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July 2008
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Mary Griswold - Captain of the Shelburne Shipyard
By Amy Lilly
The Shelburne Shipyard lies at the end of Harbor Road, which winds past a series of stunning lake vistas between the old Webb-Vanderbilt estate, euphemistically called Shelburne Farms, and some of the most expensive real estate in Vermont today. The narrow road turns to gravel as it enters a forest of masted boats on cradles, some of which are large enough to pass as second-or third-homes.
There is nothing in the approach, in other words, to prepare you for the utter lack of pretension in the owner of this exclusive marina, Mary Griswold. Dressed in a loose company-embossed polo shirt, shapeless jeans, and worn, white-soled boating shoes of the 1980s variety, and indifferently cropped salt-and-pepper hair, she is like the Bernie Sanders of the large boat world, seeming to be totally unimpressed with the wealth and status that surround her. Aren't some of these worth a lot of money? I wonder aloud, craning my neck to take in a behemoth on wheels that looks to have at least three stories and is blotting out the bright May sun. Griswold, who moves through its shadow without so much as a glance in its direction, is brusque: "I don't know. I haven't owned a boat in a while, so I don't know what people pay for them these days."
A marina owner with no boat? Not to worry. Griswold, now in her early fifties, has had a lifetime of experience with boats: her parents owned the marina before her. Born in Essex Junction, she grew up sailing her family's "dinghy-type" boat on Malletts Bay. (She is not one to offer details until pressed, at which point she rattles off lists - her instrument installer puts in depth finders, radars, autopilots, for instance - with the dismissiveness of long familiarity.) While her father built up his concrete company, S.T. Griswold's in Williston, her mother, trained as a nurse, brought up her and an older brother and sister. After graduating from Essex High School, Mary went to work for her father.
When her parents decided that they wanted a different place to keep their boat, then docked in Malletts Bay, they looked around and ended up buying a whole marina. It was 1971. Decision made, Mr. Griswold continued growing his concrete business (now one of the largest in Vermont and run by Mary's brother); it was Mary's mother, with only her nursing experience to go on, who set about transforming what was then a 50-boat marina into a 500-plus one.
Mary did the bookkeeping for the first ten years while continuing to work at the concrete company. Then in 1987 she moved over to the Shelburne Shipyard to do the finances full-time and eventually-"around the mid-nineties"-took over the operation from her mother, who went into gradual retirement. Do her parents ever swing by to see how business is going? I ask, noticing on her office walls a large photograph of her father as a smiling young professional and a framed pen-and-ink sketch of her mother in three profile views. "Sometimes," she says, but they're never far in any case: they live across the street from her in Williston.
Running a business that involves hauling, launching, and repairing some of the most technically sophisticated and expensively built toys in the world would seem to require some training. These days, Griswold tells me, there are schools for fiberglass and engine repair, but not in her mother's day. And, like her mother, Griswold herself sees no need for, nor has any interest in, business or financial training. "I hope I never see the inside of a classroom again," she says, cracking a rare grin. But what her mother did have was a talent for hiring the right people. Griswold also firmly credits her own 19 employees with the marina's success-and more than once, which counts for a lot in her style of clipped, efficient conversation.
Most of the employees have been here over 12 years, she says. Six are women, and they've been here for a minimum of 18 years-"except Karen, she's been here seven." Then, suddenly struck by her own accounting of time, she sits back: "Eighteen years. Unbelievable." One of her employees also worked for her mother. Rick, she says, elaborating no further. A male employee pokes his head into the open door of her office-probably too young to be Rick, I am guessing, but no introductions are made-to ask for something from her "medicine cabinet," which consists of a mega-bottle of ibuprofen on the bookshelf. The only other interruption in the quiet office is one that dawns gradually on me, the low sound of voices on a radio. "I keep it tuned to local fire rescue frequencies," she says, explaining that she worked nights and weekends as an EMT for 15 years. "The reason you don't see any chaos," she says when I comment on the quiet, "is that nobody's new at this. I have great people."
As we move around the marina, it becomes clear that this is no top-down business establishment but something more like a medieval guild. Each person's highly specialized work in the three departments-mechanics, boat repair, launching and hauling - is performed independently on a precisely coordinated schedule. The aura of serious workmanship seems appropriate for a place with such a long history. Shelburne Shipyard has been in continuous operation since 1826, and was a working shipyard until after World War II. Boats and some ferries were made here, including the Ticonderoga, now at the Shelburne Museum. The marina's largest building is still the oldest, a 1913 concrete-block structure with a side room housing all of the original turn-of-the-century boat-making equipment, including a lathe once used to make and repair propellers. Griswold hopes to turn the room into a museum someday. In the mid-1970s, her parents bought and restored a tug boat; Griswold donated it to the Maritime Museum, which uses it to pull The Lois McClure.
Heading out of her president's office, she brings me through a large, neatly-stocked store to view the floating docks from a white, roofed deck furnished only with white, double-seater Adirondack chairs; the building was added by her parents in 1971. The docks are mostly empty, since the marina only opened days ago on May 1st, and most customers haven't requested their boats be put in yet. Others, more concerned with the look and cleanliness of their crafts, can keep their boat on land in the "valet area." They can call 20 minutes ahead and have it lowered into the water by one of two wheeled travelifts, with carrying capacities of 35 and 55 tons each. The toy currently suspended in the larger travelift is a mere 12 tons, Griswold estimates. As we make our way around, friendly dogs belonging to the employees trot up to greet me-I count at least three different inquiring faces. Various workers we pass call out cheery hellos to Mary or stop what they're doing to share a funny story or business concern.
It's clear they're all longtime friends in this guild.
As we walk through a vast room housing hundreds of neatly folded and stacked canvas boat covers, Griswold calls out "Hey, Josie!" to a woman, who comes over to chat. "They said they want their boat done like the Barrett boat," she says to Griswold, and they share a brief chuckle. The Barrett boat, I learn as we move on, is used for fuel fill-ups and was recently repainted. "The lettering came out looking really good," is the sum of Griswold's explanation. But a few minutes later we are standing in front of the Barrett Building - a winter storage building for, apparently, truly protective boat owners who may look askance at mere canvas coverings - so I finally ask who Barrett is. He's a former employee who was working here when her parents bought the place, she tells me; his parents had worked here before him. The next building, a rack storage building where boats are stacked three high, is named for a current employee, R. G. Miller, who is in charge of the hauling and launching crew. Griswold describes him as "our longest worker, 30 years"-and the one who also worked for her parents. So this is Rick - and his building, which Griswold dedicated to him four years ago.
Back in her office, Griswold fills in the details of this unusual picture of mutual employer-employee loyalty and recognition. Her workers have had health insurance since her mother's day. Griswold herself added life insurance, a "small" dental plan, uniforms, and cell phones. One employee position she has not needed to fill is marketing manager. Word of mouth, she says, is sufficient for business. (Their Web site, launched four years ago, promises "Yankee integrity," and the repair and refurbishing work they do stands out in this otherwise utilitarian site, with close-up photos of elaborate teak and fiberglass work.) As for competition, "it's a small community. There are enough boats on the lake for everyone," she says, including her four competitors, Point Bay Marina in Charlotte, and Champlain Marina, The Moorings, and Marble Island in Malletts Bay. But "we have the best employees," she says simply.
And none of the other marinas is headed by a woman. Griswold recalls that a husband-and-wife team co-owns the Willsborough Bay Marina across the water in New York, but otherwise-she considers it - she is the only woman. And large pleasure boats still mean an almost exclusively male clientele. "Oh, women don't own boats," she says flatly when I ask to speak to a female customer. "They enjoy boats, and they may jointly own boats with their husbands," she amends herself, but "it's not the woman who takes charge of the boat." When I ask how being a lone woman in a traditionally male stronghold affects her, she says, again simply, it doesn't.
Her manner leaves little room for doubt. This is a woman who has been at the office by 7:30 a.m. five days a week, 11 months a year, for twenty years, either planning for or working the short New England boating season in which she has to both "make everyone happy and make the money." She finds ways of separating her life from her business-by not owning a boat, for one, but also tending to her house, three dogs and a cat, reading mystery novels, and vacationing in Boston and Montreal. And, perhaps only today, she has allowed herself one accession to femininity: two small, dangling gold and red gemstone earrings, and one tiny diamond stud. But, as she puts it, Shelburne Shipyard is "part of who I am. It's been a part of me for so long" that, in a sense, she has managed to remove gender from the equation.
What's left is one streamlined, efficiently run business and a whole lot of respect.
For more information on the Shelburne Shipyard, visit www.shelburneshipyard.com
Associate Editor Amy Lilly lives in Burlington.
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