With the deal officially closing at the end of 2024, Huckins Yachts of Jacksonville, Florida has been added to Bristol Marine’s portfolio of marine businesses, joining the company’s Poppasquash Road facility, acquired in 1998, the Somerset, Mass. facility (2012), and the Boothbay Harbor, Maine facility (2017.)

Bristol Marine president Andy Tyska quickly learned that he had acquired a brand with a uniquely devoted following, with some Huckins loyalists expressing concerned curiosity about Tyska’a plans.

Fortunately, Tyska’s body of work, easily seen on display at his Bristol headquarters, speaks for itself, and for the man who has carved out a reputation for excellence in his industry.

A graduate of the University of Michigan with a degree in Naval Architecture, Tyska first found his way to Bristol as an intern for Halsey Herreshoff. Though he wasn’t afforded the opportunity to do much more than paint and varnish, he was successful at one key thing: building a solid network of contacts among some of the best boatbuilders in the business.

By his own account, Tyska needled Ted Hood into hiring him, and he moved to Bristol in 1994. For 4 years, he worked for Hood while moonlighting on some of his own designs. Then, in 1998, the flagship Bristol Marine location came on the market. The rest, as they say, is history.

A company-wide rebrand

It soon became clear to Tyska that he was not just acquiring another boatyard, to be renamed. Huckins has a unique heritage and a very well-established brand. First launched in 1928 and family-owned until the recent sale, Huckins positions itself as a manufaccturer that champions uniqueness and traditional craftsmanship while creating fiberglass composite hulls — a marriage of timeless elegance and high performance.

In deference to that, and the storied histories of all of the Bristol Marine facilities, his entire organization is undergoing a rebrand. Under the Bristol Marine umbrella, Huckins will retain the name Huckins Yachts. He’s throwing it back to the early 1900’s here in Bristol and renaming the Poppasquash facility Wardwell’s Boatyard — what it was called back when folks who bought their yachts from Herreshoff Manufacturing came to Wardwell’s to get them serviced. In Boothbay Harbor, he is naming the boatyard there in honor of Fred Sample whose Down East boatbuilders operated from that location. And Somerset is now home to Bowers Shipyard, its name when it was the builder of three-masted wooden schooners in the late 1880’s.

“All of our facilities will be powered by Bristol Marine, a thread that stitches together our presence on historic working waterfronts; sharing the effort to preserve the legacy of family run marine businesses,” said Tyska.

As Tyska continues to expand both the service and product development sides of his growing business empire, he remains dedicated to his role as a steward of boatbuilding history. He has already created a museum at the Samples Shipyard in collaboration with Herreshoff Curator Evelyn Ansel that presents the history of the yard and the Down East brand, and he plans to do the same at Huckins.

As he did when he built the first Bristol Marine on land that might otherwise have gone over to condominiums, Tyska continues to value the importance of workforce development and building both a team and a network of skilled technicians and craftsmen. In doing so, he is preserving not just these facilities in their boatbuilding communities, but also the industry itself — the working waterfront — with Jacksonville the latest beneficiary of his talent and vision.

“We will continue to service, refit, and repair yachts of all kinds at our Jacksonville facility while being a resource to all current and future Huckins owners who what to join us in preserving the past and innovating for the future,” he said.