Merritt-Based Life
On a hot August afternoon, I drove down to Pompano Beach, Florida to meet boat-building icon Roy Merritt. In his blissfully air-conditioned office at Merritt’s Boat and Engine Works, and later touring the sprawling boatyard on his golf cart, Merritt told the story of a family dynasty that’s now a century old. What follows is an excerpt from a wide-ranging conversation on Roy’s life, career and evolution as a boat builder. You can also check out the full version of the conversation on the Power & Motoryacht podcast below.
Power & Motoryacht:
Merritt’s been around in South Florida at this point for over 100 years now. Is that right?
Roy Merritt:
You got that just about right. [Our story] starts with my grandfather. He was a farm boy from Michigan. He made his way down to Norfolk, Virginia, a little before World War I started—there was a need for workers. So, he learned a trade there—being a boat carpenter. After the war, he bought a houseboat because it was a cheap way to live—a skinny little old boat—and it was him, my grandmother and five kids.
Somewhere around 1923 or 4 he headed south with the boat, because I know my dad was born in Virginia in 1922. He made his way to Miami to work at Merril Stevens, which is a real old boatyard—been around forever. He heard there was cheap dockage up in Ft. Lauderdale. Matter of fact, if you went to one part, land didn’t cost you anything west of the Andrews Avenue Bridge. So, he moved there and about that time he saw people going out fishing and paying for it, and he kind of liked that. He bought this old boat—I don’t know what you call it—a real low slung boat. And the best we know it was around 1925 and the name of the boat was Caliban. The name stuck and all the boats that have ever been in the family are pretty much called Caliban.
Power & Motoryacht:
Do we know the origin of that name?
Roy Merritt:
Well, yeah, someone finally told them Caliban came from the Shakespeare play The Tempest—a bugly sea devil, and back then the boats were pretty ugly. So, it fit pretty good. So, the one reason we’re here today, is because of fishing. With fishing, of course, you got to have boats. My grandfather then built a boat in ‘29. Someone sold him an old set of boat frames, and he’s a pretty handy guy, he could build anything. The boys are starting to grow up a little bit. They’re running boats when they’re 14 and 15. And the family had five charter boats by 1929 or ‘30. Then, my grandfather got a job in the summer to tow a houseboat to Bayshore, Long Island. He got the houseboat up there and my grandfather took this customer fishing—stripers and bluefish. He goes offshore and started catching a bunch of tuna, and business started getting really good. So then a year later, he moved to Freeport, Long Island because it was closer to the city. He figured he could get more paying people to come out of the city, which they did. He bought a piece of property. Then after World War II, he sells out. Puts all his worldly possessions on board—bought an old PT boat—and another little boat. He put a boat on top of a boat, he put a car on it—everything he had—and headed south.
On the way to Ft. Lauderdale, he stopped off right across the canal from where we are now. Some lady came up asking his business. And he said, well, I’m kind of looking for property. Finds there’s a piece of property across the canal. And he ends up buying it.
He started out with seven acres for 8,500 bucks. But it was all swamp. Literally. You just dug your own basin and got your own fill. And that was the start of this place. That was around 1947.
Power & Motoryacht:
Who were some of the early folks that your grandfather would have interacted with down here?
Roy Merritt:
One picture we have of Caliban, he’s got Thomas Edison’s son aboard. That was probably out of New York. My uncle got into building—and he hooked up with Tommy Rybovich. They’d sneak up there on weekends and take measurements on boats. That’s how our relationship started with the Rybovichs. We don’t do it that way, nowadays. Mike (Rybovich) and I just get on the telephone.
The yard—it was my grandfather and my grandmother; she was the one who held it together. She had most of the brains in the family. And then my uncle and father both ran charter boats. And they gave that up in the mid 50’s—coming to work in the boatyard. Back then, it wasn’t much. Quonset huts. A lot of sand. That’s all it was. But then my grandfather built a railway. Back then you could get any kind of machinery from, you know, surplus, World War II stuff. It was pretty crude, but it worked.
Power & Motoryacht:
Growing up here, it must have been quite the playground.
Roy Merritt:
Well, back then, you know, Pompano was a beantown—a farming town. There wasn’t much boating. They were servicing charter boats and a few private boats. But that was it. You had a hard time making a living. But fishing was good. And I always had a boat. And then, of course, in time, you get out of high school, you got to go to work. And none of our family has been educated. We just have to do it the hard way.
Power & Motoryacht:
Seems like a real-world education.
Roy Merritt:
Well, you can learn if you want to. If you have enough ambition, you can make a lot of things happen. So, between dumb luck and ambition, that worked out pretty good.
Power & Motoryacht:
How did the management evolve?
Roy Merritt:
My uncle was the builder. My father was the frontman—he was really good at it. My grandfather once said he couldn’t build a square box with a set of plans. But he had all the personality. But at an early age, he backed away from everything. So even though his name was on the company as the president, the last, I don’t know, 30 years of his life, he acted like chairman of the board (while Roy essentially ran it).
Power & Motoryacht:
Can you talk about the how Merritt’s boats evolved too?
Roy Merritt:
During the during the mid- to late 50’s, also in early 60’s, the boats were smaller, 36- to 37-feet. The yard made its name by the 37-footers. There’s still a bunch around. There’s a bunch in Hawaii. I know it’s been a good place to put ‘em. You know, if you throw enough money at something, you can keep it floating a long time.
Power & Motoryacht:
What were you generally powering with?
Roy Merritt:
Just gas engines. Chryslers. There was a Daytona engine. There was a Chevy conversion. Diesels—they were too big and no horsepower. The boats Rybovich was building—Rybovich set the standard for building fishing yachts, where my uncle back then was building fishing boats. Their boats looked better. Our boats probably fished better. But there’s a market for both. And you know, we all we listen, and we all owe Rybovich a lot. They brought a lot to the business. They had all those rich Palm Beach customers and we got the leftovers. That’s the way things evolved. And when it comes to building boats, you’ve got to be a good listener, and people kind of tell you where they want to go. And of course, the main thing with boats today is the horsepower changes. It dictates what we can build. Today, we’re building an 88-footer. We couldn’t build that unless we had the engines that we have today.
Power & Motoryacht:
How about construction techniques?
Roy Merritt:
Well, the big change from the 50s on is going from plank-on-frame to cold-molded boats. We were transitioning in the early 70s—over time when we learned about composite construction that led the way for us to get into composite boats. We were doing a 46-footer—I think our first one was in ‘82 or ‘83.
Power & Motoryacht:
It’s interesting. I’m sitting here right now in your old wood-paneled office but today, you have an amazing 3D rendering of a boat on your screen.
Roy Merritt:
Well, of course, it’s changed a lot. And there’s a lot of services that help us do what we can’t. It’s what we try and do—a combination of service and building. When you build a boat, they want to bring the boat back to have it serviced. And part of the reason we got into building boats was you needed something to do when summertime came. The boat repair business used to be very seasonal. Summertime, you painted the buildings, and you took on projects you wouldn’t take on rest of the year. So, the idea was to build—make it part of what you’re doing, so you don’t have the highs and lows of business. Nowadays it’s year ‘round. It just never stops.
Power & Motoryacht:
How about your own evolution into running the company.
Roy Merritt:
First, I’ve grown up in it. I’ve always been involved in the building. As a young man, I’d much rather build than paint bottoms or repair boats, so it leads into that. And of course, I’ve had some influences in my life that have helped me. And, you know, every boat builder thinks he’s a boat designer, I’m no different. Some of us get it right. And some don’t. So, it’s a lot more fun doing that. And, and as you grow older in life, sometimes you just do it because you want to, and you can. And in our business, I don’t treat it as a hobby, but I’ve often joked about it. I said, I got the most perfect hobby shop in the world. I get to build what I want, and people get to pay for it. Now how do you beat it? How do you beat a deal like that?
Power & Motoryacht:
Can you talk a bit about how your core team works, and then how many folks do you have overall?
Roy Merritt:
We’re usually working on three to four boats, new projects—at the same time. Finishing to just starting and all in-between. We probably have about 100 people working here. I would say 60 percent is new builds and 40 is the other work. I mean we build a boat, like a cradle to grave. You build a boat, you service a boat, we broker the boats, we have an insurance agency here. It’s what we do.
Power & Motoryacht:
What are you seeing in terms of building materials or technology that’s impressing you?
Roy Merritt:
Well, sonars are a big deal. We can’t build a boat, unless you put a sonar on it. And we’ve got a few boats out now. They have—they’re called wake-adapted rudders and struts. This fellow Brant Savander—he does the engineering. It’s pretty nice. It’s extremely smooth. You pick up a good knot and a half, maybe two. It’s worth every penny.
Materials—we know how to build them even lighter, but it starts getting really expensive. And the amount you gain just isn’t worth it. It’s not only the materials, it’s the orientation and how you use them. I mean, I have an engineer come in once a year and kind of give me a physical, just look over the body—can you see any way that we can improve this? We’re doing that all the time. You’ve got to have a certain amount of skin thicknesses on a hull. We overdo it—like a lot of boats we’ve built now have all been, like a 50/50 Kevlar glass. The Kevlar is almost bulletproof. You can probably run it up on the jetty and you’re gonna pull yourself off without getting a hole in it. It’s that tough. Now, do I really need to do that much? And what does it cost? I don’t know but I think it’s worth it. All our superstructure—our top of the boat—is all carbon fiber. Because there, I want the stiffness. We’re always looking at weights of anything. But you’ve got to be practical too. You don’t want these things getting so expensive that no one will buy ‘em.
Power & Motoryacht:
You guys are also responsible for some real innovations too—like the fishing mezzanine.
Roy Merritt:
Many years ago, we started putting on these fishing mezzanines. People would have done it in time. I know when we first started, nobody liked it.
Power & Motoryacht:
It was basically a buyer who just said: it’s just kind of uncomfortable back here.
Roy Merritt:
That’s exactly right. Guy’s name was John Fossil. We’re building a 70-footer. And it was rough. It was cold. And, man, your rear end feels like it’s gonna go right through the cushion. He asked, how can we have something with more comfort? And I said, let me draw something up. So, I did it that evening and we built it.
Power & Motoryacht:
What about the rocket launcher rod holder?
Roy Merritt:
We had an old customer JoJo del Guercio. He was a Keys fisherman. And we made him—it was a series of welded aluminum pipes that sit on a pedestal or stanchion. And it looked like something I would use to set off bottle rockets. So that’s how it got the name—but that’s with him, too. We did a fishing harness too—back when he caught a lot of bluefins. He came in the shop one day and he says they had caught 104 fish in 1976. The boat was called No Problem. And the old harness, it would collapse on you because they’re all soft and the ropes will tear up your hips. He says, “Can you make something to keep the rope off me?” I said, “Well, that’s easy. I’ll just make one out of fiberglass.” And now they’re all that way.
It’s just stuff like that. But yeah, usually things happen. A little by accident or a request. And I never thought of doing it until the guy said, why don’t you do something about it?
I’m sure a lot of things happen that way in life.
Power & Motoryacht:
Do you see a typical client on a build? I’m just wondering if there’s any sort of quintessential customer for a Merritt?
Roy Merritt:
Everybody’s different. Everybody.
Power & Motoryacht:
Looking ahead, do you plan to keep this a family operation moving forward? I hear you have a granddaughter who’s young but already wants to take things over.
Roy Merritt:
Well, I got a granddaughter and grandson—they both want to come into it. Yeah, the best way to keep a family together—or a good way—can be to have a business they can work in. And after a while, you know, the best way to preserve wealth is to have some good real estate. We do. When you’ve got 13 acres on the Intracoastal, there’s not a better way to keep it. We get offers for it all the time. And you know, what would I do with a lot more money? It doesn’t do any good. I still go to work six days a week myself.
Power & Motoryacht:
No matter what. Right?
Roy Merritt:
No matter what.
Power & Motoryacht:
I’m wondering if you have sort of a set of tenets, or rules that you and this company sort of live by to stay in operation for as long as you have?
Roy Merritt:
You’ve got to stress quality—no matter what you do. And if you do that, everything else kind of takes care of itself. You can’t be stupid about it, but you’ve got to maintain the quality and the best of everything you can put out there. You stick with that, and the rest will work out pretty good.
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