Mike Allen leaving Grey Lady Marine to build boats
BY PETER B. BRACE
At his core, Grey Lady Marine President Mike Allen is a boat builder.

Allen: "I'm not doing this for any reason other than it's time for me in my work to move along; it has nothing to do with the yacht club [though] it does have a little weight on it,"

Forming Grey Lady Marine in February 1995, he got his start in the marine business by building his own design of a fiberglass Nantucket boat that kept its passengers dry and unshaken in rough seas, and then got them well into shallow waters without scraping the barnacles off its beam.

The quintessential Nantucket sport boat, Allen's Grey Ladys, came in 21-, 23- and 25-footers and had names like Rum Daze, Boomerang and Luvyahon. To build them, Allen leased shop space behind Sun Island Transportation off Nobadeer Farm Road and employed a crew to shape the moderately narrow Vhulls from molded fiberglass. Once dry, Grey Lady Marine would custom-build the rest of the boat from the hull up.

Eleven years later - after a tragic fire destroyed Allen's original boatbuilding business, followed by his leasing the boatyard on Washington Street Ext. and eventually selling Grey Lady Marine to the Great Harbor Yacht Club and staying on as its president - Allen is going back to boatbuilding. On Feb. 8, when his contract with Great Harbor ends, he is stepping away from Grey Lady Marine to build boats part-time.

"I'm not going to be actually building boats as a business," Allen said. "I'm just going to be doing it as a hobby."

Instead of building boats from the mold up and doing all the fiberglass work himself, Allen plans to buy the fiberglass hulls and then build in all the decking, consoles, rigging and amenities. He is doing this on his own, and, aside from renting shop space on Square Rigger Road, is showing no other signs of a commercial venture at all.

"I'm just going to be doing the type of fabrication work I like to do without the big crew and without the big headaches that go along with it," he said.

Allen recently completed a 35-foot high-end sport fishing cruiser on a Duffy hull from the Atlantic Boat Company of Brooklin, Maine at Grey Lady Marine on Arrowhead Drive and is working on another sport fishing boat built from a hull from North Carolina. However, he said he wants to stick to powerboats, 35 to 38 feet in length, working only with hulls from Maine.

"I'm going to build a boat and when I'm done with it, if I choose to, maybe I'll do another," he said.

His non-compete agreement with Great Harbor Yacht Club pretty much precludes him from doing any boatyard work anyway, but Allen said he plans to help Grey Lady Marine through the transitional period from his departure through the training of his replacement.

"I'm not doing this for any reason other than it's time for me in my work to move along; it has nothing to do with the yacht club [though] it does have a little weight on it," he said. "I sold this business four-and-a-half years ago and I've been running it as an employee, and Gary [McCarthy] and Blake [Drexler] have been great.

"It's a decision that Elisa and I have made." I