Why?

It was mid-September, 2001 and my wife Jan and I were cruising in Desolation Sound aboard our 46' sailboat, Integrity. The horrific events of September 11th had occurred only days earlier and at the time we didn't even know when we could come home as the borders had been closed. We were in the boating business, running a bareboat charter company and yacht brokerage. Not being sure of what the future would bring, we spent long hours discussing what we should do in the future if we got home an life, as we knew it, went on. We decided that when we got home we would seek out a manufacturer of trawlers and become a new trawler dealer.

When we returned home, I began surfing the internet in search of a builder that might consider us as a dealer. Lo and behold, I stumbled upon an advertisement on Yachtworld for a Chinese yacht yard seeking US dealers. I sent them an email and to make a long story short, within 2 weeks we were on an airplane headed for Hong Kong and then a ferry trip to Shekou, China.

The yard that we visited had had a long history of building Island Gypsy trawlers (over 550 since 1981) and after 5 somewhat confusing days, we inked a dealer contract and ordered a 36' trawler.

Within a few months, Jon Alsop came to work for us as a sales representative. He had a lot of experience in trawlers and being an engineer, he had some innovative ideas that he thought we could incorporate in a design of our own. It was on a napkin at the Nan Hai hotel in Shekou that he and I conceived what turned into the Integrtiy 496, a 52 foot overall (49.5 ft. on deck) raised pilothouse trawler. With the help of John Anderson, a gifted yacht designer from the Seattle area, we turned the napkin sketch into workable plans.

Six boats into the project, the travel time away from home (9 trips to China in 2005), increased cost of resolving warranty issues, and a strong possibility that the shipyard in China might be turned into something else by the land owners had us searching for another yard.

It was a chance meeting with a neighbor right here in Anacortes, that began, what is now, the Northwest Trawler, a 42' (45.5 ft LOA) raised pilothouse trawler to be built right here in Skagit County Washington.

More to come..................