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Under the watchful eye of Sabre Yachts’ Phil Robinson, Ray Routhier uses a power drill to countersink holes in the deck of a Sabre 40 Sedan at the company’s manufacturing site in Raymond.

Gordon Chibroski/Staff Photographer

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Ray Routhier, left, helps boatbuilders Trevor Fragale, center, and Phil Robinson, right, as they remove a railing before countersinking the attachment holes on a Sabre 40 Sedan under construction at Sabre Yachts in Raymond.

Gordon Chibroski/Staff Photographer

THIS WEEK'S JOB

TITLE: Deck assembler at Sabre Yachts in Raymond.

WORKER: Phil

Robinson, 30, of Casco.

HOURS: 6 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday through

Thursday

DUTIES: All facets of assembling the deck and main cabin areas of

Sabre's luxury motor yachts and sailing yachts, including installing

windows, railings, hardware, and woodwork.

SURPRISING FACT: These

yachts, made near Sebago Lake, sell for $400,000 to $1.2 million and

are sold to people all over the world.

PERKS: Getting to work with your

hands, seeing a finished product that is often featured at boat shows

and in magazines. Sometimes traveling out of state to work on boats.

ABOUT

THIS SERIES

MAINE AT WORK takes an interactive look at iconic, visible or just

plain interesting jobs done by folks in Maine. Reporter Ray Routhier

shadows a worker or workers, reports what he sees and tries his hand at

some of the job's duties.

IF YOU'D like to suggest a job to be explored in this feature, e-mail

rrouthier@pressherald.com or call 791-6454.

RAYMOND — Don't scratch the chrome.

It's one thing if somebody tells you that while working on their bicycle, or maybe when washing a car.

But I happened to be drilling a hole near a chrome deck railing on a 40-foot motor yacht when I got this advice. In an instant, I remembered that the boat I was working on at Sabre Yachts would sell for more than $600,000. Some of the boats being built when I was there will sell for more than a $1 million.

So I steadied myself as best I could, and prepared to drill the cleanest, neatest, safest hole I had ever drilled in my life.

"There are two layers of fiberglass, after the first one you'll hit another, so don't let it go too fast," Phil Robinson, a deck department worker at Sabre was telling me. "If the drill slips you might scratch the chrome."

I didn't slip, and I didn't scratch.

But if I had to do it hundreds of times a week, like Robinson and his co-workers do, I'm not so sure I'd do as well.

More than 2,500 high-end sailboats and motor yachts have been made by Sabre, a 40-year-old Maine boat building company. Most of the work is done by individuals or small groups of craftsman, all working on complicated schedules and deadlines so that every piece of the boat will be done when the next group needs it.

The day I visited Sabre, the airplane hangar-like facility had several hulls and decks of boats in various states of construction. Robinson and three others were working on the deck and main cabin of a Sabre 40 Sedan, a 40-foot motor yacht. Around the corner was the hull of that same boat, where other people were doing mechanical work and installing some woodwork in the lower cabins. At some point, the hull and deck would be put together.

Because I have absolutely no skills in the areas of engines, electricity or woodworking, I thought I'd do the least damage to the yachts if I hung out in the deck department.

Robinson, who has been with the company for four years, explained to me that his parents had both worked at Sabre. He had done some construction work before getting this job, so he had a lot of the basic skills.

When I got there, Robinson and co-worker Trevor Fragaly were preparing to install an assembled deck railing that would go three-quarters of the way around the 40-foot-long deck. For this, Robinson measured and re-measured, making sure the railing assembly lined up in such a way that it followed the same line all around the boat.

"We do so many different models, and every one is a little different," said Robinson. "Sometimes we do a custom boat and lots of things can be different."

At various points I helped Robinson and Fragaly lift the railing assembly onto the deck, and take it down. When it was on the deck, I helped them go around to the various railing posts and use a marker to mark the three screw holes near the base of each post.

Then came the drilling. Not only did I have to drill the hole, but I had to use considerable force to hold the railing assembly in place so the hole would be in the right place.

Before using screws to attach the railing, we needed to "countersink" the screws. I had no idea what this meant. Turns out it meant we used a slightly larger drill bit to make the top of the hole a little wider, so that the top of the screw would sit below the surface of the deck after it had been screwed in.

We were countersinking, I was told, so we wouldn't crack the gel coating on the deck. It made sense to me that someone paying $600,000 for a boat wouldn't want even the thinnest cracks or tiniest scratches on their new purchase.

After we had countersunk most of the holes, Robinson began vacuuming up fiberglass dust, so it wouldn't stick to other parts of the boat. He told me that the dust gets on everything, and that it makes some people itchy when they first start working here.

"It happened to me for a while, but I got used to it," said Robinson.

You also get used to the smell of fiberglass in the air, Robinson said. Workers and management say it's a lot better than it used to be, partly because of ventilation and new technologies. To a newcomer, like me, it was strong, but to veterans like Robinson it's barely noticeable.

Charlie Manchester, supervisor of the deck department, told me that workers could get masks and other equipment to help with breathing if the smell was a problem. What is not optional is the wearing of protective eyeglasses. It's hard to tell what might come flying at a worker – fiberglass dust or sawdust – from one department to the next. So eyewear is standard.

The work gets to be pretty routine after a while, Robinson told me. One of his favorite tasks is applying the long bowed wood trim to the deck, because it takes a little more time and craftsmanship to get it just right. Robinson said he likes focusing on one thing for a long time, as it makes the time go faster for him.

Manchester told me that one perk of the job is that sometimes workers get to travel to do warranty work on boats. Mostly it's at ports on the East Coast, but one crew got to travel to Amsterdam, in the Netherlands, to work on a boat.

Sabre's boats are sold to people around the world. The company holiday card shows one of their boats in the water in Hong Kong.

At one point, Robinson was cleaning areas of the deck with acetone, a flammable substance that smells like gasoline.

"It makes me kind of sleepy," he said of the smell. "But you get used to it."

The one part of the job Robinson hasn't gotten used to as easily is the classic rock music being piped into the work area every day, at the request of his older co-workers.

"That's the worst part of the job for me," said Robinson, as Journey's "Open Arms" played. "I wish sometimes I could get a little hip-hop in here."

Staff Writer Ray Routhier can be contacted at 791-6454 or at:

rrouthier@pressherald.com.