We're Building a Boat

This fall, John and I are going to build a boat.

Not assemble a kit with a couple of bolts and call it a day. Build. Stitch-and-glue plywood panels into a 16-foot flats river skiff. Frames. Bulkheads. Thickened epoxy. Fiberglass. A casting deck. Livewells. Rod holders. USA red, white, and blue paint. Eighteen Thursday mornings from August to December, four hours at a time, until a painted hull is sitting there ready for power and rigging in the spring.

The boat already has a name: Scoughxxuene 2.0. Alias: Soon 2.0. It is a Salt Boatworks FRS 16, designed by Adam Parchman. CNC pre-cut panels. Sixteen feet seven inches long. Beam of six feet three inches. Draft so shallow you can sneak into the skinny water where the redfish live.

Here is the concept rendering. USA stripe. Full Throttle Marine branding. The whole thing looks like something a kid should not be allowed to attempt.

And the starboard side, with the Minn Kota up front and a 60 HP (racing version, probably) outboard on the back. That is the dream version. Fall we build the hull. Our plan is in the spring we do the power.

If you are a parent reading this, you might be smiling and also thinking: that sounds impossible for a sophomore in high school.

Good! That is exactly the point.

The Part That Matters More Than the Boat

I have spent a big chunk of my adult life investing in young people. Youth ministry in Jacksonville, mission trips, coaching kids in sports. Watching a teenager stand on a field or in a driveway and realize they can do something they swore they could never do.

That is my favorite thing in the world. It's not the win or the finished project. It is the moment belief shows up.

I am a mechanical engineer by education. I like horsepower and systems and figuring out why something works. Mentorship and engineering are not two separate lives for me. They are the same thing. You build something that is supposed to function. You troubleshoot when it does not. You stay patient when the results are slow. You celebrate when a young person owns the outcome.

Last fall, shop class was a 1989 Ranger bass boat and a stubborn Mercury 90. The goal was simple on paper: take a boat that ran about 28 miles per hour and get it to 40 by the end of the semester. The path was not simple. Carb rebuild. Fuel line. Primer bulb. Filter. Trim motor. Engine height. Prop testing with Ms. Gloria at General Propeller. We bought two props on purpose because John wanted to feel the difference himself.

Rubex: 36.2. PowerTech: 41.6.

Goal was 40. We cleared it. John learned compression tests, fuel systems, and how to chase a bogging problem without quitting. He learned it with grease on his hands, not from a textbook.

That is when I started saying out loud what I had been feeling for a long time. Young people do not need permission to do hard things. They need a runway, a patient coach, and a project that is real enough to scare them a little.

Shop Class Gets Bigger

So this year the project got bigger. Hull build. Fall 2026. Jessica is the academic supervisor. I am the coordinator and the shop partner. Every Thursday morning class has a guest task built in, so friends and family can show up, put hands on the work, and leave with more than a photo.

The curriculum is written down. Session by session. Journal. Photo log. Budget. Progress tracker. Final report. We are treating it like a real course because it is a real course.

And yes, this sits right next to why I started Full Throttle Marine. Teaching John marine mechanics in the driveway made something click for me. There are young people who learn by doing. There are parents watching their kids fix engines in the garage and wondering if there is a path that does not start with four years of debt. The trades need people. Florida has more than a million registered boats. Somebody has to build a bridge between those two facts.

For our family, that bridge starts with a sophomore and a pile of plywood that will become a boat.

What I Want Him to Believe

I do not need John to become a boatbuilder for life. I need him to believe that impossible is often just unfamiliar.

The hull in December will be proof. Not proof that Dad can project-manage a kit. Proof that John can walk into a hard thing, stay with it for eighteen weeks, invite other people into the work, and come out the other side with something that works.

If you have a young person in your life who needs that kind of proof, watch this space. I plan share the build as we go. Thursdays. Epoxy. Mistakes. Wins. The whole thing. We hope you'll join us on the journey.

We are building a boat.

More than that, we are building the kind of confidence you cannot buy.