ROCKPORT — With a 92-foot hull under construction inside the boat barn, and a new pier in the works, Rockport Marine today also expanded its capacity to launch and haul larger vessels by installing a new Travelift at the harborfront yard.

Crews from the Wisconsin-based Marine Travelift manufacturers were at the boatyard today along with an Art Henry crane, lifting, placing and bolting the large beams of steel together, which eventually took the form of a hoist.

The new 85-metric-ton Travelift, produced this year, is replacing the older 50-metric-ton Travelift that Rockport Marine has owned since 2002. The lift is manufactured at Travelift, on Sturgeon Bay in Wisconsin, and constructed entirely of U.S.-produced steel. Travelift painted the steel the same color of the old lift, matching the red-brown of the Rockport Marine buildings.

The old lift was useful, but it was time to sell, said Rockport Marine manager Sam Temple. A yard on Long Island, New York, purchased it from Rockport Marine, and after the Travelift crews were to finish assembling the new hoist, they were disassemble the old one and transport it south.

“It has been a great machine,” Temple said. “But there had been a little bit of down time with it. It was time to do something, so we decided to scale up.”

The lift is in constant use through the spring, summer and fall at the yard, with recreational and commercial boats coming and going, and new ones gently lifted from cradles into the water.

Rockport Marine is known for building, restoring and maintaining a variety of boats, with lengths ranging from 10 feet to more than 112 feet. The yard sits at 1 Main Street on Rockport Harbor, adjacent to the town’s commercial fishing dock, and maintains two winter storage yards elsewhere in town.

The company, which employs approximately 50 fulltime carpenters, painters, fabricators, machinists, electricians and riggers through the winter, has worked on projects that included the cold-molded schooner Spirit of Bermuda, the plank-on-frame historic replicas Adventure and Godspeed, the S & S six-meter Jill, restoration of the P-class Bernice, and a new transom for the S & S schooner Brilliant. Currently, Rockport Marine is constructing the hull of a 92-foot sloop for a gentleman in his 90s, who wants to get more sailing time in.

The new Travelift will be slipping that hull into the water sometime in early April.

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