Double Webbie Single Shark: A Good Start to a Great Winter

In the beginning…….

Well, my name is T.J. Brackin and I will be writing for the next two months to tell you about my Webb Institute Winter Work Experience at Metal Shark Aluminum Boats. Metal Shark is located in Jeanerette, Louisiana. While at Winter Work, I will be living with a member of the Junior Class, Eric Harris. Eric and I are sharing an apartment in Lafayette, Louisiana, which gives us about a 40 minute commute to and from work each day. The 40 minute commute may not sound so bad, but when work starts at 6:00 AM, it can be a bit of a drag.

My arrival in Louisiana was pretty uneventful, and Eric was waiting for me at the airport when my flight got in. I arrived at my new home for the next two months to find a spacious, two bedroom, two bathroom apartment with kitchen, dining room, and living room, however the apartment was unfurnished. The apartment itself was very nice, but the lack of furniture and decoration was a bit depressing at first. I spent my first two nights here sleeping in a sleeping bag on the floor because my bed had not been delivered yet.

My first day of work was pretty exciting for me, having never worked in a shipyard or been to Metal Shark before. After some paperwork and a tour of the grounds, I was right away immersed in the boat building process. I was assigned to a crew working on RBS #29, one of the Coast Guard vessels that Metal Shark is currently building. On my first day I got to have a hand in the entire process. I did a bit of welding, used a grinder, held pieces of the boat in place so that they could be welded, and just got to see how these boats are assembled. My first day was excellent, and I am certain that the rest of my days at Metal Shark will be much the same.

-TJ

So funny story.... As you can see above, TJ is on top of things with writing a blog. I, Eric Harris, however, tend to be a bit behind on these things. Below is my story...

My name is Eric Harris, and I am a Junior at Webb Institute. Jeez, that sounds like I am announcing myself at a group meeting or something. In any regard, It has been two weeks since I arrived down here in Louisiana. I have been silent thus far since I have been getting used to the conditions. First of all are the living arrangements. My roommate, TJ, a freshman at Webb, and I got a really good deal on an apartment that is nice and spacious, as well as in a nice part of town. It is unfurnished, but we are making do well enough. Turns out that Wal-Mart has a good deal of stuff for cheap that will last two months. Not sure how much after that, but definitely two months.

Besides working on getting stuff for our apartment, I also have not had a great deal of free time. Most of my days have been spent waking up at four AM and returning home at six PM. This is because I am working ten hours a day. But I don’t regret a single moment of those ten hours. This is an amazing position to be working at with Metal Shark Boats in Jeanerette, LA.

The first day that I arrived, I was introduced to the engineering department, which had six people in it. There were four Webbies there, including myself and my classmate Egis. I started on Thursday, January 3^rd. After introductions went around, I was given a short tour of the facilities and was able to see the amazing work that they are doing on the boats. The turnaround rate on a boat is incredibly fast there. After the short tour I was seated at my desk and given a list of things to do. The first thing on that list was to open up Solid Works, which is a design program, and start doing tutorials. It was like diving into ice water. I never realized how complex Solid Works could be until I started trying to do the tasks that they had given me.

After a little while I got the hang of what I was doing and started picking up the pace. The first two days were normal eight AM to five PM days, where I was still home by six PM. The early days really started once my roommate, TJ, arrived. Since he is working in the production facilities, he has to be at work at six AM, and I am his ride. Luckily I was able to get approval for doing two hours of overtime a day. On the day that TJ started, Monday, January 7th, he didn’t have to be to work at eight. Upon arriving at the office, I soon ran into my other classmate who was starting on the seventh, Connor Bennett. At that point in time there were then seven people in the engineering office, of which five were Webbies. This last week, both TJ and I spent learning more about the job and about Louisiana.

In regards to the job I have been doing work on things ranging from a concept design to detail design on a vessel that begins production in the next few days and production support for vessels being constructed on the shop floor. I have not spent a lot of time on the shop floor but I plan on looking into that more this upcoming week. This is the first job where I have arrived and jumped right in and felt useful and like a real part of a team. It is exciting being able to contribute to these projects, and then watching the boats be constructed in a very short little period of time.

Last week they were taking one of the boats out for trials during a few of the days, and it was really neat watching them hook up the truck and trailer and then driving this boat out of the yard. It was especially intriguing watching the boat since I had seen the construction process on a similar one in the production side of the yard.

In addition, I have heard tell of a boat that is being delivered to the area right around Webb sometime soon, so I hope to see that out on the water while I am back at school in the spring semester.

TJ and I are currently staying in Lafayette, LA, and we have heard that this is one of the best places in Louisiana to go for any type of meal we desire. That has us especially excited since we have tried some of the local foods and they are delicious. The first day that I was at work, I went to a local place that served an amazing Shrimp Po’boy, which is essentially a sub with fried shrimp, some delicious sauce, lettuce, and tomato. And it was one of the most filling and cheapest lunches I’ve had in a long time. Another day at work I was getting ready to leave for lunch and my boss, John Wise, another Webbie, told me that somebody down the road had brought us Gumbo for lunch, and it was some of the best Gumbo I have ever had.

That’s the funny thing about where Metal Shark is located. It is pretty close to the highway, maybe ten minutes off, but it is in the middle of a farming/residential area. The land area itself is not that large, but the parking lot is packed every day. To quote Egis, “The first day I showed up I thought it was a pickup truck dealership, not a boat building company.” The entire front parking lot is filled with pickup trucks and a few other cars. But that’s pretty normal here; a vast majority of people drive pickup trucks.

This last week has also been very wet. I thought that my home area in Florida was well known for its thunder storms, but the rain this last week has put that to shame. It got so bad that schools were closed in a large area of Louisiana on Thursday and Friday. There are ditches on either side of the road and they had filled and flooded the yards of some folks. Two of the people in the engineering department had some flooding in their house from the sheer amount of rainfall.

All in all, I am just over a week into my job here in Lafayette, and I am very pleased with the location and the job. I feel like this is the best winter work so far in terms of experience and fun in the office.

Attached are some pictures from the site at Metal Shark, I apologize for the quality, both TJ and I wanted to keep our cameras dry and all we had were phone cameras.

-Eric Harris