Tag Archives: Steve Spurling

Steve Spurling: 92 and still building boats

SOUTHWEST HARBOR – At Jarvis Newman’s boat shop, on Main Street in Southwest Harbor, the walls are full of framed photos of old boats.Newman was one of the first fiberglass boatbuilders on the Maine coast, producing hulls for luxury yachts, commercial fishing boats, and Friendship sloops at the rate of one every two weeks until he sold the business in 1978. He took the mold for his first yacht from a boat designed by his father-in-law, Raymond Bunker, who built wooden boats with his partner, Ralph Ellis, in nearby Manset from 1946 to 1978. continue reading