Rebuilding Boats, Preserving Family Memories on Casco Bay

At Yankee Marina and Boatyard, our favorite boat projects are really not boat projects at all — they are people projects. Take Lil’ Toot, for example.

This 26’ wooden tugboat has been around our docks in Yarmouth, Maine, for decades. So when Lil’ Toot was due for some restoration work recently, our crew immediately stepped forward to take on the project. The distinctive 6-ton vessel, originally built in the 1950s for work in the Connecticut River, had always been a significant part of its owners’ lives, a family from nearby South Bristol. “It was the great compromise. Dad always wanted a Friendship sloop, but mom wasn’t a big sailor,” says Don Bourne, whose father bought the boat in the late 1980s.

“Poppie” Bourne

After “Poppie” Bourne passed away in May 2013, his family decided to have the Yankee Marina and Boatyard crew take care of some deferred maintenance. In addition to plank and keelson work, plus reseaming and repainting the entire hull, our technicians replaced an aging 38-horsepower Isuzu diesel with a 53-horsepower Yanmar. They swapped out the cable steering system with hydraulics. The exhaust system, which had formerly been a converted automobile exhaust muffler, was upgraded. Finally the interior paint was refreshed, while still preserving the color scheme and patina that Poppie had enjoyed.

Like many projects, Lil’ Toot held a few surprises. Though it’s unclear how much actual towing the boat ever did, once Yankee Marina & Boatyard General Manager Curt Mildrum removed the old engine he discovered mounts for a much larger one — indicating that this “cute” tugboat might have had much more brawn back in the day. In addition, the stern including framing that suggested the boat could handle serious towing jobs. (Other discoveries were more alarming, like the ¾-inch pin that’d been worn down to an eighth of an inch!)

For owner Don Bourne, bringing Lil’ Toot to Yankee Marina & Boatyard was a no-brainer. “In seeing the work that Curt and his crew have done on other boats, including all their Grand Banks yachts, I knew that if you’re working on those kinds of boats, you can certainly work on Lil’ Toot,” he says. “Curt is a perfectionist, and that’s just what we wanted.”

Don Bourne says that his mother had tears in her eyes when she saw Lil’ Toot for the first time last summer, its smokestack once again plying the waters around South Bristol, but with Poppie’s grandchildren now at the helm. Seeing the happiness of that next generation aboard Lil’ Toot and observing the safety of the newly refurbished vessel made the entire project a success. “Me and my father knew that you had to pull this, push that to operateLil’ Toot,” Don Bourne says. “Now it’s just touch and go — the boat really is a showpiece.”