Seaweed Hits It Out of the Park

I remember having a conversation with Dale Haley of Oceanville Boatworks in Stonington back in early 2016. Dale and Oceanville partner Tim Staples had just launched the first finish project from their new shop, Rock Bottom, a 46’ Mussel Ridge for Stonington lobsterman Richard Larrabee Jr.

The customer was happy and so were Dale and Tim, who had a bunch of repair/repower projects to tackle along with more prospective finish jobs.

“We’ll do this for four or five years and see where we are then,” said Dale that day, focused on doing right by their customers, one job at a time.

Ten years later, Oceanville Boatworks and their small crew (which now includes Tim’s son Dwight) is going strong, with a long list of new builds and reborn boats out the door.

Their latest launch is the 50’ Seaweed for former-Red-Sox-manager-turned-full-time-lobsterman John Farrell of Gloucester, Massachusetts, a head-turner of a boat that more than one observer has referred to as “a major-league lobster machine.” 

Plenty to do

Even though Rock Bottom was Oceanville’s first new boat build, Dale Haley and Tim Staples were already veterans of the business. Previous to their joining forces, Dale had spent 27 years at Billings Diesel & Marine (“I learned a lot working there”) while Tim’s history in boatbuilding dated back to the 1970s — the early days of Duffy & Duffy — along with tours of duty at Atlantic Boat and Hinckley Yachts. When the two first met through mutual friends, they immediately hit it off, sharing similar work ethics, focus, and humor.

“Tim and I got along great right from the beginning,” said Dale. “We ended up doing a few repair jobs for local fishermen, working out of fish boxes and renting space and we really liked working together. That’s when we said, ‘Let’s do this. Let’s get serious.’”

With a new shop built on land alongside Dale and wife Sherri’s Stonington home, the duo hit the ground running. Rock Bottom’s launch was followed by a new Super 46 Wesmac to finish later that year, with repair work to fill any gaps in the schedule — and that’s been the basic flow of things during the shop’s first decade. 

The best advertising anyone can have is satisfied customers, which is one of the reasons John Farrell says he had Oceanville finish his new 50’ Seaweed.

John Farrell’s first love

John Farrell’s passion for lobstering never left him throughout his professional

While it’s pretty much impossible to write about John Farrell without mentioning his baseball career, what you have to understand is this: his first love has always been working on the water.

He began lobstering with his father Tom Farrell, whose nickname was “Seaweed,” when he was in third grade and never forgot the lessons he learned as a kid on the deck of a boat, no matter where life found him.

John’s baseball career (he was drafted by the Cleveland Indians upon graduating from college in 1984 and pitched his first major league game for them in ‘87) took him away from the ocean physically for years, but his heart was still out there. John’s hiring by the Red Sox (first as a pitching coach in 2007 and eventually becoming the team’s manager from 2013 to 2017, capturing two American League division titles and a World Series pennant), allowed him to get in an outboard and tend a small string of traps within commuting distance of Fenway Park.

And by late 2018, John was back on the water full-time, fishing a 46-footer named Seaweed after his dad. He went hard. He was respectful of his fellow fishermen out on the grounds and he was accepted.

“John Farrell’s a class act,” one Gloucester fisherman said to me. “He’s proved himself out there ... you gotta respect the guy.”

A bigger Seaweed

The Oceanville Boatworks crew (left to right) Dale Haley, Dwight Staples, Tim Staples.

Pushing the weather, especially during the winter months, John realized he could use a bigger boat under his boots. He was especially impressed by fellow Gloucester lobsterman Don Lowe’s Anne Rowe, an Osmond 47 stretched to 50’.

John said he was aware of Oceanville Boatworks’ reputation long before he met with them. A face-to-face conversation and tours of a couple of Oceanville-built boats (one of them an Osmond 50) sealed the deal.

H&H Marine in Steuben built John’s new hull by lengthening one of their Osmond 47 (47’4”x19’2”) hulls to 50’. The bare hull and molded house/deck unit was trucked to Billings Diesel to receive her power package — a D16 Volvo Penta (750 hp @ 1900 rpm) matched to a 2.47:1 ZF 500 gear — and 3” driveline.

Long Cove Marine, another local shop, handled the hydraulics and wiring for Seaweed while KB Welding took care of the 50-footer’s metal fabrication, including the custom hydraulic tailgate.

John praised all hands involved for their talents and communication. “Everyone was fantastic to work with and I can’t say enough about their communication. Besides making trips up there and our phone conversations, Tim’s son Dwight took videos as they went along and kept me updated.”

The new Seaweed passed sea trials with the slow-turning Volvo easily handling a 40”x40” 4-bladed Ahoy prop. At 1600 rpm the 50-footer cruised at 15 knots with a fuel burn of 22 gph; top speed is 19 knots.

More importantly, John was pleased with the stability and comfort of the big Osmond (“You really feel the difference at the end of the day.”) and spacious work deck, which he estimates would comfortably carry 240 traps.

You could say Oceanville Boatworks hit another one out of the ballpark.