Some of the team from Everett Engineering showed up at Pacific Marine Expo for the first time, looking to connect with fishermen. “We wanted to get our name out more in the fishing industry,” says Paul Visocky, QA manager at the company. Visocky notes that the fishing industry currently accounts for about a quarter of the company’s work. “Especially now when the boats are in,” he says, referring to the freezer trawlers that fish the Bering Sea and return to Seattle in the off-season.

Visocky shares that the boats are in port for only two months and often need extensive repairs. “About half our workforce is working on the boats right now, and it’ll be like this again when the boats return in April. We do a lot of work for Trident and American Seafoods, and we’re just finishing one at Stabberd Maritime in Seattle. We have another one up at Dakota Creek; we’re working on the net drums and trawl drums.” 

According to Jon Stucky, one of the engineers at Everett, the company does a variety of work on the boats, primarily focusing on deck gear, and propulsion to a lesser extent. “We rebuild the winches, stern rollers, and trawl blocks,” says Stucky. “Right now, we have a shaft and rudder in the shop. We do plates for the plate freezers and other things. It all depends on what they break when they’re up in Alaska.”

“We have about 40 to 45 people in the company,” says Visocky. “Our shop in Everett is 23,000 square feet, and we have a CNC shop that’s an additional 8,000 square feet. We cut out whatever the customer needs.” He adds that they are presently machining valve housings for Kongsberg. “We’re cutting grooves for O-rings.”

Whenever possible, the Everett team brings gear that needs repair back to the shop to work on it. “It’s always quicker to do the work here than in the field,” says Visocky.  “So, we bring stuff back here if we can.” Everett Engineering does a wide variety of work, but problems with things like net drums can be fairly routine. “It depends on what goes bad, sometimes it’s the gears, a lot of times we’re machining the shafts. We clean them up and take them down to a true diameter, and then when we repour and rebore the Babbit bearings and make them small enough to fit.”

According to Visocky, the drum will eventually have to have the shaft replaced. “That’s what we’ll do next,” he said. “Probably in another 10 years.”

Visocky doesn’t seem to worry about whether Everett Engineering will be there to do the work in 2034. The company is 56 years old and going strong. In 1968, Dan Martin and Dick Eitel partnered together to open Everett Engineering, Inc. They started with a 2,400 square foot facility and have grown continuously.