Hero of the Week: Maine yacht maker will pay off student loans for new employees

 This week's HERO is a yacht maker in northeastern Maine who understands the struggle to pay tuition, and has offered the benefit of paying off student loans for new employees! BRAVO! I wish my employers did after I graduated. No matter, we need to be happy for others who don't need to ensure some of the struggles we did- it's all about helping each other!  It's wonderful to see others getting help. Here's the story from the Bangor daily news.

A T34 picnic boat is launched from Hinckley Yacht's service facility in Southwest Harbor in this 2012 file photo. The yacht maker has created a student loan program at The Landing School in Arundel to help recruit more trained boat builders. Credit: Bill Trotter / BDN

Maine yacht maker will pay off student loans for new employees

by Bill Trotter, Bangor Daily NewsNovember 18, 2022

In hopes of attracting more qualified workers, a yacht manufacturer is working with a Maine boat-building school to help finance education.

Hinckley Yachts, which employs more than 250 people in Hancock County, hopes to add roughly another 25 to 40 positions to its manufacturing and service sectors in Maine in the coming year. To help with boosting the number of trained boat builders in Maine, Hinckley has established a student loan program at The Landing School, an accredited boat-building school in Arundel.

“We are very committed to developing the talents of our existing team members and recruiting new talent to the industry,” said Geoff Berger, CEO of The Hinckley Company. “The program will support both efforts, as do all our managers and team leaders on an ongoing basis, by training and teaching our time-honored methods on the job.”

Through the Hinckley Yachts Student Loan Assistance Program, Hinckley will help pay off student loans for Landing School graduates who get jobs with the company, which employs 60 people at its service yard in Southwest Harbor and another 200 people at its manufacturing site in Trenton.

The Landing School, founded in 1978, allows students to earn diplomas in its wooden boat building, composite boat building, marine systems and yacht design programs, and Associate’s degrees in marine industry technology.

Yacht building has long been a significant industry in the state, but — like many sectors of Maine’s economy — has faced over the past couple of years an “unprecedented labor shortage,” Hinckley officials said.

Hinckley’s roots date to 1928 when it was founded in Southwest Harbor, where it initially focused on building lobster fishing boats. Now based in Rhode Island, the company specializes in power and sailing pleasure craft and has a network of service yards from Florida to Maine.

Richard Matthews, a spokesman for Hinckley Yachts, said recent high school graduates are eligible for the financial aid, but that the yacht company and the school are focusing more on recruiting people who are looking to switch careers.

“We’re working more than we ever have at the Landing School, where educators are collaborating with the industry to try to figure out ways to find new students,” Matthews said. “It’s more about people that want to reinvent themselves and change careers.”