molds to build fiberglass hulls in. Earnest worked with the Young brothers at their Corea shop and at his Beals shop. He worked with them for many years, a time in which Earnest Libby put the fast in Young Brothers boats.
At the same time he was building boats at his shop. Hull changes from one boat to the next are not as easily incorporated with fiberglass. Glass boats are laid up in a mold. The mold is built from a process similar to the wooden boatbuilding process. A scale half model is made, then a wood hull is built from it. But rather than finish it, the hull is smoothed and waxed so a fiberglass mold can be made on it and easily removed. This mold is used to make several glass boats that all have the same hull characteristics. Changes to hull design require a new wood hull, called a plug, and a new mold built on it.
Asked if he would like to build wood lobster boats again he said, "I don't know how you could do it, it costs so much. It takes much longer to build in wood. Plus one of the problems we had was finding the wood to build with, it's not there. Not many people have the skills anymore.
The Young Brothers built more than 500 boats from the mid-70s to recently. In the winter of 2009, SW Boatworks purchased the molds and restarted production.
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