How many men and women are at work on each of these boats?

About 55 people on the Golden Gate boat at this time, fewer on the Alameda boat until we get ramped up.

HR: Well, Whidbey Island is a little bit of paradise in the Northwest. It’s up in Washington, in Puget Sound. We’re right across the harbor from Everett, just about 30 miles north of Seattle. It’s an island, which is actually the largest island in the continental U.S. It’s about 50 miles long. Nichols Brothers is situated in a little harbor called Holmes Harbor on South Whidbey Island. We’re about an hour from Seattle. You have to take a ferry to get over here from a little place called Mukilteo. It’s very rural here, a lot of small farms, a lot of people who have recently moved here.

Well, Nichols is a third-generation family of boat builders. They originally got their start up in Hood River, Oregon where Frank Nichols was building boats and they moved up here about 35 years ago. It was a machine shop when they moved here and they started building little 32 foot fishing boats and through the years, we’ve built quite a number of vessels.

Are these ferries each custom built or are they stamped out assembly line fashion?

No, they are very much custom boats. I mean the only thing similar from catamaran to catamaran is that they’re all International Catamaran Designs out of Sydney, Australia.

We’ve built four overnight boats, diver catamarans. We can build anything with this basic hull design. In Australia there are high-speed catamarans moving automobiles.

They go under their own power. We’re actually delivering both of these vessels in the Bay Area and we’ll do crew training when we get down there. It takes about five days to drive down there.

For the most part, I’ll say no. I have found a few initials here and there inside the hulls. But we discourage that.

Are there any superstitions or special ceremonies that boat builders do? For example, skyscraper builders will put a Christmas tree up when they’ve topped off a building.