It’s time for a big update on the Lobster Boat redesign project! We had quite a busy summer, between moving our fiberglass shop from Tacoma into our new larger facility in Gig Harbor, planning a short-notice appearance at the Annapolis Sailboat Show from the other side of the country, and keeping up with the regular production pipeline, all while down a person in the assembly shop (our assistant boatbuilder Arelan got promoted to Warehouse Manager in September when Duckworks moved down here from Port Townsend).
But the critical point here is, even with all that happening we managed to keep up steady progress on the new Lobster Boat.
PHASE ONE – Building the plug
In this phase, we’re essentially building a wood hull that becomes the parent of the fiberglass hull. Before we can build a fiberglass boat, we need a mold. And before we can build a mold, we need a perfectly shaped hull to build the mold around… that’s the plug.
Since the hull mold will be used for every future Lobster Boat we build, there is lots of detail work in this phase to ensure we end up with a flawless shape. It’s the slowest-moving part of the entire process with tons of tedious shaping, and sanding, and buffing, and polishing to get it to a glossy mirror finish… but the payoff is worth it.
Here’s Falk giving a video update for social media at the end of July, when we were just about a month into the project. At this point, the MDF planks for the plug had been assembled, and we were just starting on the adding the little landing strakes to the the bottom.
Once the boat is filleted and the shape is faired, that’s when the real detailed work begins. This part of the process took longer than we hoped, but we felt it was worth the extra effort because the plug is the single most critical phase of the project. Everything else we do hinges on the plug being exactly right.Â
Here she is under the white sanding primer coat. (That’s Willie in the photo, who we hired to work full time on this project so our regular production team could focus on the pipeline of other boats on order.)
FIRST MILESTONE ACHIEVED – the new Lobster Boat plug is DONE!
Contrast that with how it looks in Falk’s video update below with the glossy black topcoat, and compare the massive difference. Man does it shine, now!
We completed the plug on the last day of October… so the video shows it as it was on Halloween. It’s like a Lobster Boat dressed up as Darth Vader.
WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?
Starting this week, we move on to building the hull mold itself! From here on out, progress starts to happen more quickly. There will be faster visible progress on the molds and parts, so we’ll be sharing more frequent updates as we work toward the rest of our project milestones. Here’s our target project schedule:
- Finish Plug by Halloween (done!)
- First hull done by Thanksgiving
- Seats done by end of year
- Deck done by end of January
- Finished prototype done by end of February <— Orders Open for Regular Production
- Preorder production begins March 2025
Thanks so much for your patience as we worked on getting all the details right on the plug. We’ll keep you posted as we make progress toward these milestones, and let you know if there are any changes to the timeline. Our ultimate goal is finishing all of the preorders in time for summer, with regular orders coming after that in the regular production pipeline.
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