Hinckley sailboats: a Maine yard whose reputation was built as much on materials as on style
Hinckley is a Maine sailboat builder whose name is inseparable from the Bermuda 40, a keel-centerboard cruiser that Good Old Boat has called possibly the best-known production sailboat ever made. But the brand's identity runs deeper than one hull: across nearly a century based in Southwest Harbor and, later, Trenton, Hinckley repeatedly led American yacht construction into new materials — fiberglass in the 1950s, Kevlar in 1991, resin-infusion molding soon after — while its ownership passed through several hands.
Origins and ownership
The company began in 1928 as the Manset Boatyard in Southwest Harbor, Maine, where owner Henry Hinckley's early work was servicing local lobster boats and the yachts of summer residents on Mount Desert Island. Hinckley built his first boat, a 36-foot fisherman named Ruthyeolyn, in 1933. The yard's early business was powerboats, and it built roughly 500 motor vessels for the U.S. government during World War II, though it became better known over time as a sailboat builder. By 1989, the company was under the ownership of Bob Hinckley and Shep McKenney, who in 1997 sold the business to the Bain Willard Companies, founded by partners Bill Bain and Ralph Willard. Scout Partners LLC purchased Hinckley in 2010 and acquired Hunt Yachts in 2013. In 2016, Hinckley acquired the assets of sailboat builder Morris Yachts and continued its operations under the name Morris Yachts, LLC; announcing the deal, Hinckley said the two companies build within a quarter mile of each other in Trenton, Maine, together employing about 380 craftsmen, engineers, and technicians. Writing that same year, Maine Boats, Homes & Harbors described a company that had grown since its 1928 Southwest Harbor founding to include service facilities in Florida, Georgia, Maryland, and Rhode Island.
Construction through the eras
Hinckley was one of the first American boatbuilders to move away from oak frames and planking toward fiberglass, in the 1950s. That shift culminated in the Bermuda 40, commissioned from naval architect William Tripp Jr. as a refinement of Tripp's earlier Block Island 40 (built by American Marine in Rhode Island through the 1950s and '60s); as Hinckley's first fiberglass boat, production ran from 1959 into the early 1990s. In the late 1990s the company opened a manufacturing facility off Route 3 in Trenton, Maine, where it has since built most of its boats. In 1991, Hinckley became the first American yacht builder to convert from fiberglass to Kevlar composites for hulls and decks, according to Soundings. That materials program showed up soon after in the Picnic Boat: Shep McKenney sent concept sketches to three designers in 1992 and awarded the project to Bruce King, who had two underbody designs tank-tested at the Webb Institute; the first hull went into construction in early 1994, and Dasher, the first Picnic Boat, launched that May with a vacuum-bagged Kevlar-E-glass hull over a closed-cell foam core, built using a new "scrimp" resin-infusion process that forced resin into the laminate at 2,000 psi. Hinckley describes itself as one of the first American builders to adopt SCRIMP resin infusion more broadly. In 2018, the company moved to epoxy resin infusion, citing a resin material of 40 percent greater strength and improved environmental benefits.
Lines and generations
The Bermuda 40 remained in production for more than three decades without a change to its hull shape, though Hinckley offered it in three sequential versions — the original Custom, the Mark II, and, from 1972, the Mark III, which moved the mainmast aft two feet and raised it another four feet three inches. Deck construction evolved across that run too, from solid fiberglass laminate to balsa coring and, on the last boats, PVC foam. The Sou'wester line carried Hinckley's cruising sailboats through a wider range of sizes and decades, from the 42/43 (1982–2006) up through the 51 (1984) and the 59 (1982–2001); the final Sou'wester 59 builds swapped in composite hulls — Kevlar and carbon fiber laid up with the same vacuum-bagging technique introduced on the Picnic Boat. The Pilot 35, in production from 1962 to 1975, followed eight earlier wood-hulled boats and totaled 125 fiberglass hulls, including eight built in Chile using Hinckley-assisted tooling for the Chilean Navy. Smaller production runs filled out the rest of the range, including the Hinckley 38 (1968–1970), whose hulls were molded in Ontario by Hughes Boat Works before finishing in Southwest Harbor.
Who Hinckley is for
Hinckley suits buyers drawn to a builder that treated construction technique as part of its identity rather than a backdrop to styling, from early fiberglass adoption through Kevlar and resin-infusion molding. The Bermuda 40's long production run without a hull change appeals to buyers who want a known quantity with room to choose a favored deck era and rig; the larger Sou'wester line suits those who want more size and, in its later composite-hulled 59s, construction closer to the yard's more modern work.
