For many years Houma Fabricators, Houma, La. built passenger boats, offshore boats and other steel hulled vessels much like a dozen other shipyards in the Gulf south. In the mid-90's they built several large gaming boats for Iowa entrepreneur Bob Kehl. If you hadn't stopped by Houma Fabricators for the past two years, today you would not recognize the place. Purchased by Shipyard De Hoop of the Netherlands in 2001, the shipyard has undergone an amazing transformation with an $8.6 million expansion. The Dutch shipyard is turning the 42-acre Houma site into a shipyard to resemble the company's main facility in Lobith, Netherlands. " So far we have added three steel preparation halls, four subassembly halls, new slipways with bulkheads and a permanent launching system," said O.M.