Ed McClave

Boat Restorer & Builder, MP&G

Ed McClave grew up in Groton, CT. After college (mechanical engineering, Rensselaer) and a stint as a naval officer, he began building and restoring wood boats. He worked in the boat shops at Mystic Seaport and Strawbery Banke, then was a principal in the restoration of the Herreshoff cutter Neith. In 1981 he and Ben Philbrick formed the partnership that, along with Andy Giblin, became MP&G, a firm that has performed major restorations or rebuilds of over thirty Herreshoff sailing yachts, as well as others by Nevins, Fife, etc., including the Herreshoff “New York Fifty” Spartan, completed in 2010. Ed left for graduate school (ocean engineering, URI) in 1989, followed by a “real job” doing marine safety research for the Coast Guard, returning to MP&G in 1995.

Ed co-taught all of the ABYC marine corrosion seminars from their inception in 1991 until 2004, helped develop the ABYC Marine corrosion certification course, and has contributed to the ABYC Standard on cathodic protection. He has written numerous technical articles for WoodenBoat since 1980, is a member of the boatbuilding advisory committee of the Landing School, and he served in the group that developed the USCG wood vessel inspection guidelines. He has given presentations on boat restoration, wood science, marine corrosion, and maritime history for the WoodenBoat School, IBEX, SNAME, NAMS, the MIT museum, the USCG, the Landing School, the Herreshoff Museum, Mystic Seaport, and many others. Ed wrote the computer program BevelGage, which performs boatbuilding calculations. He lives in Noank, CT.

Guide Posts

Title
Good Reads: A Recommendation from Ed McClave: OffCenterHarbor.com asked our guides to share their favorite books that should be in every boater’s library… NOTE: ...
Learning From Experience: My Biggest Disaster and What It Taught Me: The folks who run this site have asked me to write about the lesson I learned from my biggest disaster. Just by asking f...
The Three Boats I Lust After (and Why): To tell you the truth, I don’t really lust after boats very much any more. So I’m going write on behalf of some othe...