Michael Porter has spent his life in and around boats, mostly on Chebeague Island. This, together with 25 years of experience building and repairing boats, has given him a solid grasp of what works and what does not.

Growing up around fishermen, in the Maine fish-house culture that is now almost vanished, where the older men told stories going back to the Civil War, he learned early the importance of function. When the story starts, "we were coming in from New Ledge one night in a northeast snowstorm," there is just no room in it for a boat that is not seaworthy, whose systems do not work.

Boats--all boats, yachts, passenger ferries, and fishboats alike--are vehicles for dreams, but beside that, they all have to contend with the ocean, in our case the North Atlantic. No two people have identical needs, and fitting the boat to the need, making sure it will work the way it is supposed to, is where the designer comes in.