It is a cold, windy February morning, but the Hallett family is hard at work in the complex that makes up Handy Boat Service on Falmouth Foreside in Falmouth, Maine.

Patriarch Merle Hallett is warm in his crowded office on the second floor.  When he surveys his domain through the wide picture window, he sees mounds of snow hiding the hulls of hundreds of yachts that surround the buildings.

A few doors away, son Jay Hallett is hard at work in the general manager's office.

Beyond the glass partition, Merle's wife, Barbara, is arranging the inventory of upscale women's clothes and accessories in her clothing and gift store, The Chandlery

	Photo courtesy Merle Hallett
	Merle Hallett, right, has led the family, inlcuding wife Barbara and son Jay, far left, through a long and distinguished racing career. Joining them is nephew Paul Riley.

In the loft above, son Richard Hallett and his crew are busy making new sails and repairing torn ones at Hallett Canvas and Sails.

Merle Hallett, about to turn 75, has just returned from playing an hour of tennis. His immediate task is to help his son Will, 19, solve a geometry problem. Will is attending college while learning the business from the ground up.

Family is at the heart of Handy Boat. In the course of an hour, Will will stop by to discuss the problem with his father. Barbara will check in to see how Merle's tennis match went. And the family's sailing Labrador retriever, Boomer, will visit to beg for a treat.

Hallett delights in showing off Boomer. He holds a biscuit near the dog's nose.

"That's poison, Boomer," he says.  The dog backs away.

Then he tells the dog it is good and Boomer grabs it and bounds away into the cavernous boat shed.

From humble beginnings, Hallett has become a world-class yachtsmen, sailing with the best. His family has been there with him, helping to run the business, and sailing all over the world.

"We've taken Handy Boat from a sleepy boatyard to a big operation," he said. "Everyone has been involved. It's been a heck of a challenge."

Older daughters Cindy and Connie also worked at various tasks in the yard while they were growing up, before taking different paths.  

But it hasn't been all work. The family has sailed together since the early 1960s, beginning with a Pearson 33, the first of many yachts that have carried the name Scaramouche.

Will made his debut in the 1984 Monhegan Island Yacht Race when he was just a toddler. When becalmed before the start of the race, Hallett dipped Will over the side in a harness to keep him entertained and cool.

"Willie would have gone in 1983, but it was foggy and I didn't want to deal with an infant in those conditions," Hallett said.

In 1985, the family, with the addition of Cindy's husband and Jay's wife, took the seventh Scaramouche to Block Island Race Week. They were first overall among 250 boats and were named Boat of the Week. Hallett still sports the engraved Rolex watch he was awarded.

"After the first race on Monday, I took Willie up to the playground," he said. "They had those little animals with seats on what looked like auto springs. Willie didn't understand how they worked, so I got on  to show him.  The thing flipped me and I broke three ribs."

Hallett could do little except steer the boat for the rest of the week, but Scaramouche took three firsts and two seconds.

When Hallett was growing up on Portland's Munjoy Hill, he and his friends would take lumber from the East End dump to make rafts to float on Casco Bay. He built his first real boat when he was in the eighth grade, an 11-foot Moth class sailboat.  When he got a job as the waterfront director at the North Star camp in Waterboro, the Moth went with him.

In high school, Hallett moved up to a 16-foot catboat. "Augie Anderson, a Danish baker on Veranda Street, took a liking to me and let me use the catboat," Hallett said.  He gave me a membership to the Centerboard Yacht Club in South Portland, and I won my first trophy there in that catboat in 1944."

After graduation from Portland High School, Hallett began a brief career selling vacuum cleaners. The baker had sold the catboat to a neighbor, but Hallett offered him $100 and a vacuum for it.

About 1948, Hallett was building Lightnings at Anchorage Boat Service in South Portland and racing them at Centerboard and in the New England Championships. He sold the catboat and bought a 26-foot Herreshoff sloop dubbed Cinderella.  Friend Herb Cushing helped build a new deckhouse for the sloop and they went racing all over the coast.

"We sold Cinderella for $1,700 and bought a 40-foot schooner built in 1913," Hallett said. "We rebuilt it and named it Rowdy, because we were still single and had a lot of parties aboard. We raced it in the stormy Monhegan in 1952 but didn't finish because we tore our mainsail at Cape Porpoise. There were 23 boats that started and only six finished, including Ticonderoga, which set the record for the race."

By this time, Hallett was working at Handy Boat for "Bud" Sawyer, who had started the yard in 1934. Hallett purchased the yard from its second owner, Fred Felton, in 1968.

Hallett started racing 24-foot Ensign class boats in 1964. He finished third in the nationals three times, and then with oldest daughter Cindy and friend Jim Flaker in the crew, won the 1972 national championship.

In the 1970s, Lloyd Ecclestone invited Hallett to crew aboard the 55-foot yacht Runaway in the Southern Ocean Racing Circuit. Ecclestone made Hallett a watch captain and they raced all over the Caribbean for two months.

That was Hallett's introduction to world-class yacht racing. He participated in SORC for about 15 years. In 1981, with sons Jay and Richard, he crewed for Ted Hood aboard Robin.

Hallett rejoined Ecclestone to race Volcano, a 61-foot Frers in SORC. A few years later they won Antigua Race Week on Ricochet, a Canada Cup yacht.

Racing took him to the West Coast to sail in the Los Angeles to Hawaii Race, and then to Norway to crew on Jim Kilroy's 81-foot maxiboat Kialoa at the invitation of King Olaf. He crewed with Ted Turner on Kialoa a couple of times.

All the Hallett children became competitive sailors. Jay sailed on Doug Coleman's Flying Saucer when he was 4 years old. Richard and Connie competed in Turnabouts.  Richard raced Lasers, and Cindy and Richard raced 420s. Will will race in his 19th consecutive Monhegan this coming August.

"We grew up with everything focused on sailing," said Richard Hallett. "Our whole summer vacation was spent at Handy Boat, bumming around on Turnabouts and the runabouts and sweeping the floor. It's like a person who grows up on a farm and gets involved in all of it. And we're still involved."

The Halletts still sail together, with family crewing in the Gulf of Maine Ocean Racing Association events.  

"Dad is as competitive as he was 40 years ago," said Richard Hallett. "Two summers ago, we did the Camden-Castine Race on Dick Hale's Bandito, and he was right up there sitting on the rail. He still has the desire to win."

By his count, Hallett has done 15 or 16 Bermuda Races.

"We chartered a 35-footer called Aesop in 1972 with Sandy Fowler and Don Watson," Hallett said. "We were the smallest boat in our class, but we won it. For 36 hours straight the wind was never under 50 knots. It may have the been the roughest passage ever."

While he has enjoyed sailing and racing, this public-spirited yachtsman has given much back to the sailing community.  He helped organize Thursday night racing at Portland Yacht Club, was instrumental in the founding of GMORA, and was a founder of the Yarmouth Cup Race to Nova Scotia.

Most significant is his involvement with the MS Regatta in Portland from the beginning. The regatta has raised more than $1 million for the charity and has become the largest regatta of its kind in New England.

"We've always tried to promote sailing and make it fun for people," Hallett said.  "The MS Regatta gives a lot of enjoyment and helps put something back into the community.

What's next? Hallett is considering an opportunity to race from New York to England on the clipper ship Stad Amsterdam later in the year. "Barbara would really like me to do it so we could visit England," Hallett said.

Barbara Hallett's influence in this sailing family is not inconsiderable. For example, she forced a major repainting of Mr. Jumpa, a New Zealand yacht Hallett bought in 1983. Mr. Jumpa was a Farr design with a daggerboard originally owned by New Zealander Graham Woodruff.  John Wysocki brought the open stern, 40-foot, one-ton yacht to the United States, and Hallett became the third owner.

"Mr. Jumpa had a group of frolicking frogs painted on the deck, and Barbara didn't like what they appeared to be doing and made me paint over them," Hallett said.

As he turns 75 this spring, Hallett is energized and looking forward to new projects. He has been working to expand the MS Regatta into a large-scale waterfront festival.

Closer to home, he is getting ready to build a retro-design, the 14-foot HandyCat.

"We developed the HandyCat in 1971, and Cape Dory and Nauset Marine built them," Hallett said. "I got the molds back and we're going to build them here again."

Expect Hallett to be very visible on Casco Bay again this summer. He'll be easily recognizable during the MS Regatta ­ he has a very wild wardrobe, including passionate pink slacks.