Parker Boats hosted its second major plant tour and club event on February 25th, when it hosted a group of Boston Whaler owners and fans at the company's Edgewater production facility. Located on 50 acres, stretching from US-1 to the Halifax River, the facility houses 250,000 sq ft of production space, multiple boat docks and a custom built testing pool. Boston Whaler centralized its production efforts to this single facility in 1994. BW strictly does fiberglass production at this facitity and install outsourced interiors, electronics and parts per customer specifications.
Here our host and tour guide, Chuck, explains the cold molding process that BW uses for smaller fiberglass parts, which takes an average of 3 hours to complete.
The building process for BW boat begins at 3am with initial gel coat molds, then chopping and fiberglass laying. Several different types and thicknesses are part of BW's trademarked process for each boat. Each individial boat starts at the cutting machines, with each part being pre-cut and traveling through the plant as a single project.
Following the parts cutting, the boat moves into the hull fiberglassing department, where workers lay down the layers of fiberglass and gel coating. Small boats are finished in one area, with workers able to complete 5-8 boats week, working 10-hour shifts 4 days week (versus your traditional 8-hour shifts 5 days week).
Larger Boats are assembled, built and foberglasses in larger forms, which are moved throughout the plant by a massive forklift. Notice that there are wheels on both sides of the larger forms, to enable roof cranes and forklifts to rotate the boats in-form.
Next, the forms are taken into an adjacent room where a multi-million dollar foam filler machine sprays the BW "unsinkable" foam into the molds. This injection molding allows for a uniform insulation throughout the hull.
Outside, molds that have been injected bake in the warm Florida sun. Beyond the molds a large number of towers, railings and trim pieces await their installation.
Back inside the plant, we see the final assembly lines for the different BW models. All smaller boats travel down same assembly lines, while the larger (32' plus) models travel separately.
Outside, and nearing the end of our tour, we see the original Boston Whaler test pool, where countless numbers of BW's (and competitors boats) have met a chainsaw to test their "unsinkability". It doesnt require mentioning, that many of the Non-BW boats met the bottom of the pool, while not one BW did!
Parker Boats thanks its owners and fans that attended this special event. We hope that you enjoyed the information about one of our favorite brands, Boston Whaler. For a full range of Boston Whaler models and options, visit their site:
Boston Whaler or visit the
Parker Boats site to see available models now!
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