Page 11: of Marine News Magazine (January 2006)

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PacFish Acquires

Equipment

Pacific Fishermen's PacFish Shipyard personnel attended the MARCO Shipyard auction on the Lake Washington Ship

Canal, near the Hiram Chittenden Gov- ernment Locks, coming away big win- ners, with a goldmine in shipyard marine equipment for pennies on the dollar. Pri- mary on the list of 'must haves' from the closed down shipyard was the Wheelabra- tor sandblast cabinet with 6-ft. rotary table, equipped with dust collector and re- useable shotblast for zero discharge to the environment.

Big Bertha, MARCO's 150-ton Denison hydraulic steel press, was one item that generated bidding action from a shipyard in Anacortes. Shipyard General Manager

Doug Dixon was determined to keep Big

Bertha on the ship canal to maintain the heavy ship repair capability in Seattle's maritime business community. Counseled by PacFish Shareholder Stan Simonsen, the bidding continued, with a quickly raised hand and a stern glance to the com- petition, until they all dropped out.

MARCO's heavy roller for angle and pipe bending was another piece of shipyard antiquity gleaned by PacFish that will remain in the still-strong cluster of Seattle maritime businesses. Other equipment won at auction included large vessel sand- blast equipment, 150 hp Quincy screw compressor and six portable shelters for protecting vessels under repair from Seat- tle's rainy climate. Local Naval Architects will also still have use of the shipyard's steel incline weights and pendulum, which will be made available for all to use for vessel stability tests, both at the Pac-

Fish shipyard and dockside, throughout the Seattle maritime community.

Past regular customers of MARCO, who now call on PacFish for their dry- docking, such as Kris Paulson's Bering

Sea and Kris Knutsen's Aleutian Spray, provided their large open crab boat decks to haul the machinery northwest across the ship canal to the PacFish shipyard.

Longtime port engineer John Brender and crab fishermen John 'the Swede' and Tim 'TY' Young, pitched in to move the loads, coordinated by ex-MARCO employees Al

Brands and Tom Harbin, who is now a repair manager at the PacFish shipyard. In addition to purchasing all of MARCO's hard to find oakum, square galvanized ship's nails and all their zinc anodes, Pac-

Fish has hired 16 former MARCO employees to provide continued quality fish boat, tug and yacht conversions and repairs in Seattle.

Pacific Fishermen's shipyard was founded in 1946 by 400 Norwegian her- itage fishermen as a co-operative style shipyard on the site of the 1890's Ballard

Marine Railway, where Seattle founding father Joshua Green had his sternwheeler

Bailey Gatzert built, and famous for wooden halibut schooners and Navy minesweepers later named Calypso by

Jacques Cousteau and Wild Goose by

John Wayne.

The yard was subsequently incorporat- ed in 1946 and has been providing ship- yard services, including the new construc- tion of wooden 36 ft. launches for USCG

Survey (NOAA) research vessel Surveyor and 54 ft. to 58 ft. Ed Monk designed wooden seiners, including Northern Light

II (Cinnamon Girl), Cape Falcon, Mary D and Jerilyn.

January, 2006 • MarineNews 11

NEWS

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