MATTAPOISETT — For Mattapoisett Boatyard co-owner David Kaiser, it felt like a nearly foregone conclusion from the general public that the more than 60-year-old family business would be sold, after a fire left his boatyard in charred destruction and injured an employee. 

But Kaiser had a boating community to serve and a business to operate. The fire came and went — destroying the facility — but the Mattapoisett Boatyard remained.

“Rebuilding was the only option,” Kaiser said. He operates the boatyard with his son Ned.

Monday, Aug. 19 marks two years since an accidental six-alarm fire at the business on Ned’s Point Road spread to six buildings, 14 boats and close to 50 vehicles before it was contained by the efforts of more than 100 firefighters from across the South Coast. 

The 2021 fire also severely injured employee Phil Macomber.

A symbol to the Mattapoisett Boatyard’s recovery in the almost 730 days that have followed is hard to miss at the property.

A new building with an area of over 10,000 square feet is expected to be completed by the end of the year. 

About 40,000 square feet of building space was lost in the fire; the new construction will “consolidate everything,” David Kaiser said.

“We can’t wait to put everything in one spot,” he said.

Even as the new building takes shape, the boatyard hasn’t turned down work and has “hardly skipped a beat when it comes to getting the work done,” according to David Kaiser.

While all land-based operations were completely wiped out, waterfront operations were “100% unaffected” by the fire, he said. “That was a big deal.”

However, expenses for the Mattapoisett Boatyard have risen in the last year. 

Tools, parts and materials lost in the fire — uninsured losses — all needed to be replaced, David Kaiser said.

“You never think you have enough insurance, but when the rubber hits the road, you never have enough insurance,” he said. “We were clearly underinsured. We’re clawing our way back when it comes to that. Taking all of our resources and putting it toward everything that we need.”

Despite the fire, not one employee of the business’s core team has left, according to Ned Kaiser, who said they’ve “really been able to just keep on.”

“If anything, it’s brought everybody closer together,” he said.

Phil Macomber, who was severely injured by the fire, returned to work at the boatyard in May 2023. Four employees dragged Macomber hundreds of feet out of a burning building during the blaze, his femur “shattered, according to David Kaiser.

“Knowing that at any time that building could collapse, that they were putting their own lives on the line to save him, that still resonates in them,” he said.

While the Mattapoisett Boatyard has had to work with “peanuts” compared to what it possessed prior to the 2021 fire, Ned Kaiser said it was “a really cool feeling” to have made it two years since.

He said “there’s nobody to thank but” the whole boatyard team “because they’ve all stuck through it.”

When the new building at the boatyard opens at the end of this year, it will house many of the business’s various departments, such as mechanics, carpentry, parts, and customer service.

A meeting space on the second floor will serve the Mattapoisett Yacht Club. An outdoor deck looks over the harbor.

Standing between the new building and the water of Buzzards Bay, Ned Kaiser said he “can’t imagine” how many other businesses or people “would have just called it after” the fire.

“It’s a proud moment to be able to say that we’re still doing as well as we are right now,” he said.