As seen in the December 2025 issue of In the Bite magazine, written by John Brownlee:
The Lobster House is Jarrett Bay’s hull number 44, a 2004 41-foot express boat, which the current owner has owned for 20 years. He recently decided it was time for a refit, so he got in touch with Safe Harbor Jarrett Bay (SHJB) Project Manager, Donnie Lee. “I wanted to bring the boat back home for her refit, and the Jarrett Bay reputation has always impressed me,” he said. The owner and Lee discussed the refit over several calls outlining a plan, and after a visit to Jarrett Bay’s 175-acre Marine Industrial Park on the ICW in Beaufort, North Carolina, he pulled the trigger.
“When a Jarrett Bay boat comes back to us for a refit, we all get excited to give it the very best service possible,” Lee said. “But that is truly the same with all the boats that come here, especially our many loyal customers. The Lobster House refit has been one of my most favorite projects since I became a Project Manager at SHJB 9½ years ago. The owner made this project an extremely rewarding one for our entire team. He listened and gave us leeway on our update suggestions, truly taking our ideas to heart, while we made sure to keep his vision and influence present across all aspects of the project.”
Time for New Power
This refit included a full repower, so the SHJB crew started by removing the tower so they could get to the old engines to remove them and to make repairs to the decks and cabin sides before paintwork. The Lobster House previously had 660 hp Cummins QSM11s, and those engines were removed. The crew installed new, upgraded 715 hp QSM11s and new transmissions as well. New seacocks and all new hoses throughout the engine room completed the repower portion of the job. They installed new rudders, new shafts, a new fuel manifold, new engine room lights and new engine seacocks as part of the repower.
Paint and a Lot More
She received a full paint job, including the deck, hardtop, buggy top, bridge deck, bow deck and the hull, and she got a fresh coat of bottom paint as well. The boat got fitted with new teak covering boards fitted with new rod holders, a new teak cockpit deck, and new transom hawse pipes were fabricated and installed at the same time. The transom got a new painted name.
The boat received new exterior cushions for the bridge deck seating area, along with a new full enclosure. In the salon, she got new carpet and new plumbing fixtures, plus a new headliner. The SHJB crew installed a new lightbar on the top as well. And before reinstalling the tower, they gave it a fresh ceramic coating along with all the other metal surfaces.
These two examples of what a refit can entail offer differing insights into the types of things one can choose to do. The levels of complexity differ but the result comes out the same: The owner gets a boat that’s revitalized, looking like new, and ready to do what he wants it to do. And that’s why we do it.
