Speed on the Water magazine made the trip to Boyne City, Michigan, and came away with something rare: a genuine look inside one of America’s most secretive and celebrated custom boatbuilders.
The feature, titled “Deep in the Woods with Van Dam Custom Boats,” captures the culture, the craftsmanship, and the quiet ambition that drives everything Van Dam does. President Ben Van Dam, who grew up in the shop and returned after earning his degree in naval architecture and marine engineering from the University of Michigan, spoke candidly about the challenge of finding talent equal to the work. “A lot of people fall in love with the romance of wooden boatbuilding,” he said. “Then they spend a day fairing a hull for the first time and it’s no longer so romantic.”
The piece dives into the details that make Van Dam singular: whole-tree African mahogany imported and kiln-dried in Europe, all stainless-steel hardware fabricated entirely in-house, builds that require between 8,000 and 30,000 man-hours, and a company-wide culture guided by 37 deeply held principles — from “practice continual improvement every day” to “practice gratitude.” Every boat comes with a hand-bound coffee-table book chronicling the build. Every client is treated as a partner, not just a buyer.
Van Dam builds one boat a year. Each one is the first time. And that, this feature makes beautifully clear, is precisely the point.