Our Shop

Finish Line Shell Repair is a 22,000 square foot building based in Baltimore, Maryland.
Finish Line has 9 full time employees and we would love for you to come by our shop and visit sometime, but for those who cant make it, here is a quick tour of what the facility looks like.

Check in and Quality Control

This is the most important area of our operation. Every boat that enters Finish Line is inspected by Tess and Mike and given a serial tag. The boat waits until it is approved to be moved into the next area.
This is also where we do final inspection, reassembly and cleaning. Our Quality Control Expert (Tess), spends most of her time reviewing and inspecting shells to ensure the best result for our customers.

Repair

The absolute DIRTIEST spot in all of Finish Line – our repair section.
Back in 2017 we installed a 20ft tall curtain around the 4000sqft section to eliminate dust around the shop. We have 2 ventilation fans, a large commercial air cycle system and 4 air fans to make sure our guys on the floor are safe. On average we have 3 people working up in this area. All stripping, sanding and carbon repair is done here in this section.

There are anywhere from 10-15 boats in circulation at this stage. In order to keep up with demand and flow, we have multiple jobs operating simultaneously. From full paint jobs, small repairs all the way to major damages.

Paint and Finishing

When we started Finish Line we knew that we needed a differentiator. Something that set us apart from the competition. Here you will see a custom 70ft long paint booth with a full air make up system. This system is the single most important tool we have in the shop. Next to the booth is a 100sqft paint room. Our partnership with Sherwin Williams has made a huge difference in our quality. We are able to create and match any color in the world. We also use 2 different paint systems (base/clear and single stage). This allows us to paint any make and model of any boat in the world.

Our senior painter, Mike Swank, has been with us since 2014 and is a car guy at heart. We make sure that 4-7 boats are being worked on at once.

Used boats and storage

You all break a lot of boats! The other advantage we have is the storage space for shells. We know sometimes teams take awhile to approve a repair or teams decide to sell their equipment. Of the 22,000sqft its safe to say more than 12,000sqft are used for shell storage.

A major focus of Finish Line is the buying and selling of used rowing shells. In the back corner and running the length of the building are dozens of racks and hundreds of boats. We built the entire rack system over a 4 week period in 2016 and its allowed us to accelerate the business.