In the back yard of a home somewhere in New Jersey, children swing and climb on the pipes of an unusual jungle gym. Jerry Wilson has been searching for it the past five or six years. That crude but sturdy relic, which he built almost 30 years ago, should be on display in some fishing museum, perhaps even the Smithsonian Institution.
Children with a fertile imagination may see it as a miniature Eiffel Tower. In another era it was bolted to the fly-bridge of the sportfishing boat Dream Girl, providing a lofty vantage point for Capt. Walter Voss to spot giant bluefin tuna near Bimini and Cat Cay.
“We caught over 600 giant bluefins over there. I know we couldn’t have done it without the tower to spot the schools,” says International Game Fish Association President E.K. Harry, who pursued tuna with Voss for many years.
Wilson’s contribution to big-game fishing history was an unlikely one. The product of a farm in the dust bowl region of southwest Kansas, he came to South Florida in the early 1950s to work on construction of the Port of Miami. He was building trusses for swimming pool enclosures in Fort Lauderdale when Voss showed up with a pile of aluminum pipe.
Wilson was one of only two Heliarc welders in town at that time. Voss, one of this area’s deep-sea fishing pioneers, wanted to exploit that skill to construct a tuna tower for his boat.
“I told Walter, you cut it up and I’ll weld it. He knew what he wanted,” Wilson recalls. “As far as I know, that was the first all-welded tuna tower. It was a little, skinny, windmill-looking thing — nothing like they are now. But some of the other (captains) saw it and liked the idea of no mechanical joints coming loose, and they wanted to know if I’d build them for their boats.”
Today a sportfishing cruiser would be naked without one of those distinctive metal Tinker Toy structures. Some of them rise more than 30 feet above the water, giving the captain a gull’s eye view of the ocean.
Motorists backed up at an open drawbridge waiting for fishing boats to go by can curse Jerry Wilson. Most of those towers that won’t fit under the bridges came out of the Pipewelders plant he and partner George Irvine run in Fort Lauderdale.
Seated at his desk behind a door labeled “Bear’s Den,” Wilson, 58, a bearded Gentle Ben, chuckles at the irony of the empire he has wrought with a torch and pipe. He is still more likely to spend spare time tinkering with or riding one of his 80 antique motorcycles than perched on the tower of the company boat boat Virens, but he has made an indelible mark on the sport and the marine industry.
Though a relatively small company with 107 employees at its South Florida and Cape May, N.J., facilities, Pipewelders claims to be world’s largest manufacturer of sportfishing towers. At the recent Bertram/Hatteras Shootout at Walker’s Cay, Wilson noted proudly that all but about a half-dozen boats in a fleet of 80 had Piepwelders towers.
“It sure is a long way from the Kansas wheat fields,” he says, gnawing on the ever-present toothpick in the corner of his mouth. “No one knew how fast or strong the sportfishing industry would get. Mostly I was just doing a few towers a year for charterboats in the early years.”
Charter captains jokingly refer to them as “tourist towers.” Indeed, potential customers are frequently drawn to the boat with the tallest tower, even though they may only be interested in going bottom fishing on the reefs. To a degree, the height of the tower is a status symbol for boat owners.
“I think the greatest benefit is for tuna fishing. You have to be able to get up high to see the schools (of tuna) better. After they started putting towers on the tuna boats, many boat owners liked the looks of them, and then everybody had to have a tower even if they never fished for tuna,” Harry says. “I guess it is debatable whether a tuna tower really is much help in spotting billfish. At times it is. I know when you’re fishing for sailfish up north of Palm Beach and the winds are out of a northern quadrant, you get up in the tower and you can often see the fish coming down the waves.”
The modern tuna tower is really a sophisticated crow’s nest, equipped with helm and controls enabling the captain to function as pilot and lookout. The advent of the fly-bridge in the ’30s on boats like Ernest Hemingway’s Pilar demonstrated the advantages of an elevated platform for fishing. A tower above the bridge was the logical next level in the evolution.
Boat-builder Buddy Merritt may have taken the first step in that direction 40 years ago when he put a ship’s wheel atop a mast rigged with a rope and pulley system. Before circumstances brought Wilson into the picture, Rybovich of West Palm Beach was building towers that were partially bolted and partially welded.
“The all-welded tower opened up a whole new world. It (meant the tower) wouldn’t wiggle or squeak and was stronger. Placement of pipe could be put anywhere. You could construct any shape and design you wanted,” Wilson said.
Towers do more than support an observation platform. The sturdy, anodized aluminum pipes provide a framework for an enclosed fly-bridge and bimini top, overhead storage for radios and other electronic equipment, and a high spot to mount antennas and radar.
In addition to the basic tuna tower, Pipewelders makes a half-tower — essentially a support system for electronics, Bimini top and bridge enclosure without the elevated platform — and a marlin tower — a stunted tower for those who don’t need the height desirable for tuna fishing. A few years ago Wilson developed a mini tower for smaller, trailerable boats.
Boat buyers are incredibly fussy about the towers they want on their boats, so Pipewelders rarely builds two exactly alike. Wilson, who now spends more time wielding a draftsman’s pencil than a welder’s torch, tailors each tower for the boat it will adorn, often following specific guidelines prescribed by the owner. Although production boats present a standard foundation, he can tinker with other variables, altering height, width and style; placement of braces, ladders and controls.
“It’s like two ladies don’t want to go to a party with the same dress.” Wilson says. “The boat owner today is very learned as far as the boat he chooses. He knows the equipment and the type of tower he wants. Some of them want to pretty much design it themselves, and we’re happy to let them do it. That way the boat owner is part of it, and it has his personal touch.”
The tower contributes greatly to the personality of the boat, and like a face lift, is a substantial investment. A very spartan tower on a 40-footer easily can cost $20,000; a more elaborate one may run $50,000. Pipewelders recently built an exotic “Star Wars” tower for about $100,000.
But the price is of little concern to the people buying big sportfishing boats these days. Pipewelders is installing towers as fast as they can be constructed. “When you take a million-dollar boat, (the tower is) a small part of the cost of the boat compared to the usage and aesthetics it gives,” Wilson says with a shrug.
There were a couple boats in that league docked at the Pipewelders yacht basin last week. Six other large boats were due to arrive, and there was a sketch for a 72-footer on the drawing board.
Wilson likes to point out that his business has a wider ranging affect on the local economy. Owners who send their new boats to Fort Lauderdale for a tuna tower often choose to have it fully rigged and outfitted here.
“There’s usually a 10- to 15-day turnaround, sometimes a month. The guy knows he can get anything he wants right here, and he ends up spending a lot of money. I think a lot of our town fathers don’t realize what the marine industry pumps into the Fort Lauderdale area.”
Nonetheless, after many years of operating downtown on the New River near the Andrews Avenue Bridge, a zoning conflict with the city forced Pipewelders last year to relocate its installation plant several miles west off State Road 84. But it may be a blessing in disguise, as the new complex affords more space to accommodate the steady stream of new vessels.
Wilson seems somewhat amazed by what has evolved from a simple skill he learned as a teen-ager in a Kansas bicycle shop: “It has really taken off in the past 10 years, ever since they started getting more comfortable sportfishing boats — when it became a family affair rather than just two or three guys going fishing. I never dreamed there’d be the quality and class of the flotilla we have on the water today. Many condos aren’t near as plush as these boats are.”
Pipewelders has installed towers on boats up to 87 feet. Within the next few weeks Wilson will send a crew to Sweden to install one on a 99-foot custom sportfisher.
The sky literally is the limit for sportfishing towers — within reason.
“I’ll pretty much design anything they want, but if it looks mechanically unsafe, I back off. Some want towers that are too high for the boat, or they want to put too much weight up there,” he says.
The strangest request was from a housing contractor who wanted the fiberglass top peaked with gabled sides. Wilson politely declined on grounds of good taste.
“He wanted to put a barn roof on a 58-foot Hatteras yacht-fisherman. What he wanted was so out of whack for a nice boat, it would have ruined it. They would have laughed us off the river”
