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Ramsey
teamed up with Myron Harris out of Marshallburg, North Carolina, and by
1986 had built one boat, sold it, and begun another. When the orders started
coming in, Tillet and O’Neill were ready to help. “Omie was
the one who got us all started, and Warren put our hands to work.”
Ramsey’s
boats—he has eight under construction—are all cold-molded
now but were once frame-and-plank juniper. “I found that the frames
took up too much space, and given our need to please the customer, we
switched over,” he says. “But I built a whole lot of framed
boats that are still running around out there.” Ramsey lavishes
a lot of attention to detail on the interiors of his boats. “From
the bilges to the varnish, it’s all about the customer’s needs,”
he adds.
Buddy
Davis also pays homage to the Tillet-O’Neill era. He was running
one of Tillet’s charter boats back then and recalls that it was
O’Neill who taught him the finer points of boatbuilding. “We
all had our own ideas about it, but it was Warren who showed us how. Naturally,
when any one of us decided to go off on his own, we took a little bit
of him [O’Neill] with us,” Davis says, and to that end he
put his own distinctive spin on the style by offering boats with a characteristic
bow flare, sharp entry, teak toe rails, broken sheer, and tumblehome aftersections.
The
first Davis boats were also juniper-planked, then cold-molded. Ultimately,
in 1999, Davis (now building under the Davis Boat Works logo) switched
to solid fiberglass and from custom boats to semicustom.
The
Carolina boats, with their unique profile and design qualities, are easily
recognizable no matter how far and wide they go or how many tournaments
they fish. And as the new crop of builders begins to imagine what their
vision of a Carolina boat could be, it all comes back to Tillet and O’Neill.
“For me and Warren, it was all about the dreaming,” Tillet
says as he looks back over all the years. I ask him what he thinks of
the new crop of Carolina boats being built by his boys, and he doesn’t
hesitate as he answers. “They’re as fine a collection of boats
as you can find anywhere, and the boys are sincere about what they’re
doing. But here’s what I think: There’s a big difference between
just getting a boat out and getting a good boat out. Remember that.”
Briggs
Boat Works Wanchese, NC Phone: (252) 473-2393
Davis
Boat Works Wanchese,
NC Phone: (252) 473-1111 Fax: (252) 473-6222
www.buddydavis.com.
Jarrett
Bay Boatworks Beaufort,
NC Phone: (252) 728-2690 Fax: (252) 728-2607www.jarrettbay.com.
Paul
Mann Custom Boats Manns
Harbor, NC Phone: (252) 473-1716 Fax: (252)
475-1523www.paulmanncustomboats.com.
Scarborough
Boats Wanchese, NC Phone: (252) 473-3646
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