Clocking in doesn’t mean what it used to.

Josh Gaab’s job as our yard manager is a 24/7/365, futile attempt at managing heroes, bums, and psychopaths, while also attempting to rationalize chaos. In his position, he deals directly with the demands of customers and captains while juggling the yard employees, all of their idiosyncrasies, and the ridiculous expectations of the yard owner. He peers daily into an equivocal crystal ball to estimate the time and cost of each project. He lies awake at night, coming up with a plan for tomorrow and by 8 a.m. it’s shot to hell. People don’t show up, vendors drop the ball, the weather ruins service plans, the jobs evolve into deeper repairs, which extend the yard stay, forcing postponement of promised arrivals, hauls, and launches, and on, and on. It is not for the faint of heart and God help him if his back is sore or he gets the flu. The show must go on. Somehow, he manages to keep us all headed in the right direction with a smile on his face. I don’t know where in the hell we would be without him.

David Sproule became our yard manager at the old yard in the late ‘70s. Dave had been employed by the yard for around 15 years at that point and had worked in all the shops, including purchasing for Uncle Hal, before the decision was made to hand him the wheel. Like Josh, he had a damn good grasp of the basics of the entire working yard. Consequently, the trade supervisors, Curt Wills (mechanical/electrical), Jimmy Becker (paint), and a guy named Smokey (carpentry), would work directly under Dave. Curt had taken to calling me “Smokey,” a derivative of “Little Smoke” which had been assigned to me by Marshall Ray, our bottom gang foreman. Ray referred to Uncle Johnny as “The Whip” and to Dad as “Big Smoke,” because of his propensity for wearing Ray-Ban Aviators (smoked glasses) throughout the day within the glare of Z-Spar 99 and anodized aluminum. When I joined the gang, I became “Little Smoke.”

For 50 years the yard had done business solely on a time and material basis, but our world was changing. For the first time in the storied yard’s history, shortly after he cautiously assumed the role of yard manager, Dave was informed that he had to estimate job costs and write formal proposals. It was one hell of an adjustment for all of us in the old, iconic yard, but growing competition from other boatyards up and down the East Coast had shifted the industry. It was left to Dave to figure out how we were going to adjust to accurately predicting the end result, before assigning the jobs to the men that the three of us managed. He needed our help, and we all felt the angst of impending bottom-line accountability together. Out of the four of us, I probably had the least trouble with the new protocol. I was the youngest and hadn’t put in as much time as Dave, Curt, and Jimmy had within an old system where quality work was all that mattered and damn what it cost. They had a hard time with it, especially Curt. Resentment, defiance, and frustration were the initial reactions to the new demands of upper management. Eventually, we all climbed aboard and attempted to predict the unpredictable. It is then that one quickly learns the cold hard truth that all men are not created equal.

Soon after Dave took the hot seat, Bob Fisher, Motor City industrialist and new owner of the yard, decided to modernize the tuna tower fabrication element of the Rybovich legacy. Prior to Fisher’s Epiphany, the towers were built on the benches and floor of the machine shop by Charlie Troendle and Charlie Bausch with direction from Dad or Uncle Johnny. Like everything we did, each tower was a one-off prototype, designed and built specifically for one boat. Fisher, being from Detroit, had a production approach to everything. Standardize all components, design and build jigs for each standard part, and keep the customization to an absolute minimum. To accommodate all the jigs and machinery needed for production, he built a formal Tower Shop on the back of the massive new office building which he had insisted was necessary on the old south lot. He hired a separate crew to man the shop, and suddenly we were in the production tower business. Dave, Curt, Jimmy, and I watched all this happen and paid close attention. We figured the machine shop, paint shop, and carpenter shop were next.

The first thing we noticed about the new Tower Shop was that they were always busy with everything but tuna towers. Installing and testing new machinery, building a comfortable, air-conditioned break room with kitchen facilities, erecting “Tower Shop Only” signs in the parking lot, designing unique, yellow Tower Shop work shirts, installing a state-of-the-art sound system to motivate and inspire, etc. At one point in all this hullabaloo, I asked Curt what he thought was going on over there and he replied with a grin: “They’re getting ready to go to work, Smokey.” Every now and then, they would venture out from the new shop to measure something but the “getting ready” never stopped. Fisher moved all of the yard welding operations into the new Tower Shop. Now, when I needed something welded or brazed, I had to walk across the yard to the new shop and ask if they had time to help. They didn’t. They were always too busy. Busy getting ready. Waiting for the Tower Shop to get ready proved to be exasperatingly inefficient. We solved that by training Steve Kniceley, one our best young carpenters, to weld stuff for Curt and me on our side of the yard with an old machine that was left behind in the move. Steve could do anything asked of him and do it well. This saved us from the inevitable brush-off and helped us immensely with estimating fabrication costs. For some reason, the Tower Shop was spared the estimating process and any relative culpability. They were Bob Fisher’s hand-picked boys.

At the old yard, Curt, Jimmy, and I would assign the day’s work in a short morning meeting for each of the three shops and the crew would quickly gather their tools and get to work. As I look around our yard today, I worry about that same Tower Shop mentality creeping in to yard operations. People are spending too much time getting ready to go to work. The first thing I’ve noticed is that everyone must install some sort of orthopedic floor mat at their bench. I’m not sure what this accomplishes because I never had one. It must have something to do with altering the earth’s gravitational pull on sedentary feet. The next common work preparation device is the personal fan or blower. You need to get this set up just right before hitting the first lick of the day. After 30 minutes or so of aiming and adjusting the flow of the fan, it is common practice to plug your Bluetooth speaker power source into the accessory outlet on the blower. Following this operation, dialing in your Pandora, Spotify, or Amazon Music on your iPhone can take a considerable amount of time. Evidently, one needs to get the music to correspond with the mood of the job and confer with fellow workers before deciding upon a theme for the morning. While setting up the music on your phone, you will most likely want to share the latest Instagram posts with your co-workers. This has become a necessary social exercise to ensure camaraderie throughout the day. Next, let’s take a leisurely stroll to the office to put in for some PTO tomorrow because you have a feeling that you will be tired after a hard day’s work today. OK, we’re almost ready. Oops. Don’t forget to refill your personal water supply on your fraternizing tour back from the office. Everyone seems to need unlimited water these days, even while standing idly on their orthopedic floor mat. What is this obsession with aluminum water canisters carried by everyone from toddlers to octogenarians, requiring incessant, re-filling rituals? Who needs that much water? Who has the time? My Grandparents, my Uncle Jimmy, and my Aunt Mary lived well into their 90s. My Aunt Ethel lived to be 100. Each of them worked outside in the Florida sun, every single day. None of them carried around a logoed canteen. It’s as if we’ve evolved into some new primate genus of a lesser God, from Homo Sapiens to Hydro Sapiens. Hey! Where did the time go? It’s 11:15. Time to get ready for our 12:00 lunch.

When Dave ran the yard, everyone had a brown bag or a lunch box that was kept on or under their bench. Like school days when your lunch was in your locker, refrigeration was not an option. That Spam and cheese sandwich or last night’s leftover Chef Boyardee would keep until lunchtime. I walked the yard a few mornings ago and took a count. These are real numbers, folks: 17 personal refrigerators, eight microwave ovens, and two toaster ovens. If all these appliances are ever in use at the same time, there’ll be an FPL brown-out in eastern Palm Beach Gardens. The toaster ovens are the most curious part of this anomaly. Unlike a microwave, cooking in a toaster oven requires pre-heating, attention, and considerable time. I checked the time cards and work orders. There is no job number for cooking lunch. What in the hell? Is getting ready a legitimate job line in our estimates and formal proposals? Is cooking lunch billable? Lord have mercy, have we become the Tower Shop?

Let’s get real. Work is work, and preparing for work should be accomplished before you leave the house. Get here, punch in, pick up that hammer, and build something. 4:30 will be here before you know it. I’d like to think that Curt and Jimmy are watching from above, estimating the time it will take to do your job and betting you can do it in less. Down here, Smokey is getting ready. Getting ready to shut all these fans off, unplug the toaster ovens, turn off the Zambezi music, and go home. But first, I need to fill my water canister and set up my Audible. I could never navigate the 2 miles back to the house without them.

This article originally appeared in the January 2026 issue of Power & Motoryacht magazine.