Fortier Boats, a Somerset Family Yard and Its Striper Boats

A house builder, a teenager and a mold made with friends

Fortier is a two-generation story. Roger Fortier made his living building homes in Somerset and belonged to the New Bedford Yacht Club. In the mid-1970s he and Rod, then a teenager, acquired a set of Eldredge-McInnis drawings for a 26-foot wooden launch, a direct relative of the striper boat Fred Brownell's Mattapoisett yard had built in 1957. With help from acquaintances who knew fiberglass, father and son made a plug, pulled a mold and in 1976 put their first boat in the water. That boat was still running more than four decades later.

Demand came quickly. The new company was incorporated and found 11 buyers in year one. Roger died in 2011, and Rod has led the firm since, working from an office that looks out over the Taunton River on the old Crowninshield Shipbuilding property. Total output has passed 500 hulls, yet the yard still completes only a handful of boats in a typical year, a pace Soundings has noted.

What the Fortier name stands for on the water

The yard's philosophy is conservative in the best sense. Hulls follow the Eldredge-McInnis tradition of a sharp bow, a deep forefoot and a molded full keel that shields the propeller and rudder, so owners can poke along rocky Buzzards Bay ledges without fear for the running gear. Construction is done by hand with Core-Cell foam coring and a vinylester barrier coat, and teak trim gives the boats their classic downeast look. Nautical Quarterly's line that the 26 seemed to have been designed by a fish still follows the brand around.

Today the lineup runs from the 26 through a 30 and a 33 to a 42, and Fortier has fitted Volvo IPS pod drives to some of the larger hulls. The 26 remains the signature model. Our Fortier 26 page covers its cockpit, cabin, engine history and used values in detail, including the Open Bass Boat variant that appeared in 2014.

Reputation, support and buying secondhand

Southern New England and Long Island anglers treat Fortiers almost as a cult, and good boats seldom linger on the market. Two things support that: supply is thin, and the factory still looks after every hull it has built. Across the road from the shop is a Fortier storage and service yard, and the company brokers its own used boats, which makes it easy to find examples with known histories. New boats are priced individually, and our model page gives estimated new and used figures.

Points worth checking on any older Fortier:

• Moisture in cored decks and hull around deck hardware
• Repower paperwork, engine hours and the condition of the beds
• Prop shaft, cutlass bearing, rudder and skeg shoe
• Leaks at cockpit hatches and their seals
• Soft or rotten teak on the windshield and rails
• Original fuel tanks and valves on older hulls