The Boat About to Conquer New England

The MJM 50z is the most glamorous possible way to get to a lobster bake.

Down East-style boats like the MJM 50z are based off the working vessels scouring the pounding waters off the coast of New England for water bugs. As such, most of the boats in this category have salty, traditional lines, broad beams so they’re sturdy in a sea, and large, open cockpits that allow men to do work. Of course, “work” onboard these so-called “lobster yachts” usually doesn’t exactly mean hauling in heavy lobster pots in gale-force conditions. The reaction to the adjectives “dark” and “stormy”: Yes, please.


If you couldn’t guess, the boats are popular with the old-money crowd that populates the wealthiest and stodgiest ports on the northeastern seaboard (Kennebunk, Marblehead,Newport). The families with endowed chairs at Ivy League institutions treat these powerful beasts like station wagons. That is a little thing called privilege.


If “Picnic Boats” are the ultimate privilege than the MJM 50z is another thing altogether. As well as being fifty feet long, the 50z is actually very seaworthy. Aside from having a slippery, fuel-efficient hull that’s splits apart waves like a machete going through a honeydew, she also comes standard with a gyro-stabilizer from Seakeeper—a first in the industry. Gyro-stabilizers are hard-to-explain marvels of physics, but, in uber–shorthand, they’re basically large metal balls inserted into the hull that keep boats from rolling from side to side even when the ocean starts to play rough. That means less seasickness, more time on the water, and more cocktails in the cockpit as you watch the sun dip down below the horizon and figure out how to spend all that loot you inherited from Uncle Pierpont. It’s a good problem to have.