Matt Nichols gazes out at Holmes Harbor, watching the complicated, agonizingly slow series of maneuvers needed to move 3.2 million pounds of steel from land to sea.

“See that? The crane is moving the spud,” he tells a group of on-lookers. “The operator has to grab it from the top metal ring. That takes some talent.”

Spuds are long columns of steel, standing upright in the water, acting as positioning anchors for a raft of side-by-side barges and boats.

In the middle is a sparkling black and white articulating tug boat squeezed in between two blue barges. It’s been under construction for about a year behind the simple wooden fences of Nichols Brothers Boat Builders on Cameron Road in Freeland.

Behind every single piece of the giant tug — from the bolts to the bunk beds to the ballast tank — are the 350 employees at Nichols, some whom have been there 30 years.

Measuring 138-by-44-foot, weighing 1,550 tons and built with two 13-foot diameter propellers, the tug — with no name — is getting wet for the first time.

So far, so good.

No leaks.

“It happens,” admits Matt Nichols, the last Nichols working at the family company. “Someone forgets to close a valve or something.”

Taking off his sun glasses, he then announces “it’s time to go home and cut my lawn before the sun goes down.”

Reacting to people surprised he’s leaving so soon, Nichols laughs. “Do you know how many of these I’ve watched?”

Now 7o years old, Matt Nichols almost didn’t live beyond seeing boats No. 1 and 2 launched.

Both were 42-foot seine fishing boats that needed to be delivered to Cordova, Alaska.

A crew of three were aboard each boat, including 16-year-old Matt.

“All we had was a sextant and a compass,” he recalled. “We got in a huge storm. It was 25-foot waves and six foot waves on top going a different direction. We should have never survived. That’s the first time I talked to God.”

That’s one of many tales of nearly 55 years in the boat building trade Nichols will tell Saturday at Clinton Community Hall. Beginning at 2 p.m., he’s presenting a slide show tour of “how the family built this quintessential island industry from the ground up.”

Beginning in1964 in Freeland, the company began as Nichols and Downing Boat Works, owned by Matt’s father, Frank Nichols and business partner Jack Downing.

Frank’s father, George Mark Nichols, settled in Hood River, Ore. in 1939, after leaving Yakima.

“His brother asked if they could build a tug boat, called The Whale.Since they were blacksmiths, they knew how to forge metal,” Matt Nichols said. “They started building boats and never stopped.”

Indeed.

Over the years, high-speed passenger catamarans, research vessels, tug boats, crab boats, an Argosy tourist boat, the superstructure of six Washington state ferries, mini cruise ships, the Navy’s fastest vessel, fire boats for the cities of Los Angeles and Seattle, ferries for the city of San Francisco, 2,000-seat luxurious dinner excursion boats, a three-masted schooner and seven river boats for a DisneyWorld ride are among big boats constructed behind an unassuming wooden fence.

Prices range from $3.5 million to $55 million.

“Look on the wall,” Matt Nichols says, giving a tour of offices where photos of all the completed boats are framed.

“You’ll see every kind of vessel. To date, there’s been 189 launched out of this shipyard.”

Matt’s father ran Boat Works in Oregon when he decided to pack up his wife and 11 children and move to Whidbey Island.

His father chose land on the lip of Holmes Harbor for several reasons. “It was a price that was affordable and we got the tides that really work for us,” Matt Nichols said. They built and lived in the light green house that now serves as an entryway to the shipyard.

“I made them save the facade,” Matt Nichols said. “I just couldn’t tear it all down.”

Frank Nichols had six of seven sons working for him — Archie, Matt, Luke, Willie, Mike, and Nate.

“We were Dad’s crew,” Matt Nichols said. “We were crawling up the sides of boats before we could walk. Our dad used to say, ‘You don’t even know what you know.’

“It was like tribal knowledge.”

Except for Matt, the brothers left the business one by one, with Archie staying the longest for 25 years.

“Brothers get along a lot better when they are not business partners, I discovered,” Matt said.

His title is no longer owner but executive vice president. In 2008, the company, Ice Floe, bought the shipyard for $9.2 million in a bidding auction after Nichols Brothers filed for bankruptcy. All employees were temporarily laid off and hired back.

Today, some 350 employees work in the shipyard, considered the largest employer in unincorporated areas of Island County. “We have some very talented people out here and we train them ourselves,” Nichols says, walking across the road from his parents former home which has been converted to offices and meeting space. “About 10 percent are women, which is a pretty high percentage.”

Matt and his wife, Cassie, raised their five kids and also fostered five other kids, but not all at the same time.

Cassie Nichols said she fostered troubled teenagers when her children were small and the arrangement worked out well.

“One of the girls later asked Matt to walk her down the aisle,” she said. “We’ve remained close to all of them.”

They have 11 grandchildren and three great grandchildren with another on the way.

Under construction for about a year, the vessel launched over the weekend is the second ocean class articulated tug built by Nichols for Savage Companies. The first one, named S-182 Abundance, had a bright orange top deck.

Both boats’ final push occurred in the wee morning hours of Easter Sunday, ending up at Nichols Brothers dock in Langley. Once again, an odd-looking tug boat served as backdrop for the marina’s sunrise service.

“Two Easter Sundays in a row, it just happened that way,” said Jeff Bukoski, Savage senior project manager for vessel new construction. “Some guys weren’t too happy about that.”

Articulated tugs are not tiny and they don’t tow boats like traditional tugs.

They’re part of the system called articulated tug barges (ATB.) They lock into the back of a barge using a pin system, becoming a single unit that pushes from astern.

“It’s a highly capable boat and it’s designed to be safer,” Bukoski said.

Powered with twin 4,000 horsepower engines, the tug is expected to push barges measuring 581 feet in length and 96 feet wide. The tug is also built with living quarters to accommodate the barge crew.

Abundance now works in partnership with a barge called Harvest, built by Vigor Industrial in Portland. It transports liquid ammonia in the Gulf Coast that’s needed to make fertilizer.

Bukoski declined to specify where the second tug may end up or why it’s original name, S-183 Vision, has been scrapped; there’s no name on the black and white tug, just numbers on the stern.

“We’re chasing a changing market,” he said. “The project started more than two years ago and things change.”

Change is evident from just looking at a black and white photo of The Whale, the first boat Matt Nichols’ grandfather built.

Whatever happened to it?

“My dad sunk it,” Matt Nichols said. “It was being used building the Bonneville Dam.”

• 54 Years of Whidbey Family Tradition: A Nichols Family Boat Building History, 2-3 p.m., Saturday, Clinton Community Hall, 6411 S. Central Ave. Free, open to the public. Funded by the Friends of the Clinton Library.

An articulated tug boat, measuring 138-by 44-feet, was moved about 800 feet into the water from where it was constructed at Nichols Brothers Boat Builders. The 1,550-ton vessel was rolled into the water at low tide. Photos by Patricia Guthrie/Whidbey News Group

Matt Nichols, left, is the last of Nichols family working at Nichols Brothers Boat Builders in Freeland that started in 1964. Over the weekend, he watched the 189th vessel get launched after being constructed piece by piece behind the company’s wooden fence.

Matt Nichols, many of his 10 siblings and his parents, Frank and Peggy Nichols, lived in this light green house. Matt Nichols saved the facade when it had to be torn down for shipyard expansion.

A “pocket” cruise ship for Lindblad/National Geographic Expeditions is in its superstructure stage. A similar ship was built and launched last year. Over almost 55 years, Nichols Brothers Boat Builders has constructed or rebuilt hundreds of vessels including Washington State ferries, excursion passenger boats, tug boats, pilot boats, high speed catamarans, fishing boats, crab boats, oyster dredgers, three-masted schooner, and seven river boats for a DisneyWorld ride.

Matt Nichols in a photo taken a few decades back. At various times, he’s worked beside his father, five of his brothers and his own son. He’s the last of the family still at the Freeland shipyard, because, as he likes to joke, “I’m a little slow.” Nichols is giving a talk about the history of the company Saturday in Clinton.

Matt Nichols, executive vice president of Nichols Brothers Boat Builders, looks over plans of a potential client at his office across from the shipyard. Nichols Brothers was sold in 2008 to Ice Floe and it retained the family name.

Workers look like as tiny as bait atop the tug boat that took about one year to construct. It’s built to attach to a barge.

A welder works on the hull of a “pocket” cruise ship contracted to be built by Lindblad Expeditions/National Geographic, the second one built by Nichols Brothers. There’s usually four projects underway in different stages at the shipyard.

Getting closer and closer to the water, the tug is rolled in stern first. Two propellers are 13-feet in diameter.

“Crawlers” placed under the vessel slowly roll it forward to the shore. Frank Nichols, founder of the company, invented the crawlers, his son, Matt Nichols said.

A boat with scuba divers and others heads out to the articulated tug after high tide helped it float into place between two barges.

Big tug, little tug. In the wee hours of Easter Sunday, the articulated tug with no name successfully motored to Nichols Brothers dock in Langley.