Laura Slye has spent her life on or around the water, working in the marine industry and sailing. Two other passions are horses and dogs; she has also worked as a dog trainer and caretaker for a time. “Dogs, horses, and boats. That’s me, and that’s it,” she said. (Dylan Burmeister photo)
A resident of Waldoboro, Laura Slye has been living and breathing boats since “day one.”
Her parents met in Maine, but Slye grew up in Newport, R.I., which she described as “a hub for sailing, yachting, and marine trades.” She was introduced to sailing through her father, who had a boat, and she took sailing lessons starting at age eight.
“I was rabid about sailing,” she said.
Slye went on to become a sailing instructor as a teenager. She started racing and continued with her high school’s varsity sailing team, while attending vocational school to study marine trades in her junior and senior years of high school. Slye graduated high school in 1999.
In the marine occupations program, she learned small and large engine repair, mechanics, and welding. Slye was the only woman in the program.
“It was fine with me,” she said. “I’m one of those people who, when I hear ‘no’ or ‘you can’t,’ I’m like, why don’t you just step aside and watch me.”
While attending vocational school, Slye qualified for a paid internship with New England Boatworks in Portsmouth, R.I., where she was a welding apprentice. The work was extremely challenging, she said.
“There’s a really high skill set required for yacht welding,” said Slye.
After high school, she found a job as a production rigger at a friend’s family’s rigging company.
The job of a rigger comprises the production of ropes and cables that support a boat’s masts and sails.
Going into the job, Slye knew the basics from her experience sailing, but she did not know how to splice – one of the fundamentals of the job. She learned the skill on the job.
In addition to rigging, she started training dogs in 2001. “I’ve always had an affinity for animals over humans,” said Slye. She became a private caretaker in Rhode Island, working for a family with horses, dogs, and two boats.
“Dogs, horses, and boats: that’s me, and that’s it,” she said.
After five years as a rigger, Slye was suffering from various injuries. “That kind of work is really hard on your body,” she said. “I was like ok, this is something I absolutely love, but I was also wondering what else was out there.”
Slye moved to her grandparents’ home in Waldoboro in 2007 and was hired at Wayfair Marine in Camden as a yacht rigger. Part of a three-person crew, she learned the skills she didn’t have already on the job, similar to her first rigging position.
“Everything I’ve done in a job has been on the job training and expedited learning,” she said. “If you didn’t get it, you were booted.”
Working at Wayfair opened a whole new world, Slye said. “We had yachts from the Caribbean,” she said. “We had classic yachts ranging from day sailors from the local community to 80-foot yachts that had been all over the world.”
“The international community became open to me, and I was meeting so many people,” she said. Slye had the opportunity to sail from Ecuador to French Polynesia on a yacht that she had done a two-year refit on at Wayfair.
“It was an amazing, life changing trip,” she said. “It was one of the best times of my life.”
Her time at Wayfair taught her most of what she knows about rigging. She’s worked on thousands of riggings, she said, and she and her crew “became a family.”
“We met so many people and we did so many boats together,” Slye said. “At Wayfair, it was all-inclusive: the riggers would go out and get the boats; assist with new launches. We were heavy equipment operators as well as riggers.”
Working on elements like deck replacements or refits “expanded [her] knowledge base exponentially,” she said, and made her a better rigger.
“To be a good rigger, you have to be able to see the problem solved while everyone else sees the problem,” Slye said.
Her work at Wayfair came to a halt when she broke her shoulder, which was worn out by years of wear from rigging.
“I was really good during that time at blocking out a lot of pain because I didn’t want to be seen as weak,” she said.
Slye has always been a woman in a mostly-male industry. “We all support each other in our network and our community, but there weren’t many people who looked like me,” she said. “You can’t be seen as less than as a female, and you can’t be seen as not worthy.”
Although she felt that pressure and recognized the lack of women in her field, Slye never felt that she couldn’t do the job. “I never had this ‘oh, I’m a girl, I can’t do that’ attitude,” she said. “I was always a tomboy.”
“I often felt like I was passed over, but I never played that card,” she said. “I just let my skills speak for me. I’m not the kind of person who wants something given to me because I’m a female.”
After breaking her shoulder, Slye received a shoulder replacement in 2016, leaving her “cut out of something [she] was so passionate about doing.” She realized she couldn’t keep up with the work physically in the long run, which was mentally challenging to accept, Slye said.
“Being on boats is an absolute treasure, but it’s not great for your body. It adds up,” she said.
In 2019, Slye started working for Hodgdon Yachts in Southport as their lead rigger. After three years, she became Hodgdon’s dockmaster, a job she described as similar to a giant chess game. This job was also less physically demanding.
Part of the role of dockmaster was doing a mechanical test run on each private boat the company maintained, which meant Slye learned how to drive hundreds of boats.
“Within a split second of them hitting the water, I had to figure out how the boat moves,” she said. “It was like a valet.”
Slye also worked with young people who worked at Hodgdon for the summer.
“I love seeing people succeed, and so enabling these young folks who came in to get out of their comfort zone and improve, that made me more fueled to deal with the daily comings and goings of work,” she said.
Slye left Hodgdon in the spring of 2024 to open her own business, Sea State Services. “It’s utilizing my experiences as a marine trades professional and a licensed captain,” she said. Slye is planning to teach sailing and expand upon the business in time.
Opening her own business is partially enabled by her 100-ton captain’s license, and she has both sailing and towing endorsements. The licensing course is compressed into two weeks and also requires demonstration of work on various types of vessels.
“It’s something I always wanted to attain,” said Slye. “I felt that if I had that under my belt, I would have a bit more respect.”
“That license allows me to be anything, really,” she said. “It allows me to do more jobs in the industry that are easier on my body. It allows me a longer term in the marine trades, because I can’t physically do rigging with sustainability.”
As she is figuring out her next path, the past few months have been mentally challenging, Slye said. “I’ve always been an absolute workaholic, and my comfort has been in producing, grinding, and showing up every day,” she said. “I burned myself out, but I’m just finding this out about myself now.”
Slye said hard work, even if new and scary, is how she got to where she is. Although the physical toll of working in a boatyard has been hard, Slye said she wouldn’t have done it differently.
“If you’re going to go out and live a really fun life, be prepared to break a few bones and get a few scars,” she said.
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