The Perfect Project
A NORTH CAROLINA ENTREPRENEUR MAKES IT POSSIBLE FOR ANYONE— YES, ANYONE—TO BUILD A BOAT.
The 1950s table saw in Adam Parchman’s garage is stored neatly beside a workbench covered with boatbuilding plans. It has no safety features to speak of. When I approach the saw with wood in hand, Parchman politely tells me he’ll do the cutting.
The 32-year-old engineer is the founder of Salt Boatworks, a company that sells boatbuilding plans and jigs to anyone who wants to build a boat. The venture is the result of years of generous mentorship from dozens of folks including Shay Trainer of Trainer Boatworks and Donnie Caison of Caison Yachts. He remembers many of them saying, “You’re a crazy young kid. I like you.”
His mentors taught him about cold molding, making a jig and using a CNC machine. It took him two and a half years to build his first boat, a 21-foot center console named Learning Curve. “I’m the one building the boat, but all these people are pouring all this time and knowledge and skills into me. They always have the door open for me,” he remembers thinking. “This community is something that doesn’t happen in the corporate world where I work during the day.”
When he shared his work on social media, people expressed interest in building their own. In 2016, he responded to this demand by founding Salt Boat