Steve Stone

Filmmaker & Fearless Leader

Steve Stone runs Off Center Harbor’s business and marketing, and he has filmed and directed most of the site’s 700-plus videos.

Steve studied business and marketing in undergrad, and then fine art (documentary filmmaking and animation) in grad school. Long before taking up filmmaking and business though, when Steve was 9, his dad came home from the office one day with a Laser sailboat in tow. It was a totally random act by his dad — the boat was rented for the weekend to see if the family might have interest in sailing. 

The first outing in 30 knots ended with blood gushing from dad’s nose as he hung onto the sheet for dear life as the Laser sailed away with Steve’s sister aboard after dad was bashed overboard by the boom.  Somehow, the Laser would stick with the family go on to imprint a deep need within Steve to be on the water, under sail, playing with the edge of the wind

Nearly twenty years later, on a serendipitous outing in the South Pacific aboard a leeboard ketch designed by L. Francis Herreshoff, Steve read one of Maynard Bray’s books and got hooked on the beauty of well-designed traditional boats. Steve credits Wayne Roberts, a boatbuilder in New Zealand, for deepening that appreciation for beauty into a reverence for simple boats and a simpler life. 

And after nearly another 20 years passed, Steve moved to Brooklin, Maine. As Maynard was snapping still photos of Steve steam-bending frames into a Herreshoff S-boat, Steve said: “Hey Maynard, does that camera shoot video?”… and OffCenterHarbor.com was born. You just never know where life will turn.

Here’s Steve at work filming aboard the legendary Malabar II (PHOTO: Benjamin Mendlowitz):

And on a camp cruise in Maine in HOWDY, a Caledonia Yawl: