Marine fabrication class launching new boats

Students in Wrangell High School's marine fabrication class are putting the finishing touches on some new designs.

A longstanding program continued under current industrial arts teacher Drew Larrabee. The course gives high schoolers the opportunity to design and construct aluminum boats for themselves, applying the math and physics skills they've learned in the process.

Third-year student Brian Schwartz is welding the hull on a 17-foot jet scow of his own design, which should be finished by or during the upcoming Christmas break.

"The most important part is the tunnel," he explained, a channel at the stern which brings the heel of the jet intake to or just above the bottom of a boat. Along with the general shape of his boat, Schwartz explained the feature should allow for minimal draft, allowing travel in water as shallow as three inches. This would let him travel around more easily on shallower water, such as along the Stikine River and its interconnecting sloughs.

Senior student Reyn Hutten is putting together a more hybridized design, which she and her father hammered out over the summer by looking at other boats. She explained her boat – a snubnosed scow with a v-bottom – should be well suited to inter-island hunting, allowing for easier landing and loading of game. At the time of Tuesday's interview, she was still adjusting the craft's design, reducing the size of its gunwale.

Students are helped through different stages by Larrabee, as well as by experienced students, professional shipbuilders and contractors. The design decisions are ultimately their own, and ideas take shape as the boats come together.

For Hutten, the process is a new one. She had taken welding last year, and has never built anything on this scale before.

"I built a birdhouse once," she noted. The boat build has pushed her to think more spatially as well, and Hutten is pleased with the challenge so far.

School senior Tarren Privett is putting the finishing touches on a 12-foot jet dinghy he started last year, which when finished should sport a Kawasaki 750 motor. It's the first he's ever built for himself, and Privett said the biggest challenge has been accounting for measurement differences as the design comes together.

"I built the intake from scratch," he pointed out. When finished, the boat should be able to run in as little as 1.5-inches of water, enabling travel in even shallower water.

It's similar to a design fellow senior Garrett Miller built last year. Also busy welding aluminum together in the shop Tuesday, he is putting together the frame for new benches as his capstone project. Using aluminum and synthetic materials, he is making them for use at the future Mariners Memorial at Heritage Harbor.

With plans at the ready, the new memorial is now in the fundraising stage, and Miller pointed out the Wrangell Port Commission has been looking for signs of community support in the project. Through his contribution, he hoped it would demonstrate interest in the memorial for potential donor sources. His benches will be finished sometime in January or February, well before shovels start making way for the new memorial.

"At least people will have somewhere to sit," he said.

"The pace of the boat construction this year is much faster than usual," Larrabee commented on the program. While this is largely due to the experience and wherewithal of his eight students, he noted the schedule has had to step up in part because of changes to the school day.

In recent years the high school has transitioned away from block scheduling to daily class periods, which has reduced class times and dropped courses from eight to seven each year. The changes have also impacted participation in programs like marine fabrication and other industrial arts. Larrabee pointed out the schedule change has the effect of reducing 32 possible credits down to 28 over a student's four years. Twenty-six are required courses for graduation, meaning students have significantly less room to take on a greater variety of classes.

"My class enrollment is down this year," he said of marine fab. "We've actually had to adapt the shop to be more efficient."

Secondary schools principal Bill Schwan said he would be sitting down with teachers after January 1 to reevaluate the schedule as a whole, including the move from block scheduling. He also hopes to shift the enrollment process more toward an online format, and make it easier for students and parents to select classes.

"It's going to be driven by the kids, their needs and wants," Schwan said.

To that end, he said the timing of different classes would be closely looked at, to reduce potential conflicts and allow for greater variety.

"We're moving forward with visionary projects," he said, pointing out programming like electronics, robotics, three-dimensional printing and other skills. Schwan noted these were experiences kids can someday use in the workplace, something they should be encouraged to take part in.

"The sky's the limit as we look down the road," he said.

In the meantime, new technologies available at Larrabee's shop have been allowing students to adapt more efficiently. For his senior project next year, Mikel Smith plans to convert the marine fabrication's practical 3-D boat model into a Rhino-CAD program format. This would allow components of future students' boats to be cut out using the shop's computer numerical control (CNC) router, reducing the need for hand-cuts on aluminum.

Smith has been working with the CAD program since last year, and noted there are a number of commands to learn. A large manual comes with the program, but there are other ways to master it.

"How I learned is I just looked things up online," he pointed out, using instructional YouTube videos and online discussion pages to learn what he needs.

In the meantime, Smith was working out a design for his own boat by hand. Next year he plans to build an SJX 2170 jet boat, the features for which he will customize for more local uses like hunting.

Students in the program pay for their materials themselves, and the aluminum he will need will cost between $3,000 and $3,500. After the motor, bells and whistles are all added though, he anticipated the project will cost him about $10,000 – a fraction of the cost of buying one off the lot, and with the added experience of building it himself.