Text and photo by Patty Huston-Holm
Most of the 11.8 million registered water vessels in the United States come from the country’s 4,000 manufacturers – not from the hands, the sweat and overall talent of an individual boat maker.
“Why would they want my boat?” Stevie Wilson, Ocracoke Island’s only boat maker, asked. “Maybe because they took a fishing trip with me, they got to know me.”
Or maybe buyers of a vessel with Wilson’s stamp know that they are getting something unique, made by a person who cares deeply about the product, its quality and the water it will operate upon.
Stevie, or “Captain Steve” as many have known him for three decades, is, in his own words, “a waterman.” Born here, or an “Ococker” as locals say, he is a master captain, master (scuba) diver, fisherman and a ship-wreck historian of sorts.
Of the estimated 3,000 sunken ships off North Carolina, an area called the “Graveyard of the Atlantic,” Wilson says the ones he knows about are “non-grandiose rust buckets and piles of debris with sharks and turtles around them.”
On a blustery spring day, Wilson worked on his fifth boat and first “Ocracoke” skiff, a shallow draft boat with a flat bottom, pointed bow and square stern. Inclement weather provides time from Wilson’s other passions – Dream Girl Sport Fishing excursions and tending to his 400,000 oysters growing on a 10-acre, Pamlico Sound farm off Devil Shoals.
While discussing the boat-making process, he unapologetically points to the dust, wires and equipment surrounding his unfinished, 20-foot-long product inside a white-tarped construction area.
“I grew up here on the water,” he said. “I can’t say why I’m infatuated with boats, but I have been since I was a child.”
He credits his late father, Jack, and Ocracoke School teachers for his boat passion and skill. Less about academic learning, the informal and formal educators surrounding Wilson pushed him toward “critical thinking and problem-solving skills,” he said.
Such is how Wilson and his wife, Jennifer, a local postal clerk, today guide their children, ages 7 and 9.
Wilson, who is vice president of the Ocracoke Seafood Company board, a business that serves 19 full and parttime fishermen, can’t imagine a life outside of Ocracoke. Of his 53 years, only three – one as a high-school exchange student in France and two at Elon University – were off the island.
Creativity can be messy, time consuming and worthwhile.
His boat starts with an engineered mold from a traditional manufacturer.
The final step for the roughly 20-foot-long skiff is the motor. In between are the resin application, the battery and its bay, bait tank, hatches, bumper rails, bilge pump, draining holes and more.
“The details inside that most don’t think about are the most time consuming and expensive,” he said. “I’m the quality control…I’m here for every stage of the process.”
With an assistant, Wilson could make a boat in two weeks, but for this first one by himself “it’s hundreds of hours” over a month or so.
He is not driven by the money. Sight unseen, this Ocracoke skiff has a few interested buyers.
While Wilson plans on continuing his boating excursions, oyster farming and boat making, he is aware that life can be fragile. At this time six years ago, he was recovering from a serious injury incurred when, as he was fueling up his truck at the marina, his emergency brake gave way, pinning him between the dock and his vehicle.
“I’m in some pain every day,” he said, pointing out the surgical scars on his back. “But I like to be busy. It’s important to keep moving.”
While charter fishing, farming and building, Wilson also is exploring a mentoring initiative. Along with the Ocracoke school administration and Beaufort County Community College, he’s designing a course about boat construction and safety with the realization that skills like boat fabricating are transferable to other careers.
“A student going into orthopedics would benefit,” Wilson said.
