After Hours

At 12, Chester Young spent a summer with his father on a clam trawler off Virginia. This past summer, the 49-year-old vice president and COO of Hans Wilson & Associates boarded the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower for a Tiger Cruise, a U.S. Navy program for crew members’ families (his brother-in-law is an officer). But it’s the Phil Bolger-designed vessel he’s rebuilding that turns heads. A nautical architect famous for vessels including the HMS Rose replica in Master and Commander, Bolger created blueprints for home-built boats, like the 1957 “Tennessee” boat that Young bought four years ago and is fixing up.

“I was very fortunate. I haven’t seen another one on the market,” says Young. The distinctive, 30-foot, nine-horsepower craft he and his wife call the Esther Mae can be seen powering along the Caloosahatchee or Pine Island Sound. “We’ve put about 4,000 miles on it and 800 hours,” he says.