View full sizeDale Williams of Williams Fabrication stands near the shrimp boat "Mr. Fic" on Friday, Sept. 28, 2012, at the boatyard in Coden. The vessel is the first built in Coden in more than a decade. (Press-Register/Victor Calhoun)CODEN, Alabama -- Dale Williams would look like an expectant father if he weren’t hard at work finishing the “child” he’s helped create.
The Coden craftsman is within a month of finishing the first shrimp boat built in his area in more than a decade, a near-identical twin to the “Miss Hannah” he built for Dominick Ficarino. Ficarino owns one of the largest seafood processing plants in Bayou La Batre, Dominick’s Seafood.
The new vessel, quietly idling in its slip awaiting finishing touches on its 105-foot form, is also for Ficarino -- with a few adjustments.
“They’re twins, born 11 years apart,” Williams said of the two vessels.
Since last year, Dominick’s Seafood has been featured as part of the History Channel reality series “Big Shrimpin’,” which follows three of Ficarino’s shrimp captains as they harvest the Gulf of Mexico. The “Miss Hannah” is already featured as one of the boats on the show, and once Williams Fabrication releases the new vessel, it will be, too.
The new boat’s name: “Mr. Fic,” after Dominick’s father, Williams said.
When he ordered the vessel, Ficarino wanted a three-foot addition to the deckhouse, which “accommodated another state room,” he said. Both are to accommodate a camera crew, presumably for the next season of “Big Shrimpin’.”
The “Mr. Fic” will also have giant freezers that can carry up to 35,000 pounds of shrimp, and an extended range, Williams said. There are also “a lot of subtle changes that you wouldn’t recognize to make the boat a little better.”
The 61-year-old said building the $2.3 million vessel marks an uptick for a boat market that’s been dormant since a bubble in the ’90s.
Now, Williams Fabrication employs more than a dozen people, and is also building two lobster boats for a company in New England. Having left Ingalls Shipbuilding after a 14-year tenure, he said the plan was to build just one boat, and now the company is on No. 20.
Talking about the “Mr. Fic” project, Williams likens the process to conception and childbirth.
“This boat started developing out of my head,” Williams said. “Like two people get together and say, ‘Let’s start a family,’ two people say, ‘Let’s build a boat.’”
But, unlike a child playing in sand, ships only “become” once they’ve been set to float, he said.
“It’s not really born until it goes in the water, into its natural state,” Williams said. “And a boat isn’t conceived to sit on a beach. It’s conceived to go in the water.”