Ken Fickett
Ken Fickett started his boat building career as a pre-teen working after school, summers and weekends for one of Miami's most famous commercial boat builders . Sweeping up, caring for tools and acting as a gofer, he learned boat building from one of the best, Raleigh Stapleton. Ken worked for Raleigh until he went to college and when he returned from college he went back to work for Stapleton until opening his own business in 1971.
It was a time when the industry was shifting to fiberglass, and Ken exhibited a spacial knack for fabricating molded components. "I've always had a high degree of what they call spatial aptitude," he explains. "In school I scored high in figuring what a two-dimensional pattern would look like in 3-D. I could envision what the other side of a mold would look like, and how things would fit together in three dimensions."
Nearly forty years later he's still at it. Mirage Manufacturing, in Gainesville, Florida is located at the same spot on N.E. 20th Way where it all began. Same address! Same phone number! During this time, Ken's built some of the most competitive MORC racing sailboats, a line of popular, fast, offshore sportfishing boats and, of course, the Great Harbour Trawlers which have become known as America's Go-Anywhere Liveaboards.
When he was in his 20s Ken learned to fly. His interest in flying and his knowledge of high-strength, ultralight fabrication led him to develop several high performance airplane projects. Ken brought the Aero Mirage TC2, Team Tango and Foxtrot aircrafts to market. Although Ken sold his interest in his aviation company to focus on the development of the Great Harbour Trawlers, he still maintains a Cessna 205 for family and business use.
Today Ken continues to run Mirage Manufacturing and is busy developing his largest project yet, the all-new Great Harbour 74. He also enjoys a hands-on roll at Great Harbour Charters, which operates out of Marsh Harbour, Great Abaco in the Bahamas during the Spring and Summer and from the Jacksonville, Florida area during Fall and Winter.
When Ken is not busy designing, building or chartering Great Harbours, you'll find him at boat shows and owner's rendezvous talking with owners and prospective owners about the benefits of his designs and listening to their suggestions and feedback.
And to help spread the word that Great Harbour Trawlers are the right choice for so many avid cruisers, Ken has become an award-winning writer for the boating industry. To read his articles and letters to editors, click here. You'll discover that Ken Fickett doesn't follow the crowd when it comes to boat design and construction. He knows there are too many "me-too" trawlers on the market. Instead, he sets his own path, designing and building boats that fit the needs of avid cruisers who simply want to enjoy the liveaboard lifestyle without having to spend millions of dollars on boats that are too expensive, too complex and require too much maintenance.
