PacFish Acquires Equipment from MARCO Auction

PacFish Shipyard acquired shipyard marine equipment at the MARCO Shipyard auction on the Lake Washington Ship Canal, including a Wheelabrator 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 classic 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. MARCO’s heavy roller for angle and pipe bending was another piece of shipyard antiquity acquired by PacFish that will remain in the cluster of Seattle maritime businesses. Other equipment won at auction included large vessel sandblast equipment, 150 hp Quincy screw compressor and 6 portable shelters for protecting vessels under repair from Seattle’s liquid sunshine. 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 PacFish 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, PacFish has hired 16 former MARCO employees to provide continued quality fish boat, tug and yacht conversions and repairs in Seattle.