Neighbors

Last Working Harbor

As its name suggests, Bass Harbor is one of those villages that is all about the meeting of sea and shore.

Among other things, it’s one of the last predominantly working harbors on Mount Desert Island’s increasingly rarefied waterfront.

The snug inner harbor is still home to a busy fishing fleet through the entire year. And while there are more yachts creeping into the moored fleet, they remain the exception to the rule.

That could have changed substantially in 1999 when Carlton Johnson bought the boatyard on the Bernard side of the harbor. Bobby Rich had built the cluster of buildings and piers near the head of navigable waters back in 1938. A couple of marine railways ran down like tongues from the mouths of boathouses, into the harbor.

Johnson said he recalled messing around the property when he was growing up down the road in Seal Cove.

“I’d go down to the marina and get yelled at,” he recalled. But that didn’t cool his keen interest in boat building.

He went on to work at Bass Harbor Marine in the 1980s when that facility encompassed Up Harbor Marine and what is now Morris Yachts out by the Swan’s Island Ferry Terminal.

Johnson started his own boat building and repair company in Lamoine in the 1990s. But when the facilities in Bass Harbor came on the market in 1999, Johnson couldn’t help but bite. He split the operation with Morris Yachts leaving him with Up Harbor Marine.

“I was desperate to own that yard,” he said.

Since he bought the yard, Johnson has added wheelchair accessibility, replaced all the pilings, rebuilt the floats and added a holding tank pump out facility.

For all that, the place hasn’t changed much. It’s still sort of a community boatyard. Morris Yachts reserves space on a couple of floats. Jimmy Rich has a few spots there for boats that he can’t moor in the exposed waters off his yard in Duck Cove. There are some yachts that stay at the Up Harbor floats through the summer and there are workboats that spend the whole year there, unloading their catch at the neighboring town pier.

“I bought the place because I think it’s the coolest, funkiest place I’ve ever seen,” he said. “And because when I retire, I want to sit down here and tie up boats.”