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While walking through one of Hodgdon Yachts’ manufacturing facilities, I picked up what I thought was a solid wooden locker door that measured about two feet by three feet. I say thought because it looked like wood, it felt like wood — heck, it even smelled like wood. But it weighed about as much as a Frisbee. The door had been hollowed out and the core replaced with lightweight honeycomb aluminum. While this is hardly a simple process, it’s just a small example of the capabilities that Hodgdon Yachts has been developing.

“We’re not just a little old boatbuilder in Boothbay,” said Ed Roberts, Hodgdon’s director of sales and marketing. “A lot of people don’t know we’re America’s oldest boat company, and a lot of people don’t know we’re working in advanced composites.” The yard opened in 1816.

Hodgdon Yachts is actually made up of five divisions, with headquarters in East Boothbay, Maine. Originally known for building plank-on-frame and cold-molded sailboats, the company has expanded its capabilities to a wide variety of advanced composites in the construction of hulls and decks, as well as interiors (View our complete photo gallery here).

The irony for Hodgdon is that its almost under-the-radar existence has attracted famous clients who covet their privacy, but this is one of the company’s biggest hurdles. Pages-long confidentiality agreements accompany so many of the boats that come out of the facility that the company has not been able to benefit from the exposure that these specialized vessels would normally generate. “We’re the best-kept secret in the boating industry,” Roberts said with a laugh.

At its headquarters, Hodgdon has three building halls with more than 55,000 square feet of space divided among construction, finishing and offices. From the outside, the offices look like those you’d find at a typical small company, but in the reception area, photos of some of the company’s more famous sailboats, such as Antonisa, Scheherazade, Windcrest and the commuter Liberty, as well as signed photos from naval departments around the world and proclamations from the U.S. Department of Defense tell another story.

Hodgdon has worked closely with the University of Maine researching various composites, as well as timber, for use in boat construction. Under contract to the Office of Naval Research, Hodgdon Defense Composites developed the 83-foot Mk V.1 High-Speed Composite Craft. Nicknamed Mako, the boat was constructed with a carbon fiber/Kevlar composite and powered by twin 2,400-horsepower MTU diesels turning Kamewa waterjets. Top speed is 50-plus knots; the range is 500 nautical miles. The boat was developed to showcase the ability of high-performance composites to absorb the shock of wave impacts. Launched in January 2008, Mako met or exceeded the basic requirements for operating speed, weight, capacity and range. The composites used to build the boat were engineered from a proprietary formula developed for the Navy by Hodgdon’s engineers.