Overview
Yachting Solutions was conceived as a “one stop shop”, creating the ultimate in customer convenience by providing everything from sales and maintenance to dockage and storage. We strive to be the industry’s leading yacht services provider, delivering the highest level of quality service, value, and customer convenience. In addition, we offer crew and captain services, unparalleled resto-modifications and 24 hour emergency response assistance. At Yachting Solutions, our goal is to not only meet our clients expectations, but to anticipate and exceed them.
Our History
The Yachting Solutions concept dates back to 1994, the year that founder and CEO Bill Morong graduated from Maine Maritime Academy with a degree in Nautical Science and went to work as a professional yacht engineer and captain. “I learned very quickly about the reality of owning and operating yachts, and how this might differ from their owners’ expectations,” he says. “Ever since, we’ve been focused on solutions—yachting solutions.”
The first “solution” was to provide seasonal crews for summer residents on Maine’s Penobscot Bay—chiefly in Camden and Rockport as well as Islesboro, North Haven and Vinalhaven. This service grew to include year-round maintenance and off-season storage of boats, as well as consulting with prospective owners on yachts that would suit their needs.
When a large merchant bank set up a regional base in Camden, Morong was recruited to be its Marine & Aviation Fleet Manager, responsible for operations, maintenance and staffing of half a dozen executive jets and several yachts. When that company was acquired and its Maine operation closed, Morong and partners created the Trident Yacht Basin in nearby Rockland Harbor, with 250 feet of dock space and 60 slips as well as a 60,000-square-foot storage facility and workshop.
In 2020, Morong’s team sold the Rockland venture and returned to their Yachting Solutions base in Rockport, where they had already built a large storage and maintenance facility on US Rte. 1. Now, in addition, the nearly 10-acre property includes a retail center and showroom, a sales brokerage and insurance office, a repair shop, a parts & shipping/receiving building and several apartments as well as storage space for approximately a hundred boats. Each department is staffed by experienced and certified professionals.
Equipment includes heavy-duty trailers and tow vehicles that can handle boats up to 60 feet long, and support vans stocked with tools and parts that can meet a boat anywhere on the New England coast on short notice. The Yachting Solutions complex is less than a mile from Rockport Harbor, with its launching ramp and docks, and the company owns moorings in both Rockport and Camden Harbors. In 2024, Yachting Solutions opened a satellite sales and service office in southern New England, in Mystic, Connecticut, on the north shore of Long Island Sound.
Yachting Solutions represents half a dozen select lines of boats as well as marine engines and electronics. The company has a three-tiered approach to the boat business. First, ‘Lifestyle by Design,’ which at its core means matching the boat and services to the client. Bill Morong again: “What do you want to do with your boat? Where will you use it? Are you mainly interested in the destination, or the journey? How many people will you have on board?”
Second, offering the right boats. “For example, we selected Nimbus boats, from Sweden, because of their design and the quality of their construction. Until recently, the Nimbus brand was almost unknown in the US; now we’re the biggest Nimbus dealer in the world, which tells me we made the right choice. Nimbus boats, particularly the WTC line, are elegant, fast, safe and very good value for money. Also the rocky, island-rich coastlines of Scandinavia and New England are similar, so boats designed for that part of the world are right at home here, too.
“Our other brands were carefully selected also, so we can offer good choices at a range of prices. Whether a client is looking for an express dayboat, a live-aboard cruiser, a blue-water sailing yacht or an inflatable tender for any of them, we can help.”
And third, the company’s unique Safe Haven Advantage Program, which takes the work out of owning a boat. For a flat monthly fee, Yachting Solutions provides annual hauling, winterizing, storage and launching, and maintains a boat and its powerplant and systems to the manufacturers’ specifications. This includes regular servicing, new bottom paint and refreshing the electronic systems with upgrades as they come available. Boats in the Safe Haven Advantage may be re-sold at a premium as Certified Pre-Owned.
More than two decades ago, Yachting Solutions was conceived as a “one-stop shop,” offering ultimate service and convenience informed by its founder’s broad experience in operating and maintaining boats. Today, the company employs Coast Guard-certified captains, factory-trained technicians and highly qualified sales and insurance brokers, all backed up by experienced management and abiding by the traditional Maine ethics of hard work, attention to detail and fair value.
Bill Morong will add, “I was lucky enough to grow up here, in Camden. My maternal grandfather arrived a century ago as a deckhand aboard Lyndonia, Cyrus Curtis’s famous 230-foot steel-hulled steam yacht. Curtis’s boathouse, on Camden’s inner harbor, is now the home of the Camden Yacht Club. So my family’s roots are in salt water, and we understand what makes our clients loyal. At Yachting Solutions, our goal is not only meet to expectations, but to anticipate and exceed them.”
