Freeport boat restoration duo aims to put SUV motor on water

FREEPORT — A chance encounter in 2009 landed Freeport Boat Outlet owner George “Do Do” Brockman in Pebble Beach, Calif., last August to dine with design executives from the Japanese car maker, Infiniti.
The question before them: How might an 8-cylinder sport utility vehicle engine fit into a classic wooden boat?
The project, Brockman said, is part of a new marketing effort for Infiniti, pairing the company’s QX56 SUV engine with a 1962 Chris-Craft Holiday boat to show the luxury vehicle’s towing power.
While the project is not typical for Brockman, who mostly deals in used boats and racing and restoring stock cars, he and Freeport boat restorer Jim Martin are versatile.
As an 8-year-old, before riding out in a flat-bottomed skiff on Maquoit Bay, Martin said, he solved the problem of a leaking hull by melting candle wax into the seams of the boat.
That kind of problem-solving might come in handy for the restoration project that Martin said still has a lot of questions to be answered — questions that, a year ago, Martin and Brockman had not deeply considered.
Alongside shrink-wrapped boats in Brockman’s yard sits a Busch North stock car he hopes to restore and a 1952 Chris-Craft Riviera boat that Martin has his eye on.
But then the Infiniti project came along.

“It just kind of happened,” said Martin, who regularly does repair work for Brockman’s used boat business.
Brockman said the story has a beginning at his Route 1 boat business.
In 2009, Brockman sold an 18-foot 2004 Celebrity Bowrider to Nate Chapnick, a senior editor for the Atlanta-based luxury magazine “Men’s Book” and a Camden Hills High School graduate.
GEORGE “DO DO” BROCKMAN, 63, left, and Jim Martin, 57, are restoring a 1962 Chris-Craft Holiday in Brockman’s Freeport garage for the Infiniti luxury car makers. The boat will be fitted with an Infiniti engine. Above left, mahogany sawdust and tools of the trade litter a work bench. TROY R. BENNETT / THE TIMES RECORD Chapnick arrived that day — in the pouring rain — in a Lotus streetcar and decided that he would take the boat, Brockman said.
Brockman and Chapnick became friends during that exchange, and on a later visit to Brockman’s boat yard, Chapnick saw the 1952 Riviera boat Martin plans to restore.
In October 2010, Chapnick called Brockman with an idea.
“He said he has a friend with Infiniti USA who is working on a boat project and asked if I was interested,” Brockman said.
Brockman and Martin had a boat in mind. By then, Brockman said, both had driven countless times by the vessel that is now the centerpiece of the project — a boat that they dug out from the snow at Wheels and Deals along Route 302 to show to Infiniti communications director Kyle Bazemore.
At that time, the boat had major weaknesses in the hull and an engine that Martin junked, but the duo saw potential.
“We told him that this is the boat we should use — fancy lines and the fastest hull ever made in wood,” Brockman said.
The hull of that particular boat will need to be rebuilt, Martin said, but the lines of the boat are just right.
“It is easy to come up on plane and it corners well and handles well,” Martin said.
In August, Brockman traveled to Pebble Beach with Chapnick to meet with Infiniti executives and discuss the project now under way.
With most of the hull removed, the 50-year-old boat is now overturned in Brockman’s garage, awaiting new framing, an improved inside hull crafted from marinegrade Sapele plywood, and an outer hull of mahogany.
“We’re making it a more water-tight boat,” Martin said. “Back when it was built, this boat would have to go into the water for two or three days before you could take it out — now, it will be what’s called a dry launch boat.”
But that work is all preparation for the main event: the installation of the 2011 Infiniti SUV engine, which Martin said will raise a lot of interesting questions.
“That engine isn’t going to turn 5,800 RPM as we intend to do in this boat,” Martin said. “The car has a 7-speed transmission that at 70 mph is doing around 1,800 RPM. In a boat, when you put it in forward gear, it’s one speed.”
For the problems of making a modern automotive engine swim, a team of mechanics at Tennessee Technical Center, Nashville, and Nashville State Community College in Tennessee are preparing the engine’s aquatic transformation in a process Martin called “marinization.”
So far, that work has been the only part the project to happen out of state, Martin said.
“We’re trying to keep as much of our outsourcing here in the state of Maine,” Martin said.
Custom interior to match Infiniti’s QX56 will be handled by Andrew Arsenault of Freeport; wood planing will be done by Maschino & Sons Lumber of New Gloucester; the boat will be rolled upright at a facility in Fryeburg; and work on the bell housing and transmission was done by Brackett Machine in Westbrook.
With all of the help, Brockman and Martin said they will still rely most on each other to bring the project to completion.
“If I was going to take on a project like this, I couldn’t do it alone,” Brockman said.