Acushnet Marine ElectricEST. 2008 · MA #ME-12740
Crew · Saoirse FerreiraControls · NMEA 2000 lead2019–present

Saoirse Ferreira — NMEA 2000 and the bus that has to work.

Saoirse came up through the UMass Dartmouth Electrical & Computer Engineering program, did her senior project on CAN-bus diagnostic tools, and joined the shop in 2019. She runs the SKM-PowerTools coordination studies and leads every NMEA 2000 commissioning the shop does. She is the youngest of the four and the most patient with anyone who has ever said the word "plug-and-play".

Licensure
MA Journeyman JE-31144, NMEA-certified
Joined
2019-09-23
Plates led
P-06; supports P-04 (SKM)
Lives in
Fairhaven
Saoirse Ferreira, with a laptop running NMEA 2000 diagnostics on a bridge bench, beside a Maretron N2KMeter and a coiled length of mid-cable.
Crew · Saoirse Ferreira mid-commissioning

§ 01 · How she got here

Saoirse grew up in Mattapoisett, in a household that fished commercially every summer for forty years on her grandfather's side. She did her undergraduate at UMass Dartmouth, focusing on signals and embedded systems, and her senior thesis on a low-cost CAN-bus diagnostic for sailboat NMEA 2000 networks. She was looking for a job that would let her do real work with her hands when she came across the shop's careers page in summer 2019.

§ 02 · What she does

Saoirse runs the SKM-PowerTools and ETAP licenses on the bench, doing every coordination study and arc-flash analysis that goes out the door. She runs every NMEA 2000 commissioning — Plate P-06 — and is the contact on bridge-electronics work where the captain has multiple brands on a single bus.

She wrote the August 2025 bulletin on backbone discipline; it has been quoted on a NEMA panel and forwarded around the offshore-wind support trade enough that the shop occasionally gets calls from beyond the harbor.

§ 03 · Outside the shop

Saoirse races a Cape Dory 25 out of Mattapoisett Yacht Club on Tuesday nights in season. She also serves on the Fairhaven Conservation Commission — the boats and the harbor she works for are connected to the marshes and the estuaries the commission protects.

She is the crew member most likely to recommend a particular podcast on a long drive to Bristol.

Cross-references: Saoirse leads P-06 (NMEA 2000) and runs the SKM bench for P-04.

Sources

  1. UMass Dartmouth ECE. Electrical & Computer Engineering.
  2. NMEA. NMEA training and certification.
  3. Mattapoisett Yacht Club. Tuesday-night races.
  4. Fairhaven Conservation Commission. Town agency.
  5. Buzzards Bay Coalition. Estuary protection.
  6. SKM Systems. PowerTools licensing.