That’s not Van Dam’s claim — that’s the assessment of yacht designer Bill Prince, offered to a Power & Motoryacht editor who was about to visit the Boyne City shop for the first time. Prince, who was in the middle of designing a runabout with Van Dam at the time, is not given to exaggeration.
The November 2019 Power & Motoryacht feature introduced readers to both Steve Van Dam — founder, craftsman, and now proud mentor — and his son Ben, who had recently assumed the presidency of the company. Their dynamic, captured in a few sharp exchanges during the shop tour, says as much about Van Dam’s culture as any formal description could. Ben moves through the shop “with purposeful calm.” Steve jokes that his new role gives him “more time to give tours” before Ben cuts in: “Yeah, he swings the brush at us.”
The centerpiece of the visit was Catnip, a 30-foot runabout so precisely finished that the writer initially mistook polished stainless steel for chrome. The craftsman behind that metalwork, Jesse Brown, came to Van Dam as a carpenter before Steve discovered he could weld — “better than I could,” Steve admitted. That’s the Van Dam story in miniature: finding exceptional people, giving them room to grow, and letting the work speak for itself.
Steve Van Dam summed up his philosophy before the visit ended, pulling a folded 37-point creed from a worn leather wallet. “If you’re going to do something, why not try and be the best? Why settle for mediocrity?”