Usually dreams come before boats. In Thor Emory’s case, the boat came first.

Emory wanted a unique charter business within the competitive and storied landscape of Maine sailing. For years, he looked for a business that would be different from others, something like his work at Outward Bound, where he taught for seven years.

Additional Photos

Thor Emory pilots his Presto 30, Thorfinn, across the waters of Rockland Harbor recently. The 30-foot two-master, with its retractable centerboard, can sail in as little as a foot of water, making it ideal for Emory’s Thorfinn Expeditions, which is both a sailing school and a charter operation. Photos by Gabe Souza/Staff Photographer

Emory runs trips along the Maine and Canadian coasts in the summer and hopes to eventually make trips around Newfoundland. He’s sailed the Presto 30 in the Everglades and off the Pacific Northwest and has plans for Alaska, too.

Thor Emory adjusts the sails on the Thorfinn. The boat’s design hearkens back to 1885, when Commodore Ralph Monroe created a “sharpie” with a round, not a box-shaped, hull.

In 2009 he found it: Ryder Boats boatyard in Bucksport rolled out its award-winning cruising sailboat, the Presto 30 for Outward Bound.

A year later Emory made Ryder’s second Presto 30 his.

He had found his dream.

“I always wanted to have my own outdoor niche, but especially around here, there are plenty of people doing (sailing trips). What would it be?

“Then I saw the Presto 30 and I thought, ‘That’s it,’ something to tow around, it’s fun to sail; it’s an awesome expedition boat,” Emory said.

With the 30-foot, flat-bottomed Presto 30, Emory went into business as Thorfinn Expeditions, which aims to provide not only day and multi-day sails, but “skill-oriented training in extraordinary locations,” according to its website.

He can take a novice sailor into coves with only a foot of water, as the boat has a retractable centerboard, not a deep keel. He can beach it on islands for a lunch break, or pilot it across the open ocean on a multiday adventure.

He’s sailed her into the Everglades, around Matinicus Island and off the Pacific Northwest. He intends to venture with Thorfinn to Alaska.

Eventually, he wants to run trips around Newfoundland with his rugged yet nimble boat.

BACKCOUNTRY SAILING

Charter boat trips in Maine offer a multitude of experiences, from lobstering lessons to traditional schooner sails, to saltwater fishing trips.

Emory, based in Rockland, has crafted his sailing school to teach what he calls “backcountry sailing” on a boat that skims along as fast as 30 to 40 knots.

“It’s more in line with a mountaineering school,” he said.

“I think a lot of charter sailing boats are not necessarily that demanding. Not to say they aren’t, but the tall ships are bigger, more luxurious, not as playful.”

LITERALLY THOUSANDS

The Presto 30 is so multidimensional, it’s the first one of his designs that Rodger Martin had to own in 37 years as a boat designer.

The boat won Sail Magazine’s 2011 Best Cruising Monohull under 50 feet. But Martin, in Newport, R.I., loves it for its spirit and character, he says.

The design was inspired by a 130-year-old favorite: Commodore Ralph Munroe’s 1885 sharpie model.

“The Presto opened up South Florida as a winter haven in the 1880s,” Martin said of Munroe’s design. “These boats, sharpies, these flat-bottomed boats, there were thousands of them on the beach there, literally thousands.”

The sharpies were perfect for sailing up to a beach and hopping off. One design stood out back then; that was Munroe’s.

“His sharpie rig had a round hull instead of a box-shaped hull,” Martin said. “Many others designed Presto-type boats then. It became a bit of a fad.”

Martin brought the sharpie design back with his two-masted Presto.

NEVER A SINKING FEELING

The South African designer said one of the cooler features of the Presto 30 is its refusal to sink. Adding to its considerable stability is the fact that the two masts are carbon-fiber sealed, which provides a great safety mechanism when the boat capsizes.

“It’s almost like airbags in the car,” Martin says. “Most boat designs heel over beyond 120 degrees. They stay upside down unless something rights them. With this boat it’s 145 degrees before it goes upside down.”

This summer eight more Presto 30s are being built in Bucksport, but Emory, who is now a rep for Ryder, said he thinks they could become all the rage. And the designer agrees.

“They’re very handy. You can put one on a trailer and take it down to Florida and sail it across the Bahamas, as my wife and I did last winter,” Martin said.

“People confuse it with being a coastal boat, and while you have to be very careful, you can take them pretty much anywhere, as Thor intends to do.”

Staff Writer Deirdre Fleming can be contacted at 791-6452 or at:

dfleming@pressherald.com

Twitter: Flemingpph

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