John Medeiros, of Bristol, sands the bow of the 90-foot sailboat Irishman at New England Boatworks in Portsmouth.

The Providence Journal / Frieda Squires

A report financed by the Governor’s Workforce Board says Rhode Island will need to train about 2,400 new workers in the next five to 10 years to meet the future needs of the state’s marine industry.

Highlights of the report will be presented at a meeting of the board this morning by Susan Daly, vice president of marketing for the International Yacht Restoration School.

The Governor’s Workforce Board has created eight industry partnerships around the state, including marine trades, and each of them is filing a similar study, called a skills-gap analysis. The $36,000 report on the marine industry was created by Planning Decisions Inc., of South Portland, Maine.

“We want to identify where the skill gaps are, both the immediate gaps and looking five years down the road,” said Michael Koback, director of the board. He said one of the conclusions he drew from the report was how the marine trades are linked to other parts of the Rhode Island economy, from the construction trades to tourism and hospitality. “It’s been an eye-opener,” Koback said.

The report estimated that Rhode Island’s core marine industry includes more than 500 businesses with 6,000 jobs and sales of more than $1 billion in 2006. The core marine sector includes marinas, boat builders, dealers, rentals and charters, suppliers of machinery and equipment and marine instruction. Those figures are restricted to the state’s recreational boating businesses, and do not include giants such as Electric Boat or Raytheon. Daly said those companies have very different employment and training needs than the consumer-boating companies, and are represented by the Rhode Island Marine Trades Association.

In addition to the core businesses, the report identified another 1,700 that have a connection to the marine trades, such as electronics companies and machine shops. Add them to the mix, the report said, and there were a total of about 2,300 companies and 6,600 jobs connected to the marine industry in the state as of 2006. The average salary for these jobs was $39,400.

A survey conducted for the report by the Marine Trades Association found that there are now 450 vacancies in Rhode Island’s marine industries. Engine repair is the skill most in demand, followed by electronics, computers and woodworking.

Growth plans over the next four years could add 600 jobs to that list, with another 600 vacancies that are expected to need filling to replace retiring workers over the next decade.

“We’re constantly looking for help, particularly skilled help,” said Tom Rich, co-owner of New England Boatworks, which has about 110 employees.

The rest of the 2,400 projected jobs are dependent on the status of three major projects currently on the drawing boards — a conversion of 23 acres of former U.S. Navy land in Portsmouth that would be used by a consortium of area boat builders; a proposed 1,500-slip marina in Weaver Cove, in Portsmouth; and the creation of a major yacht-service center in Quonset.

Of the participants in the survey, only 24 percent said they felt new job applicants were well prepared, with 47 percent reporting that applicants were partially prepared and 21 percent saying job seekers were poorly prepared. Slightly more than half the survey respondents offered some form of training program, with on-the-job instruction being most common, particularly at boatbuilding companies.

Koback said the next step after the presentation of the report is to inventory the available training programs for the marine trades and determine what can be done to improve them, which may involve adding new programs or making changes to existing ones.

“We need to shift to where the industry is moving,” said Rich, of New England Boatworks, who added that the trend is toward larger, more sophisticated craft that incorporate more sophisticated electronics.

asmith@projo.com