Mock It Up

Ring Leader’s owner, Randy Ringhaver, grew up in his family’s wooden shrimp boat-building business in St. Augustine, Florida, in the 1950s and ’60s, before they opened their first Caterpillar dealership. So he knows craftsmanship when he sees it. But one thing he had never seen before was Lyman Morse’s technique of mocking up the critical areas of a boat before commencing layup.

“Lyman Morse said, ‘Before we start this boat, we want to build a full-scale replica...out of plywood scrap. Then you can get the feel of the boat; you can get your measurements just right, like the gunwale height,’” Ringhaver recalled. When he flew up to Maine to walk through the mock-up, he reported, “You could walk through the bridge. They even had a toilet in the head. I’ve never seen another yard do that.”