Art on the Water

Photos by Ryan Moser / Story by Lexi Holian

In a place steeped in boatbuilding history, Josh Everett doesn’t just put the finishing touches on local sport fishing boats and world-class yachts – he gives them personality.

A lifelong artist, Josh found his niche in marine graphic arts on the Outer Banks. He’s painted transoms with names like Waterman, Marlin Darlin and Dream Time, and crafted faux teak finishes for renowned boat builders including Spencer Yachts and Viking. And his ocean-centered artwork and gold leaf lettering aren’t just physically imposing, they’re also inspired by coastal life and this region’s maritime heritage.

“I’m blessed to be doing what I’m doing,” says Josh, climbing off a boat in Wanchese after a typical 12-hour workday. “There’s such a rich community of boat builders here in North Carolina.”

Josh started his company in 2007 while working as a builder at Bayliss Boatworks in Wanchese, but his passion for boats came about long before that. Raised mostly in the landlocked state of Colorado, he spent a few summers with his family in Martha’s Vineyard, and he was drawn to the water and the aesthetic of boats even then.

“My father always told me, as a carpenter, that the highest level of achievement for a woodworker is to be building wood ships,” he says. “I remembered that.”

After graduating high school in the 1990s, Josh traveled to St. Thomas, where he was first exposed to marine carpentry when he took a job as a shipwright. He went on to study art and design in college, and then spent a decade in New York City as a commercial artist and tattoo shop owner. But after September 11, 2001, he was ready to get out of the grind and return to the water.

He wandered around a bit until ending up back on St. Thomas. Then an opportunity arose to work as part of a crew delivering a sailboat from St. Thomas to Annapolis – and when the True Love passed Newport News not far from the Outer Banks, he decided to hop off and catch a ride with a family friend down to the beach.

During his first year on the Outer Banks, he rebuilt a house that he now calls his home and took a job from John Bayliss at Bayliss Boatworks. It was there that he met marine artist Robert Milfield, who regularly traveled from Florida to paint names on the Bayliss boat transoms.

Josh Everett at work applying a faux teak finish to a new boat transom.

“I understood what he was doing because of my background as a commercial artist,” Josh says. “But he was also just a master at his craft.”

Unfortunately, Milfield passed away several years after the two met. That left a gap in the market, and when Bayliss needed a marine artist, Josh asked if he could step up. Throughout his time as a marine carpenter both designing and building boats, he had stayed engaged in the arts – mostly painting large-format nautical landscapes – and John Bayliss knew he had real talent.

“That was the beginning of my career,” Josh explains as he recalls the first boat he painted, a 67-foot custom sportfishing yacht named Bud Man. For the next few years, Josh continued to work at Bayliss while painting on the side, but within a relatively short time he was traveling up and down the East Coast doing transoms for a variety of boat builders.

Eventually, Josh decided to retire from Bayliss and commit to painting full time under the name Everett Nautical. Today, he works with a team of talented designers on vessels from the Outer Banks to the Caribbean – aiming to preserve old boat building techniques passed down by word of mouth while utilizing new technology to create genuine works of art. “When I think of old-world craftsmanship,” says Josh, “I think about guys with a good eye who know what they’re looking at and how to read true surfaces. A computer can’t give you that real experience, but it can give you a different type of accuracy, speed and efficiency.”

The scope of work that the team does is enormous, from multimillion-dollar yachts in Miami and Puerto Rico to charter boats docked at Oregon Inlet – and to this day, Everett Nautical continues to work with local boat builders including Bayliss, Scarborough Boatworks, Mann Custom Boats and Briggs Boatworks.

A large part of the company is also devoted to simulating wood grains on the exteriors of yachts, which can involve an immense amount of work for some of the larger projects. With the declining availability of real teak wood in the industry, Everett Nautical offers a more sustainable approach in faux teak painting that is virtually maintenance free.

A flourish of type on a finished transom.

“It seems like the scope of our work just keeps broadening as we grow and develop as a company,” Josh says. “But the backbone of what we do is still marine sign painting.”

Everett Nautical transoms are hand-painted using traditional pinstripe patterns, airbrushed graphics and hand-laid gold leaf. Gold leaf lettering is a technique that spans back through maritime history, and the finished product reflects sunlight beautifully off the water.

“I’ll step back after some projects are done, and just look at them,” Lead Designer Ben Miller says. “I get emotional about them – I really do.”

To take a project from ideation to completion, Everett Nautical designers also work with clients to perform typography studies, sketch studies and color studies well before any painting begins. It’s all about getting into the mind of the client, Josh explains, and maintaining a dialogue while conceptual drawings are being created and passed back and forth.

“I like to know a little bit about the pedigree of the boat we’re working on,” Josh says. “Some boats and some boat types lend themselves to more traditional designs or more progressive, modern designs. It just depends on the builder.”

Boat builders contact Everett Nautical months or even a year in advance. While a boat is under construction, Josh likes to personally keep an eye on its progress and then start design development two to three months before the team is ready to physically be on the boat.

“I like to have it keep moving at a rapid pace,” he explains. “A lot of times your first instinct becomes your best instinct.”

Everett Nautical team members Ben Miller, Ben Morris and Josh Everett onboard the newly finished Irish Rover.

After design consultations, the actual transom painting may only take three or four days in total. The timeline is opposite for faux teak, which doesn’t take very much preliminary work, but can be extremely labor intensive when it comes time to paint. A large faux teak project can take three or four weeks to complete depending on the scale of the boat, even with several team members working together.

“It’s really fascinating to watch it unfold,” says Everett Nautical artist and charter boat captain Ben Morris. “Everybody’s doing their own little thing on top of each other’s work, and it all eventually comes together as one piece.”

The industry is constantly evolving as well, and Everett Nautical is targeting bigger vessels and projects all the time, including mega yachts. But the team doesn’t find any less fulfilment in working on smaller vessels, especially when a job well done means so much to the boat builder.

“It’s really a privilege to be able to do this work,” Josh says while attributing the success of the company to his origins at Bayliss and his great team today. “It’s taken on its own life, and I’m happy to create opportunities for other artists who are willing to dedicate and put the time into this practice.”

“You can’t just Google this stuff, and learn how to do it,” Miller explains. “You have to be taught, and it’s intense.

“Josh is my mentor, my boss and my friend,” he adds. “It’s both a challenge and an honor to work with him.”