For 42 years, season after season, customers have been coming back to Benjamin O. Sarles' boatyard and engine shop on Spa Creek in Annapolis because, they say, it's more than a place to tie up your boat or get the engine fixed. Ben, they believe, will take care of you.
"I've been around a lot of boatyards. This one seemed to fit the bill," said Al Gladden, 76, who has been docking his boat, Ellen G., at the Sarles boatyard since 1952. "You feel comfortable here."
Mr. Sarles' small, family-owned yard is among the last of its kind, marine industry experts say.
Of the 100 marinas and boatyards in Annapolis, only a handful, including the Petrini Yachtyard and Marina next to the Sarles boatyard, are family-run, said Beth Kahr, administrative director of the Marine Trades Association of Maryland Inc. The others are owned by investment groups.
The largest marinas in Annapolis, Port Annapolis Marina and Mears Marina on Back Creek, have nearly 300 slips each. The Sarles yard has 42.
"We're kind of like a big family," said Mr. Sarles, an unassuming man who wears plaid shirts, jeans and a baseball cap. "With all my customers, I've become good friends."
One customer who must have considered Mr. Sarles that kind of friend willed him a half-dozen fishing rods when he died. The rods are stored in the shop, next to a cardboard box full of baseball caps inscribed with the names of towns and parks from Sandy Point near the Bay Bridge to Elizabeth, N.J.
Mr. Sarles estimated that he has more than 300 caps, all given to him by customers who learned he collects baseball caps.
Even the new customers appreciate the yard and praise Mr. Sarles.
"There's nothing fancy about this place, but the kind of guy he is makes me want to stick with him. Ben is a people person," said Mick Taylor, 52, who first docked his 27-foot sports cruiser at Sarles' in June.
"There are better and fancier places, but I like a nice, clean marina. The fact that he maintains it makes me think he'll take care of my boat, too."
Everything at Sarles' looks freshly whitewashed, from the sign at the Boucher Avenue entrance to the workshop to the storage sheds. Maybe that is because Mr. Sarles, who was born in 1936, "grew up right in the boatyard," he says. "I got the dirtiest jobs at the time -- painting bottoms and scraping barnacles."
He took over the yard from his father, who took it over from his father before him.
Benjamin E. "Pop" Sarles left Oxford, Md., and a career as a professional fighter at the turn of the century to build a boatyard in Annapolis. In 1907, he opened Sarles Boats and Engine Shop Inc. at the foot of St. Mary's Street, where the Annapolis Waterfront Marriott now stands.
Seventeen years later, "Pop" Sarles bought land on the Eastport side of Spa Creek, just upstream from the bridge, leveled the hilly site with dynamite and built the boatyard his grandson runs today.
While "Pop" Sarles, who lived to be 86, designed 30 kinds of wooden boats, his son, Benjamin R. Sarles, worked on boat engines.
In 1952, Benjamin O. Sarles became a partner in the yard with his father, a partnership that lasted until the older man died in 1989 at age 82. He learned the trades of both generations that came before him. He works on boat designs and repairs engines. And he does a little bit of everything else in the yard: diagnosing engine problems, hoisting coils of thick rope, helping dock an incoming boat.
"The boat business is seven days a week. It's a lot of hours," he said.
Today, he has his own experienced help, including Denzel Payne, an 81-year-old woodcarver who has been with him for 18 years; and his children, Wendy Sarles Gordon, 28, and Benjamin Sarles, 32. His wife, Shirley, kept the books until she died in January.
Mr. Sarles said he hopes his children will take over the business.
Although it is "not a business you're going to get rich in," this has been a good year, he said. Over the summer, he rented nearly all of his wet slips. The rest of the year, he has fixed engines and cabinets for a couple of hundred boats.
But now, as cold weather edges in and the quacking ducks make more noise than boat engines on the creek, it is time to prepare the boats for their hibernation.
They will be pulled from their slips, propped up in huge cradles, framed and covered for winter storage.
By the end of the month, the driveway of the boatyard will be packed hull-to-hull with boats propped up on cinder blocks and swaddled in blue tarpaulins.
"In the wintertime, it's almost like a graveyard," Mr. Sarles said.
By January, the boatyard will be shut down -- except for the times when he walks over from his house and checks on the boats -- until another boating season rolls around.