About Michael Porter Marine Design

I have spent my life in and around boats, even during periods when I was not involved with them professionally. I have raced my own and other peoples' sailboats, run my own workboats, and logged considerable sea time moving boats around between New England and the Caribbean. This, together with 25 years of experience running a boatshop, building (mostly to my own designs) and repairing boats, has given me a very good idea of what works and what doesn't.

Growing up around fishermen, in the Maine fish-house culture that is now almost vanished, where the older men told stories going back to the Civil War, I learned early the importance of function. When the story starts, "we were coming in from New Ledge one night in a northeast snowstorm," there is just no room in it for a boat that is not seaworthy, whose systems do not work.

Boats -- all boats, yachts, passenger ferries, and fishboats alike -- are vehicles for dreams, but besides that, they all have to contend with the ocean, in our case the North Atlantic. Their owners need to have dreams, but somebody has to mind the store.

If dreams are not to end in disaster, the boat has to work. The functional aspects of the boat, seaworthiness, systems, and fitness for the intended purpose, must be taken seriously.

No two people have identical needs, and fitting the boat to the need, making sure it will work the way it is supposed to, is where the designer comes in.