Nautical Angle Helps Boat Builder
Set Sail In Oyster Bay

By Ambrose Clancy
Friday, March 14, 2008

If you take South Street, Oyster Bay’s main drag, all the way through town it dead ends just a few feet from the bay. On a misty afternoon last week a few cocky mallards strutted in an empty street meandering off to the west.

It’s a perfect place for Wagner Boat Works to take over a building, where a front showroom leads to the shop, and Jerry Thompson, master boat builder, strips blue painter’s tape from the gunwales of a 15-foot catboat.

The company moved here in August after the owner, Barry Wagner, bought fiberglass molds from Menger Boatworks, which went under four years ago. Sinking about $250,000 in startup costs, the company has already sold five catboats including the luxe vessel of the line, running 23 feet. The prices of the custom made crafts range from $13,500 to $80,000.

Just as Oyster Bay has a rich nautical history – there are efforts to revitalize the sleepy waterfront by attracting businesses such as Wagner – the catboat has played its part in the region’s watery past. Thompson said catboats were of Dutch design and used as swift, durable workers in New Amsterdam’s harbor, offloading goods from tall ships and conveying them to Manhattan or other ports up the Hudson River.

Unlike Menger, or any other current boat builder on Long Island, Wagner is only building “cats,” Thompson said, since there is a niche to be exploited in the recreational boat market because of the many virtues of the distinctive crafts.

They are easy to operate with just one sail on a single mast. The cats can sail almost anywhere, even in shallows because they don’t draw much water, Thompson said. The 23-footer, weighing 6,900 pounds, only draw 23 inches of water while the 15-footer skims the surface only drawing seven inches.

“It’s like a sports car,” Thompson said.

The market includes everyone, he said, but pointed to older sailors “coming down from large sailboats but still love to sail a boat they can bring the grandkids along,” Thompson said.

The ease of sailing, plus the design of catboats, half as wide as they are long, make it an especially stable boat so young people can learn to sail safely.

“You can stand on the sides of these boats and they’ll never go over,” Thompson said.

Stability doesn’t mean a lack of fun, he added, saying the story goes that these boats got their name because they’re “quick as cats.”

Wagner said the start-up was going well: The three-employee operation could deliver a customized 15-foot catboat in a month, and the top of the line boat could be had in about three months.

Sailboats are mostly a male preserve, Wagner said, except for catboats, which attract women because of the ease of handling and the amenities of the larger boats, which have comfortable bunks, full galleys and showers.

“Women also really like the look of these boats,” Wagner said.

The latest statistics on registered and unregistered recreational boats in the United States puts the number at about 18 million, a rise of three million since 1990. There might be a slight spike in the number of sailboat purchases this season over power boats, since the Northwest Marine Trade Association reports that when gas prices go up significantly, so do sales of wind-powered crafts.

Wagner’s launch got a leg up through favorable lease arrangements for the building from the owner, Wang Corp., which owns a good deal of property on the waterfront and is looking to revitalize the area.

“They want companies like ours here,” Wagner said.