When a business has been around for 67 years and word comes it’s changing hands, a natural response might be to wonder: Will the name change? Will it provide the same service?

Dusty and Amy Goodwin, as of Sept. 1 the new owners of Blake’s Boatyard in West Boothbay Harbor, would like you not to worry.
The business has passed from Amy’s grandfather Fred Blake, who died in 2008, to her father Gary and his brothers Joe and Neil, to her and Dusty. Both have been at it a while now. “It’s been a family business,” Dusty said. “And it’s going to continue to be a family business.”

“We’re going to make it as seamless as possible,” Amy said.

As the Goodwins and their staff, including Amy’s dad Gary, and uncles Neil and Joe, scurried around on a recent weekday, business as usual. And this time of year, with boats coming in for seasonal storage, business is booming.

Blake’s handles the full run of life on the water, from boats to floats to maintaining 600 moorings. About half of the boats they store at the main facility at 118 McKown Point Road or another site on Back River go inside.Amy Goodwin came to the business in her early 20s, when grandmother Ginny Blake had to give up running the front office due to health concerns. Amy’s grandfather, Fred Blake, who founded the business in 1951, and Gary, Neil and Joe handled the labor end of things. Later, that group included Dusty, after he and Amy met.

“When you meet a girl who owns a boatyard and you’re a lobsterman, you do the math,” Dusty joked. His commercial fishing gradually ceded to work at the boatyard. The balance changed for good in 2001, when the couple’s daughter Hali was born. Fishing trips far off the coast went away, and work at the boatyard moved fully to the fore.

Amy said her husband and her grandfather bonded over the work. “They were a lot alike,” she said. “Perfectionists.”

“If I’m going to do a job, I’m going to do it right,” Dusty added.

There’s much to do. Once the boats are stored for the season and maintained, Blake’s will transition into marine construction in the winter. Those weeks will at least be capped with weekends at home or on vacation, something unthinkable since about March.

While the core of the business has remained consistent, technology is ever-changing, requiring Blake’s to stay on top of the latest in motors and other aquatic equipment.

And now that the Goodwins own the business, they’re looking ahead to who’s going to keep it going. In that spirit, they’ve hired 21-year-old twins Evan and John Hepburn and immersed them in how things are done at Blake’s.

“It’s not a 50-person crew here,” Dusty said. “We try to be as efficient as possible.”