 In 1938, his mentor, marine artist Frederick Judd Waugh, encouraged him to go to Maine, "where it will all be before you".Handlen settled first in Biddeford Pool and later in Kennebunkport.As a young man, he worked in Bernie Warner's shipyard on the Kennebunk River and eventually designed and built his own forty-foot, sixteen ton topsail schooner, "The Saltwind", which is moored in the Kennebunk River behind his house, very near the site of the old shipyard.