Inside the Plant Where Pursuit Boats Are Built
In the light of morning, before the heat settles over the water and the wind begins to ripple the inlet, the factory floor already hums. Inside the Pursuit Boats plant in Fort Pierce, Florida, hulls sit in various stages of becoming: sleek, white promises of days offshore, lines cast into deep water. Workers move deliberately and rhythmically, each with a distinct purpose and role in creating the next Pursuit vessel.
Watch that floor for an hour and you learn how Pursuit boats are built — in layers, by hand, under checklists, by people who intend to still be standing at the same bench in ten years. Nearly 50 years after Leon Slikkers put the Pursuit name on a line of fishing boats, the method still explains the brand better than any brochure.
Where Pursuit Boats Take Shape
Fort Pierce holds all of it. The company completed the 182,000-square-foot plant there in 2020, and the added room let production scale while the standards held. Today 555 employees work the site, and many of them count their time with the company in decades rather than years.
Every boat (like the latest Pursuit DC 286) starts in the same place: the spray booth, where crews apply gelcoat and a hull first takes on its shape and finish. From there the vessel moves down the line as a project more than a product — one that demands attention and receives it.
How Does a Pursuit Hull Come Together?
A hull begins as layers. Crews digitally cut each composite layer to exact specifications before placing it within the hull and the structural components, then apply knit fiberglass by hand during lamination. Taskie Walters and Wadson Louis work resin into a mold with the unhurried pace the stage demands. Nobody rushes this part. A mistake made now reverberates throughout the life of the vessel…