Celebration Boatworks was officially founded
in April 2001 after Jared Hickman returned to
the Seattle area after a prolonged trip to southern
California. Although Jared went to California to
help Joe Grieser with a Santa Cruz 52 he was
working on, he found that there were a lot of
boat owners in need of a mobile repair man.
After working in San Diego for a month the Santa
Cruz 52 (with Jared on Board) was moved to San
Francisco for the Big Boat Regatta. Once there
Jared again found that there was an overwhelming
demand for mobile boat repair men.
Once Jared returned to Seattle in October of 2000 he
decided to try out the boat maintenance business in
Seattle. After a shaky winter start things
started to take off the following April and so
Jared decided to make it official and opened
Celebration Boatworks.
In 2005 the summer rush found Jared
with more business than he could handle and he
started hiring contract employees to help out.
For the last several years Jeff Lamborn has been a
steady member of the Celebration Boatworks team,
but it is not unusual to see as many a 5 people
on the docks working on Celebration Boatworks
boats.
Jared Hickman, Owner
Jared
started his boating career in New Mexico at the
age of 4 when his father purchased a Force 5. A
couple of years later Jared found him self sailing
his sister's Laser whenever she would let him
and called the sailing tender for the Cal 27
that the
family owned his own. Due to an unfortunate
accident between the Laser and the sailing dinghy Jared was forced to repair both when he
was 8 years old as boat repair men are scarce in
New Mexico thus starting his boat repair career.
In
the fall of 1990 Jared's family moved to Seattle
and traded the Cal 27 for the J-30 Celebration.
The family would race Celebration for the next
15 years on the Puget Sound. Due to the competitive nature of the family and
the harsh Seattle winters Jared found him self
polishing his boat repair skills.
For a
summer in his college years Jared worked at
Marine Service Center where he painted boat
bottoms and ferried boats around Lake Union.
In the Spring of 2000, Jared's good friend Joe
called and asked if he would come to San Diego
and help him out for a few months, being sick of
the retail career he decided to quit, move out
of his apartment and go to California.
A few years ago Jared become an official
certified US
Sailing Judge and he strives to get out on the water whenever he can. In July 2007 Jared took a job that
he just could not pass up with the City of
Seattle as a Bridge operator. Although the
business and the city job take up most of his
time, if the wind is up Jared is on the water
sailing his Laser or Racing on the J-24
California Girl, The J-105 Allegro Veloce and
the Peterson 40 Shoot The Moon whenever he can.
