Hinckley Yachts | Since 1928

The Quiet Icons of American Boatbuilding

There are certain names on the water that seem to move slower than time itself. Names that gather a patina of salt air, of varnished teak, of centuries-old shipwright tradition. For sailors in New England, and increasingly across the world, that name is Hinckley.

Since 1928, the yard in Southwest Harbor, Maine has been shaping more than boats. It has been shaping a way of being on the water—calm, confident, and quietly proud. These are not vessels that clamor for attention. They are boats that invite it.

A Beginning in Wood and Salt Air

Henry R. Hinckley opened the shop at the edge of Mount Desert Island with an eye for craft and an instinct for proportion. In the early years, Hinckley boats were wooden sloops and yawls, sturdy enough for Maine waters yet always marked by elegance.

By the late 1950s, the company stepped into history with the Bermuda 40, among the first fiberglass sailboats built in America. She was a revelation—timeless in line, forward-looking in material. A boat as comfortable carving across the Gulf Stream as gliding into a Nantucket mooring field.

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The Picnic Boat That Changed Everything

If the Bermuda 40 was Hinckley’s legacy piece, the Picnic Boat, launched in 1994, was its cultural phenomenon. Inspired by the working lobster boats of Maine but slimmed down and refined, it offered day-cruising with ease, grace, and a touch of jet-powered mischief.

It wasn’t the boat people asked for. It was the boat they didn’t know they needed. With water-jet propulsion that could skim through the shallows and joystick controls that made docking almost playful, the Picnic Boat rewrote what boating could feel like.

Today, its modern siblings—the Picnic Boat 34, 37, and 40—carry the same silhouette: low, sleek, and unmistakably Hinckley.

Built Like Fine Furniture

Step aboard, and it’s clear. A Hinckley is as much an interior as an exterior. Hand-varnished teak, flawless joinery, bronze fittings polished to a quiet glow. Every seam and surface is fussed over. Owners often compare them to heirloom furniture, built not just to last a season, but to be handed down.

That detail comes at a price, and Hinckley has never been shy about it. They build fewer than thirty boats a year, each one custom, each one carrying a Maine fingerprint. It’s slow work, intentionally so.

Technology, Without the Noise

For all the classic lines, Hinckley has long been a laboratory. The JetStick joystick system made maneuvering effortless before anyone else thought of it. Their DualGuard composite hulls—layers of carbon, Kevlar, and resin—are as tough as they are light. This balance of tradition and technology is what lets Hinckley float so confidently in two worlds: the old and the new.

Why We’re Still Drawn to Them

There are faster boats. There are cheaper boats. But there are few boats that embody such an odd and wonderful tension: luxury without ostentation, innovation without flash, and tradition without stagnation.

The Picnic Boat, nearly thirty years on, remains a symbol—not of excess, but of ease. A boat to take friends to a hidden cove. A boat that doesn’t fight the water, but folds into it.

A Final Thought

Evening on Penobscot Bay. The tide has turned slack, the breeze has softened, and a Hinckley Picnic Boat hums its way home, carving the water with quiet authority. The sun burns low, glinting on varnished teak and bronze. It’s not about speed. It’s not about power. It’s about grace.

That’s the Hinckley way.