§ 01 · The yards
We are pre-cleared as an outside contractor at three yards:
- Fairhaven Shipyard & Marina — the closest yard, across the river from the New Bedford waterfront, accessible by car in eight minutes or by skiff in twenty. Two travel-lifts, a dry-graving slip, and a paint hall. We share keys.
- Bristol Marine, Somerset — thirty minutes up Route 6, with a 1,200-ton dry dock and the most experience in the region with steel-hulled commercial work. We have been pre-cleared since 2017.
- South Terminal Operations — the new offshore-wind dock at the south end of the harbor; we work both fishing-vessel and wind-vessel electrical here.
We will work at other yards too — New England Boatworks at Portsmouth, Newport Shipyard, Casco Bay Steel in Portland — but the three above are where we have a daily presence.
§ 02 · The 06:45 stand-up
Every day a boat is in the yard, the day starts with a fifteen-minute stand-up at the foreman's desk: who is doing what, what is blocked on what, what is needed by lunch, what is needed by tomorrow. The shop's job is to be honest about what we'll get done and to call out blockers early. Foremen do not love surprises and they especially do not love a Friday-afternoon discovery that the genset hasn't been re-bonded.
Our default discipline at every yard: clean tools every night, every cable run swept and tagged at the end of the day, no loose conductors hanging off the boat at the end of shift, no open boxes left for the next-morning paint crew to walk into.
§ 03 · What we typically do at haul-out
Haul-out is the only time some work can be done. We use the slot for:
- Re-bonding through-hulls, prop shafts, rudder posts — while the boat is dry.
- Replacing the underwater bonding strap, if it has thinned to the point of needing replacement.
- Anode-system re-design after a galvanic event.
- Any switchboard or board-level work that benefits from a stable boat (no rocking, easier to land conductors).
- Survey-prep walks — the boat sits still long enough for a thorough one.
- Rewires, when the haul is long enough to fit one.
§ 04 · Shipyard safety
OSHA 29 CFR 1915 governs shipyard safety and we work to it.[1] The relevant sub-rules for electrical: §1915.179 (energy isolation, lockout/tagout), §1915.181 (specific lockout/tagout for vessel work), §1915.184 (hot work), and §1915.185 (lockout-tagout for ship repair). Our crew carries personal arc-flash PPE rated for the boat's analysis — none of the apprentice "is the breaker off?" routines.
Hot work near the engine room and tank spaces is coordinated with the yard's marine chemist (a USCG-certified gas-free engineer). We do not weld; we do sometimes use a heat gun, and that is also coordinated.
§ 05 · How it bills
Shipyard work is billed at the regular hourly rates on the rates page, plus the half-day flat travel charge for Bristol or other out-of-harbor yards. The yard's facility fee is the yard's bill, not ours. Estimates are still single-page and the change-order discipline is the same.
The 2025-11 haul-out of F/V St. Antônia at Fairhaven Shipyard was a 26-day P-01 rewire combined with a hull-paint job and rudder-post bonding. The foreman ran the schedule. We worked the boat from 07:00 to 17:00 every weekday, kept the engine room clean for the painters, and we did not push a single deadline. The launch was on the day the foreman wrote on the schedule on day one.
Cross-references: P-01 when a rewire is the work, P-04 when a board upgrade is the work, P-07 when haul-out is the chance for an unusually-thorough walk, and the hulls log for boats we have worked at the yard with.
Sources & further reading
- OSHA. 29 CFR 1915 — Occupational Safety and Health Standards for Shipyard Employment. ↩
- Fairhaven Shipyard & Marina.
- Bristol Marine.
- U.S. Coast Guard. Inspections & Compliance — Marine Inspection.
- National Shipbuilding Research Program. Shipyard standards research.
- SUNY Maritime College. Marine engineering reference materials.
- USCG Auxiliary — vessel safety check programs.