We visited the Hatteras Yacht factory in New Bern, NC today, and it is totally awesome! I certainly want to thank Nancy Ray and Chad Voorhees at Hatteras for arranging and providing this tour.....really great hosts. Chad is the custom yacht designer, which means that if you pay $5 mil for a boat, maybe you'd rather have the galley over here, an extra stateroom and a different kind of cabinets, or maybe a crew quarters that's out of sight for a professional crew....Oh and do you want that in cherry or mahagony? He's also very knowledgeable about much of the production process and he walked us through every step.


They start with two huge molds, one for the entire hull and one for the decks and superstructures. The hull is made in a swimming pool size mold like this where the inside of the mold is extremely finely made and smoothed because it will form the outside of the hull.
Then workers hand lay woven fiberglass mats with epoxy resin until they have built up the desired thickness in every specific part of the mold. The metal beams and hangars here are walkways for the workers to be able to reach the mold surface without stepping on it as they lay the fiberglass. Other manufactures use "chopper guns" to spray chopped fiberglass and resin with a hose, but it's not nearly as strong, so Hatteras uses this better process. They have also developed a new process that adds the resin to the fiberglass mats with vacuum infusion and they are just starting to use that also in order to improve quality.


When they extract the hull from the mold, it's a huge, gleaming white raw hull like this. It still needs lots of work before it is moved "across the street" to another building for finishing. It's very hard to get a sense of perspective for size from these pictures. These things are huge.


The top mold with the deckhouse, the decks and other structures is made the same way, only upside down in a mold. Then it is turned right side up after it is cured and out of the mold.
Then they start adding all the tubing, wiring, a pair of huge engines, interior walls, appliances, etc. A yacht is like a city....it has it's own electric power generating, storage and distribution systems, it's own water systems, sewage systems, etc., plus engines, propellers, rudders, hydraulics and navigation systems. It's staggering to see how much goes into one of these. They also install some of the larger cabinet walls and woodwork and the large items like refrigerators, stoves, generators, etc.

Then they put the top onto the hull. and it starts to look like a boat.

After the top shell is on, the interior cabinetry, wiring, air conditioning, lighting, control systems, plumbing, and hundreds of additional items are fitted in place and tested. All the things you see them working on here would have gone through Chad Voorhees' computer.
After the interior cabinetry is completed, the almost complete boat goes through the painting processes and comes out a Hatteras beauty like this 77 ft. Convertible.

Then they go into the water at the factory for final finishing and interior trim. There they are tested and run on shakedown cruises before delivery to the buyer. The factory is located on the Neuse River which we crossed on the ICW on the way to here. I understand that sometimes the shakedown cruises can include going to Cape Lookout where we were 2 nights ago.

I found it very interesting that almost everything for Hatteras boats is made right here in North Carolina, USA. Of course, they buy many of the installed items, like refrigerators, air conditioners, props, electronics, etc. but they build everything they reasonably can here and the whole process appears to be quality oriented. When the guy that runs CAD/CAM computer design for interior cabinetry will take the time to walk Hatteras owners through the factory and can tell you why Hatteras fiberglass hull process is better quality than their competitors and how their new process will improve that even more, it just shows that quality is instilled into the whole team.

They even gave us Hatteras logo shirts when we left the factory. Now I want a bigger new Hatteras, I just can't afford one. Hey Kathy..................