David Rosen:  Steve was easy to explain. He saw an Adirondack guideboat being built and fell in love. In David's case......actually it was the same. He saw his first guideboat and fell in love.
        He came across this boat at a yard sale. And, in truth, it wasn’t a very good boat. But Dave didn’t know any better. He bought it and soon went with his 4-year-old son to the Adirondack Museum where he discovered what quality guideboats were all about. He also found Steve’s name in a coffee table book.  As it happened, both he and Steve lived in Vermont, about 20 miles from each other.
       David’s barn had recently burned down. As he watched it burn, he didn’t know if it was insured. As it happens, it was. Thousands of dollars of woodworking equipment melted away and rack upon rack of neatly sorted cherry, maple, butternut, pine, black birch and walnut went up in flames. With the insurance money David bought that first bad guideboat and then part of Steve's company. Even though David had been a woodworker, he certainly wasn’t in Steve’s league. Their general sense was....Steve would build ‘em..... Dave would sell ‘em.
       The only problem was…Dave could sell faster than Steve could build. So, they started expanding the company. As of this writing we now employee a dozen craftsmen. Every one of those employees, if we started building, say, kitchen cabinets, would leave and find another place to work....probably near the water....probably building boats.
       When folks tell David that he's a wonderful salesman, he shakes his head and says, “Actually, I’m a lousy salesman...but I'm a good advocate. Our actual salesmen are sitting out there in the yard,” says David as he points to Steve’s boats.
       Prior to discovering these boats, David had been a sociologist, he taught college, he had been a surveyor, a machinist, a construction worker, a medic in the Army and the caretaker of a camp for inner city kids. 15 years before ever hearing of an Adirondack guideboat, Dave had a dream in which a woman showed him three boats tied to a dock. She invited him to select which boat he would take. He didn’t know it at the time, but he can quite clearly recall that all three boats were Adirondack guideboats. That's how deep the connection goes.


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    There are many pleasures in our business. None is more keen than the friendships we’ve made: with customers, potential customers, with suppliers and those who put on the shows we attend. But perhaps the keenest pleasures are the friendships made with the folks who work in our shop. Steve and Dave receive most of the credit for the quality and beauty of our boats. However, if you examined the boats carefully, you’d find nine sets of fingerprints. Below we invite you to meet the crew. 

Randy Stewart: People often marvel at Steve and Dave’s ability to run all over the country selling boats. To which Dave responds, “It’s Randy who lets us do that.” Randy Stewart is our production manager.....he designs tools, parts and manufacturing processes. If he hands you a chisel and says, "Be careful, it's sharp,” you'd best be careful. 

     More than likely, when you call the shop it’ll be Randy who answers the phone. He talks people through the building of our kits, he negotiates with suppliers and when he reported to the salesman that something was wrong with the adhesive in the latest batch of 3M sandpaper.....his complaint rattled its way up the chain and 3M made a world-wide recall of that run of sandpaper. Seems to us, only one person was paying attention. 

    Early in his life Randy was a truck mechanic. Then he became an aviation mechanic and took a job maintaining helicopters flying over a tuna fleet near Guam. Aircraft maintenance is difficult enough.....doing it on a pitching boat in a salty environment in the middle of the ocean ... well, that's even harder. Randy's job was to keep his birds and his pilots in the air....which he did.

     Randy first met Steve at a show at the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum, he came to the shop for a look-see and 12 years have passed since then. Randy’s passions include radio controlled aircraft, fine cigars, Cuban if you’ve got ‘em, science fiction and working to 1/10,000th of an inch...to which Dave says, “Please, Randy, don’t do that to us.” The photo shows Randy teaching Joshua, David’s son, how to weld. (Yes, that's the same Joshua as in the photo above.)

   The smoked glass in Randy’s welding helmet is genuine OSHA approved safety glass, the rest of the helmet is made of genuine OSHA approved cardboard.

Justin Martin:  Justin Martin is one of the hardest working, smartest, most up-energy and straight-shooting people we’ve ever known. He ran Mad River Canoe's molding room before the company got bought out and moved south. This photo was part of a series of wedding-announcement photos that were taken in one of our wooden boats. 

Ian Martin: 

      Ian was brought into Mad River Canoe by his brothers as part of a work study program in high school. He became the shop supervisor in charge of the finishing department at Mad River, all before his eighteenth birthday. Ian and Justin do a bit of everything, sales, demos, wooden boats, varnishing and molding all of our boats. A visitor once watched them in the molding room and said, "They were incredible. They didn't talk but their coordination was perfect. It was like a beautiful machine on auto-pilot."

Randy Martin:

      Randy was the first of the Martins to start building boats. When Mad River Canoe was located in Vermont Randy worked in the composites department. Soon he became so skilled he took over as the head of Research & Development. When Mad River began looking for other employees with similar work-skills, Randy said, "Well, I've got a brother......." and so began Justin's introduction to  boats. 

      In our shop, when a composites issue becomes particularly confusing, the answer is always the same, "Let's go ask Randy."  

      Randy also builds our molds and plugs. (Plugs are the composite sculptures from which molds are cast.) Most of the time, however, Randy, makes the wooden parts for our cedar guideboats and cedar guideboat kits.   

Jack Martin:

      Jack has had many careers...woodworking has been a common theme...but the other building trades are also well-represented. For us Jack mostly makes the wooden parts for our boats.  Justin says, "Dad has always tried to keep his family close to one another ...and I think he was successful in that. If you were to offer my dad any job in the world I think It would be the one he has now.....working with his boys."

Jack and his 3 sons, Ian, Randy and Justin.

Raven Billings:

      Since 1999 Raven has been building our oars. By a quick back-of-the- envelope calculation, he has made 5000 oars. It is a tedious, demanding, precise, dusty, noisy and difficult job. And it is also a solitary job.....how he puts up with it is a mystery to the rest of us....a mystery for which we are all grateful.

Dan Bushey:  Dan does the final assembly on our boats. This includes the installation of gunwales, seats, oarlocks and decks. This last, the installation of decks, is often a sign of sloppy or careful boatbuilding. A visitor once admired the fit between the deck and gunwale and said, “I don’t even think you can measure how tight that joint is....and they are both curved pieces of wood, mated perfectly to each other.” 

     His friend said, “Oh, I could do that?” To which Dave said, “In 15 minutes?” The friend said, “Oh, no. It’d take me all day....and I’d ruin three of them before I got it right.”  Well, Dan doesn’t ruin any of them and it doesn’t take him all day. If you own one of our boats or stop to see them at a show, take a look at the deck and how perfectly it is installed in your boat. 

    Dan loves birding and fishing. When the south wind is blowing and the hawks are migrating, Dan might not come to work for a day or two...he’ll be out catching, banding and safely releasing birds on their yearly migration. Below is Dan with an immature bald eagle. If you ever meet Dan in person, ask him how much it hurt when a mature bald eagle bit his nipple and refused to let go.

     This is Dan with one of his catfish. He routinely catches fish of this size. He's got a secret, a particular bait, at a particular place on Lake Champlain, at a particular time of day at a particular depth. With that information, and one of our boats, you should be able to catch a similar fish. By the way, this fish, along with the eagle, were returned to their native habitats unharmed....one into the air, the other into the water.