About Essential Shipyard Industries
Essential Shipyard Industries is a full-service boatyard and marine supply business with two yards on the Salish Sea: ESI North on Skyline Way in Anacortes and ESI South on McGlinn Island in La Conner. Tens of tradesmen and craftsmen — technicians, painters, composites specialists, fabricators, cabinetmakers, and store staff — keep pleasure and commercial vessels from the San Juans to Puget Sound running, repaired, and ready.
What we do
Haul-outs to 100 tons, bottom paint and full topside refinishing in our own paint booth, fiberglass and structural repair, engine repowers as a Gold-Level Certified Yanmar dealer, marine electrical and LiFePO4/Victron systems, in-house metal fabrication and custom marine cabinetry, and two retail stores stocked with the paint, batteries, electrical, and tackle you actually need. 24/7 emergency haul-out at (360) 610-7577.
Our people
We've grown by two routes: bringing in senior experts from leading marine companies, and building our own people through Essential Shipyard University. The result is a crew where the person handling your repower, your topside paint, or your electrical system has done it many times before, to a written standard.
How we train
We wrote the book on marine trades training — literally. Essential Shipyard University is our in-house training and certification program, and every ESI employee starts there. Production Tech 1, our Kaizen and lean production course, is mandatory before anyone's first day; leads go on to Production Tech 2. From there the trade ladders run deep: a six-level composites program from fundamentals and safety through repair, mold-making, infusion, prepreg, and autoclave QA; marine electrical and LiFePO4 conversion; repower consulting and installation with ABYC hard-pass modules; MFD and NMEA 2000 installation; shaft, prop, and haul-out technician courses; diesel and hydronic heater installation. Every course ends in certification and is written to ABYC standards. Technicians work from structured engine survey and factory-interval service checklists for Yanmar, Volvo Penta, and Cummins, so the record of what was done on your boat is as complete as the work itself.
How we got here
ESI started as a mobile repair service around the Port of Friday Harbor, opened a service outlet at the historic Jensen's Boatyard in 2022, expanded to the Anacortes shipyard in 2023, and added the La Conner yard after that. Founders Jason and Emily Knott still run the company; Jason has worked on boats for more than twenty years — charter fleets, crab and fishing boats — and invented the SolidNav electric sailboat motor in the early 2000s.
Standards
ABYC member. Northwest Marine Trade Association member. Certified Hempel, Sea Hawk, and GlideCoat Pro applicator. Gold-Level Certified Yanmar dealer. Authorized Garmin and Raymarine dealer. Victron Energy dealer.