Salary
Average Salary: $94,040
Expected Lifetime Earnings: $3,925,982
A wise (and maybe not real) man once said, "a boat is a giant hole in the ocean that you throw money into." And while that person was likely referring to the unending repairs associated with owning a thing that floats really well, shipwrights are still the first link in the money chain of any such purchase.
Sadly, there are no residual royalty programs like the ones Hollywood writers get—as if every time someone steps into a boat you designed, you get $0.03. Still, you'll do pretty well for yourself as a shipwright, earning nearly $100,000 (or, more specifically, $94,040) per year on average (source).
There are a lot of things that affect that wage, including where you work and what you're working on. A big fat engineering firm working under contract for the Department of Defense is likely to skew that mean into six figures, while sketching out questionable designs for dog-friendly canoes in Seattle is more likely to land your finances in hot water. (Get it? It lands them in water? Whatever. You get it.)
Like most jobs that pay decently well, you can expect to pay up front to have a chance at earning it later. Shipbuilding is a specialized trade, meaning it requires education and training galore.
You're going to need to move to a coastal college to find a good place to get learned up (that might be expensive if you're starting somewhere like Iowa), and you're going to need to deal with relatively low income for a while until you get your feet wet on actual boat construction sites. Stick with it, though, and you'll come out on top. You'll eventually be sailing right along, you might say.