The Mark I, a 100-foot dragger out of Seattle, left Hansen Boat Co. in Everett, Wash., in February, after extensive repairs and the installation of a new pipe gantry. The Mark I was launched in 1967 as one of the “really early crab boats,” says Hansen Boat Co.’s Rick Hansen.
Since then she has been sponsoned, and in 2006 Hansen Boat Co. built her a new pilothouse. This time around, consideration was given to crew comfort as the Mark I was in to have the main deck’s interior rebuilt. The options, however, were somewhat limited, as when the interior was torn apart it was revealed that the walls were all steel bulkheads. “So we ended up not moving anything,” says Hansen. But once the work was completed, the Mark I’s crew had a new galley, three new staterooms and a head. One of the staterooms was fashioned from a large stateroom with four bunks. However, four bunks weren’t needed. Thus, “we split (the stateroom) and gave them a mudroom, so they can get in and out of deck gear and store it without having to go into staterooms,” says Hansen. Rusty, leaking doors were replaced with watertight doors.
New flooring went down in the galley and staterooms — some of which are above the engine room — consisting of an epoxy underlayment over which was glued 3/8-inch-thick rubber tiles that Hansen describes as “real dense rubber.” He assumes that would deaden some of the sounds coming from the engine room. After everything was finished, he remembers, “the crew was pretty excited about their new accommodations.”
