The Ocean Fury, a 125-foot king crab boat, was hauled out in June at Hansen Boat Co. in Everett, Wash., for what Rick Hansen, the shipyard’s vice president, says was a standard haul, which included spot blasting rust on the hull, painting the bottom, replacing one shaft bearing and checking out the others.
It’s a house-forward crabber, with what Hansen describes as “a massively long 5 1/2-inch shaft with bearings under three fish holds.” The bearings were cleaned and repacked with grease.
Other than that, there hasn’t recently been a lot of work at Hansen Boat Co. “Summer is our slow time,” says Hansen, but it allows the boatyard to do maintenance work, such as sand blasting the 140’ x 48’ deck on the dry dock and giving it a coat of primer. “It was getting kind of scaly. We’ve been gearing up to get rolling again in September.”
The first boat on that September list is the Jodie Marie, an Alaska limit seiner that longlines, crabs and seines and will have finished fishing Alaska’s Area-M seine season on Aug. 27 before arriving at Hansen Boat Co. in mid-September for wheelhouse work. New wheelhouse windows are needed and for that to happen the existing windows will be removed and patterns made for new windows.
“We’ll slide him into the dock and get rolling on it,” says Hansen. “We gotta move on those windows because they have a lead time of six weeks minimum — if heated (windows)10 to 12 weeks” to get new windows.
With the windows removed, the steel around the bolt-in windows needs to be examined for rust. “A lot of times it will rust out,” noted Hansen. In addition, it’s possible a dripless stuffing box for the main shaft will be installed, and there will probably be some painting and other work.
The Jodie Marie’s owner also has the Odin, another seiner that also longlines and crabs. It will be at Hansen Boat Co. in the late fall, after working the Washington Dungeness fishery. The last time the Odin arrived at Hansen Boat Co., the boatyard was so busy there wasn’t dock space, so the Odin was sent 1 1/4 hours north to Bellingham to be hauled. Hansen Boat Co. sent a couple of its crew to Bellingham for the necessary repairs.
