Ouzel: A Modern Classic Built with Purposeful Elegance

By US Harbors – On a Sunday in November 2025, a mast standing well above the wood-clad buildings at Rockport Marine marked the end of a long build. Ouzel, a 95-foot contemporary classic sailing yacht, was launched at high tide, watched by her owners, crew, project partners and a crowd along the waterfront. Sail trials began in June 2026 on Penobscot Bay, and Rockport Marine delivered her to her owners at the start of Maine’s summer season.

The project began in late 2021, when Peter Wilson of MCM, the owner’s representative firm based in Newport, Rhode Island, approached Langan Design Partners on behalf of owners planning a large sailing yacht for world cruising. Mark Whiteley Design and Rockport Marine joined in early 2022; MCM and Langan had worked with the Rockport yard on earlier projects.

Langan Design Partners was founded in 1998 by Bill Langan, who previously led the design team at Sparkman & Stephens. Ouzel‘s lines borrow from the classic S&S cutters of the mid-20th century: a traditional sheer, long overhangs and a low pilothouse. Below the waterline and aloft she is a modern boat, with a carbon rig, a Park Avenue boom, a high-aspect rudder and a bulb keel.

Ouzel‘s hull is a wood composite, a long-standing specialty at Rockport Marine.

The approach gives a strong shell that needs less internal framing than a traditional plank-on-frame yacht, along with the natural insulation of wood. For a one-off boat, it also avoids the cost and time of building molds.

Mark Whiteley’s interior was built on site, with painted panels, cabinetry in West African avodire and varnished mahogany furniture.

The owners asked for a boat built in New England, and Maine in particular. With the designers in Newport and England and the builder in Maine, the team met remotely every week. They also gathered in Rockport with the owners to walk through full-scale mock-ups before parts were committed to the boat.

Ouzel is the largest boat Rockport Marine has built, and she pushed the yard to the limits of its shop space, slip width and Travelift capacity. Temple, a third-generation boatbuilder, told Maine Boats, Homes & Harbors magazine that the bigger challenge was people. Rockport Marine added 10 craftsmen for the project, and on a typical day 20 to 25 people worked on the boat. In addition to their own team, about two dozen outside firms were brought in to support the project. Many were Maine shops, among them Billings Diesel of Stonington, which supplied the engine and generator. Others were brought in for narrow specialties: Hall Spars, based in Rhode Island, built the rig, and Irons Brothers cast the keel in the UK.That kind of shared work has deep roots here. Maine boatbuilders have long relied on one another, each shop known for its own trade, and that collective talent is what has made Maine known for exceptional boatbuilding, then and now. Temple credits that depth of skilled tradespeople for making a project of Ouzel’s size possible.

Temple has said he enjoyed working at this scale and is looking at facility upgrades that would let the yard take on projects of similar size, or larger.

Getting her out of the building took some ingenuity. The deck is 21 feet wide and the shop door is 17, so the crew cut a slot in the gable end of the building.

Ouzel spent several days in June on sail trials in Penobscot Bay, with designers, builders and specialists from each firm aboard. In 15 knots of breeze she sailed upwind at about 10 knots, tacking through less than 90 degrees, and reached at around 12. As the afternoon sea breeze built, she briefly topped 13 knots. The owners opted for a deeper, 12-foot draft to favor sailing ability, and Langan’s Tom Degrémont pointed to a practical benefit: a boat that sails well can also move quickly out of the way of bad weather, which matters for a yacht headed to remote waters. Ouzel has since left Maine for the distant shores she was built to reach.