Intern at Jarrett Bay Boatworks
This summer I am interning at Jarrett Bay Boatworks located in Beaufort, North Carolina. Jarrett Bay builds custom sport fishing boats. The boats are wooden and fiberglass is applied directly to the hull once it has been built. My boss is Gary Davis, the New Construction Superintendent, but I also work closely with Chad Voorhees and Livingston (Lib) Brooks, both are Product Design Engineers. Currently, Jarrett Bay has four boats under construction: Builder’s Choice (64’ Sportfisherman, Hull #59), Blank Check (84’ Sportfisherman, Hull #60), Grander (46’ Walk-Around Express, Hull #61), and Project Ireland (90’ Sportfisherman, Hull #62).
The boat I have been helping with this summer is the 90’ Sportfisherman. This is the largest sportfisherman built by Jarrett Bay, and to my knowledge it is the largest ever built. An huge goal of this construction process is to get this boat down to a certain weight so that it can reach a top speed in the low 40 knots. In order to achieve this, the design team here, along with some outside contractors, have come up with ways where weight can be saved. I was not here when this was done, but carbon-fiber composite stringers were installed instead of typical plywood stringers in order to save weight. This is the first time that Jarrett Bay has used this technology on their boats.
My project for the 90’ that I am working on this summer is helping with the weight study. On a day-to-day
basis for this project I do research to find lighter weight appliances and systems that will be on the boat, track weights, and other tasks. Since the boat was recently flipped to be right side up, I have been tracking the weights of materials that were used as the jig that have been removed from the boat. When the boat was flipped, the travel lift gave us a rough estimate of how much the boat weighed. With the weight that was removed, I can calculate an estimate of how much the boat currently weights. I also recently completed research to find truck scales that we will place under the boat with hydraulic jack-stands to periodically check the weight to make sure we are on track.
The coolest experience that I have had during this internship is watching the boat be flipped over. This is a huge milestone of the construction of this boat. At Jarrett Bay, the hulls are built upside down on a jig. Once the hulls are glassed, they are flipped over so that work can begin on the inside of the boat. The day before the boat was flipped, it was taken out of the warehouse to sit in the sun so that the resin in the fiberglass could post cure by baking in the sun. On the day of the flip, the boat was taken by a marine travel lift over the water so that it could be rolled over and then placed into the water. I got to be up about 30-40 feet on the genie boom watching and videoing the flip from start to finish. It was absolutely incredible. Here is a link to the video of the flip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJpS8Kl7ivU. The following link will take you to
see construction pictures and renderings of the 90’ Sportfisherman: http://www.jarrettbay.com/carolina-construction/custom-yachts/hull-62/