.

Building a Better Adirondack Boat

by  Andy Kirkaldy

 The Addison Independent

Ferrisburgh VT – Ferrisburgh boatbuilders Steve Kaulback and David Rosen have a modern take on a 150-year-old product, one which they believe combines the best attributes of canoes and rowboats. About 20 years ago Kaulback, already an experienced canoe builder and woodworker, discovered a relative owned an Adirondack guideboat. He was immediately struck by its beauty and quality.“ I got into it and just loved it right off the bat,” said Kaulback, a New York state native who now lives near his Adirondack Guideboats’ Route 7 headquarters. “It was so far superior to anything I knew as rowboats.” Before long, he devoted himself to guideboats, which were first built by fishing and hunting guides in the Adirondacks in the mid-19th century.  The Adirondacks had just become a wilderness attraction. The guides needed a way to move around their customers and their gear.

     Rowboats were slow. Canoes were unstable. Adirondack guideboats were born, and Kaulback and Rosen believe they are still unmatched. As proof, they say their boats regularly blow the competition out of the water, including a recent 22-mile sea-going race around Cape Anne in northern Massachusetts. “The design of 150 years ago is dusting them in these races. It’s pretty incredible,” Kaulback said. “And it’s further incredible that this design was by a roughneck lot of woodsmen over there just trying to solve the problem of getting their customers from one side of the lake to the other.”

       Kaulback studied different variations on the theme before coming up with his own design. The bows of his creations curve back from the waterline toward their passengers, with the extra boat under the waterline and the less square footage exposed to the wind allowing for greater stability. "Once I became enthralled with the boats, I developed my own building system,” he said. “Over time I got a concept about what was best in a couple different boats and combined them into my own set of lines.” 

Guiding the Sales

      But just making a superior product proved not to be enough, even though the company has surged since Rosen came aboard four years ago to handle marketing and business development. “We’ve been trying frantically to build production because there’s such an eager demand out there,” said Rosen, who stopped in for a visit four years ago because he was curious about the boats and within a week became Kaulback’s partner.  Production has increased. As basically a one-man operation, Kaulback grossed about $42,000 in the year before Rosen, a former academic from New York City, who now lives in Bridport, came aboard. Adirondack Guideboat, Inc has grown to $250,000 in sales in 1999 and they are guessing they will do $500,000 in the year 2000. The company employs 10, including the two partners, in its one-story shop behind the North Ferrisburgh truck weighing station.

       Rosen and Kaulback believe their boats can tap into the $360,000,000 annual market for canoes and kayaks. The boats they build range in price from $1,900 to $2,500 for their Kevlar Vermont Packboat; to $$4,000 for their Kevlar Guideboat, to $13,000 for their cedar Adirondack guideboat. “I know how wonderful our boats are,” said Rosen. “But the reaction people have when they go out for a demo is, “I didn’t know a boat could be this fast, this stable and this much fun.”

       Guideboats are wider than canoes, giving them stability and the ability to carry three people and their belongings. Long, side-mounted oars give rowers leverage and can move the boats crisply. For example, Rosen said he once easily outpaced a boat with a six horsepower outboard engine. Rosen has given the boats wider exposure by attending craft shows- he said he sold two of their $13,000 wooden boats in Manchester recently- both boats being bought by women as surprise birthday presents for their husbands.

Finding A Bigger Pond

       But the partners know they must make a move. The company, which they say makes about 95 percent of the guideboats built anywhere, is too small to meet existing demand, never mind beginning to tap into a nationwide market. “There’s a need for more boats than we can currently make,” Kaulback said. “We can’t stay at this level and do well.” The partners have considered expanding where they are, but have also looked at Vergennes and its Otter Creek Basin. On any site, they hope to double their work force.

     The city basin would allow them “to put our customers in boats and say, “Six miles down the river and you’ve got Lake Champlain, turn right and you’re headed towards Montreal. Turn left and you’ve got the Champlain Canal and then the Hudson,” Kaulback said. “We love the idea that Vergennes has a history of boat building, and what we have to over would dovetail nicely with the future plans for the basin area.

      But money must be raised. Rosen and Kaulback have talked with the Addison County Economic Development Corporation and are considering making another move which boosted the fortune of another Vermont company – Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream. Ben and Jerry’s held an initial Vermonters-only stock offering to raise expansion capital, and Rosen and Kaulback may use the same tactic with some of the same personnel.

     “Our accountant is now researching it,” Rosen said. “He says he hasn’t been this excited since he set up Ben and Jerry.” Both are confident success is just a matter of expansion. Kaulback gestured at Route 7 and said he thinks sales whenever he sees another boat on top of a passing car. “As long as they have those roof racks, they’re going to be looking for alternative watercraft,” Kaulback says, “We’ve just got to step up to the plate.”