Talent Knows No Gender

Angie Davis was on her way home from work on the Gallants Channel Bridge in Beaufort, N.C., when the boats from the Big Rock fishing tournament were coming into town. Many of those boats had been built at Jarrett Bay Boatworks in Carteret County, where Davis, who is 65, has worked for 24 years. “For as far as I could see, one boat after the other were coming in,” Davis says. “I was kind of proud to know that I worked on a lot of those boats at one time or another.”

Davis has spent most of her adult life working at boatbuilders in North Carolina. After she graduated from high school, she wasn’t sure what direction she would take. Her friend Cathy Canfield was working at Grady-White in Greenville, N.C., in the final finishing department. She suggested that Davis consider doing the same. “I told her I don’t know anything about boats,” Davis says. “I didn’t even like boats. I still don’t.”

She also had no idea about the opportunities that were available, especially for women, in the boating industry. This is a complaint that still rings loudly. Acquiring and retaining employees remains a major challenge for companies in every segment of the business.

“I wasn’t aware of builders in our area,” says Haines Duff, a structural design engineer at Chris-Craft, who graduated from the Stevens Institute of Technology and grew up sailing off Massachusetts. “I didn’t immediately know it was an option as a career.”

Davis worked at Grady-White from 1983 to 1998 in final finishing. “There were women in all the departments, but the department I was in was mostly women,” she says. “I never liked the idea of office work, and I don’t like computers. I like working with my hands, and I’m particular, and I’m proud of the work I do.”

After her stint at Grady-White, Davis moved back to the Beaufort area, where she had grown up. Linwood Parker was starting Parker Boats, and she joined the all-women final finishing team there, but left to go work at Jarrett Bay when Randy Ramsey started the company. The schedule was better-suited to Davis’ daughter Sara starting school. Today, Sara and her husband, Matthew, have a 1-year-old son, Ace.

“In the first 30 days, I thought I had made a big mistake because I didn’t know how afraid of heights I was,” Davis says. “I went to my supervisor and said I’m scared of heights, and he said, ‘Don’t worry about it. There’s plenty of work on the ground,’ and that was 24 years ago.”

She started out doing detail repairs, then moved to the varnishing department, where she still works. “It’s indoors, out of the weather,” she says. “It’s not hard work, but it’s constant, and the whole plant is a family.” She says her male co-workers have never treated her differently because she’s a woman. “I’m like the sister around here. They’re just co-workers. They see I’m a hard worker.”

Davis also says that boatbuilding has so many opportunities that if an employee starts in one department and doesn’t like it, he or she can check out another area. “I don’t think people are aware of how many different stages there are to building a boat,” she says. “You try one department, and if that doesn’t work, you can be transferred to another department. You can learn boatbuilding through it.”

To get the word out about potential careers in the industry, Jarrett Bay invites students from local schools and community colleges to visit. “If you can make youngsters understand if you’re looking for a career to be in, the company is like family, it gives you a sense of community, what more could you want?” Davis says.

Looking ahead, Davis says she has no plans to retire. “As long as I’m able to, I’ll probably just keep right on working,” she says. During her lunch break, she often goes down to the water to watch the boats being hauled and launched. “I admire them. I appreciate them. I just don’t want to be on them.”

Hustling for Respect

Jessie Cleeton grew up in Lebanon, Mo., never knowing about the boating mecca of Lake of the Ozarks just 38 minutes away. “I had no idea how big the boat community was up here,” says the 28-year-old, who has been a paint technician at Performance Boat Center in Osage Beach, Mo., one of the most popular dealerships on the lake, for a little more than a year.

After attending trade school and receiving her Automotive Service Excellence certification, Cleeton started her career at an auto-body shop in Lebanon. A paint representative who calls on the shop and Performance Boat Center told her that the boat dealership was looking for someone in its paint shop. Cleeton inquired about the position and was offered the job.

“I didn’t realize what I was missing until I got here,” she says. “It’s a different atmosphere. Everybody is more laid-back. They’re not worried about getting their car back because they need to drive to work. The customers here are much cooler.”

Coming from the auto-body sector, Cleeton was used to being the only woman working at a facility. “I feel like my hustle is worth more than my talent,” she says. “I feel like all the guys I work with have respect for me.”

Myrick Coil, the shop foreman at Performance Boat Center, says Cleeton is “better than most of the guys.” The rigging shop foreman is also a Cleeton fan. Cleeton has had to transition from working mostly with steel panels on cars to working with fiberglass and carbon fiber. She says she’s still fine-tuning such skills as airbrushing and painting carbon fiber. She pays close attention to small details, a skill that is critical when applying or repairing a multicolor, graphically intricate paint job.

Cleeton also has discovered the perks of working at arguably the most popular attraction in a performance-boating hot spot. She attended the street party that takes place every year as part of the week leading up to the Lake of the Ozarks Shootout, the largest high-performance boating event in the world. She also went for her first 126-mph ride in a Marine Technology Inc. catamaran that she worked on — because the customer wanted to thank her for the job she did. “I’ve gone on a couple of boat rides,” Cleeton says. “It’s totally different from being in a car.”

Cleeton was raised by her father, who was always working on some kind of vehicle in his shop. “I was always in the shop helping him work on something,” she says. “He wouldn’t pay anyone to fix things.” This led to Cleeton becoming something of a gearhead in high school. She had a 1989 Chevy Camaro that she traded for a 1988 pickup truck that she still has.

A parent of an 8-year-old son and twin 5-year-old daughters, Cleeton raises horses at her home in Lebanon. She says that she would like to see more kids get involved in a trade, and that students need to be exposed to the opportunities the boating industry has to offer. She also knows that she’s setting an example for her daughters and other girls. “They’re very independent, and right now they want to do the same thing I’m doing,” Cleeton says.

Betting on Herself

At the 2021 Palm Beach International Boat Show, Amanda Latham had dinner with Intrepid Powerboats owner Ken Clinton. She had incorporated her company, Man O’ War Marine, in 2020, and Clinton encouraged her to apply for a Mercury outboard dealership. Within 28 days, she had her Mercury dealer number.

Today, Man O’ War Marine covers 15,000 square feet on the same street in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., as Latham Marine, her family’s company that makes hydraulic steering systems and other marine components. With her well-known last name, some people assume that her parents got her the dealership, but that’s not how it happened. “Many people think that my dad or mom called someone to pull strings, but I wanted to know if I could get in as Amanda Latham, not Bob Latham,” she says.

Latham, who is 36, earned a bachelor’s degree in clinical psychology. “I was going to be a doctor, and it didn’t pan out when I graduated,” she says. Her mother, Kathy, put her to work in the front office at Latham Marine. Bored with clerical work, she went to her father and asked if she could work in back with him. He was assembling a stainless-steel tilt column. She watched him do it. He told her that she could ask three questions, and that he would be back in 25 minutes. “He came back, stared me down and said, ‘All right you can do it,’” Latham says.

As often happens with family businesses, there were clashes. Latham says she was asked to leave a few times, and after one dismissal, about two hours later, Brian Davis from Seven Marine called. Bob Latham had told him that his daughter was no longer with the company, and Davis asked for permission to offer her a job. “Brian said, ‘The condition is, you need to be in Wisconsin,’ and I said, ‘I’ll be there in two weeks,’” she recalls.

In 2017, Latham went to work at Seven Marine in Germantown, Wis., as the service manager. Before relocating, she learned the ropes from two Seven Marine technicians in the Florida Keys. “I went to Wisconsin, and it was a year before Volvo Penta asked me to move to Virginia,” she says. “The offer wasn’t substantial enough to make that move.”

She talked with a Seven Marine dealer in Palm Beach and felt that going to work there was a better opportunity. First, however, there were some Seven Marine engines in Europe that needed attention. Volvo Penta didn’t have technicians in Europe who were trained on Seven Marine products because it was so soon after the Swedish propulsion giant had purchased the outboard manufacturer. “I decided this is a big leap of faith that I could go fix all this stuff alone, and I went over there and had a lot of success,” Latham says. “That got some attention from people at Volvo Penta.”

After she turned down the move to Virginia, the company asked her to become a Seven Marine dealer. In 2020, Man O’ War Marine was incorporated. (The name came from a boat that Bob Latham had throttled to a world championship in offshore powerboat racing.) A year later, Volvo Penta shut down Seven Marine, and Latham became a Mercury dealer. Today, her shop is full of boats undergoing repowers with multiple Mercury outboards from 300 to 600 hp.

When it comes to choosing staff, Latham says, “Talent doesn’t have a color or a gender. I care if you’re good.”

A More Structured Approach

Haines Duff, who is 28, is a structural design engineer at Chris-Craft Boats in Sarasota, Fla. She grew up sailing on Buzzards Bay off Mattapoisett, Mass., where her grandfather built sailboats. She played field hockey and lacrosse in high school, and the latter led her to the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, N.J., where she continued to play while earning a degree in engineering. After interning at firms that designed buildings with a focus on sustainability, and at the Military Sealift Command in Norfolk, Va., she went to work at Michael Peters Yacht Design as a naval architect. She spent nearly six years at the firm in Sarasota.

“I knew I wanted to do something in the maritime industry,” Duff says. “When I first started, there was another female designer.” When that person left, Duff became the lone female on the team. She says that while she never thought her male colleagues treated her differently because she’s a woman, it’s something that’s almost unavoidable.

Of Peters, she said, “He’s got a boatload of experience and some great stories.” When she left his firm, she didn’t travel far, landing at Chris-Craft in August 2022 as a structural engineer. “My boss is a female, and it’s fantastic to have a mentor,” Duff says. Her primary focus is on lamination, core schedules and composites. The builder stays conventional when it comes to construction. “I feel more creative when I find a solution to a structural problem,” she says.

As part of her role, Duff is looking at sustainability and end-of-life recyclability for materials. She says she would like to see the industry take a more sustainable approach to production. She also would like to see more women get into the business, but adds that all kids should be given the opportunity to try something new. It’s more of a matter of getting the word out to everyone. 

“We’re a huge employer in this area, and I tell people that I work at Chris-Craft, and they don’t even know what it is,” Duff says. “Part of the issue is a bit of marketing. I think they’re trying to do that now and give kids the opportunity to try something new, but it didn’t happen when I was in school.”

She says what’s most important is that she likes what she does. “I hope that we get more females in the industry,” Duff says. “Once you enter it, you realize how much is around you.”

This article was originally published in the June 2024 issue.