Mavrik Marine’s MV Dorado has left the building

The 320-passenger jet ferry MV Dorado rolled out of Mavrik Marine last week for a brief excursion to Anacortes.

The La Conner boat builder is contracted by California’s Water Emergency Transportation Authority to build four, and possibly five, aluminum ferries for its 15-vessel San Francisco Bay fleet. The MV Dorado is the first.

On Wednesday evening, Feb. 16, the 130-foot long, 36-foot wide and 30-foot tall vessel was lifted onto a custom-fabricated, 18-wheel, remote-controlled hydraulic dolly that fit between the catamaran’s two hulls.

Thursday morning about 11 a.m. Mavrik employees steered the remote-control dolly as it made its way cautiously toward the Swinomish Channel for placement on a barge owned by Culbertson Marine.

“If you watch a caterpillar going across the road, that was about the speed of it,” said eyewitness Brad Bradford, a longtime boater who has been tracking the construction of the MV Dorado with interest.

“It would go a couple inches, stop, everyone would look to see that everything was okay, then a couple inches more.”

The trickiest part was getting the blue, green and white ferry onto the barge docked at the Pearle Jensen Way parking lot. The Mavrik crew laid a temporary bridge of 1” thick solid steel plates and four girders between the shore and the barge but the barge was higher than the access road. As the dolly moved uphill, Bradford watched some of its wheels leave the ground and the I-beam at the rear scrape the bridge deck. It was a tense moment.

“One inch, scrape, a couple more inches, scrape, but they seemed to go for it and the dolly kept moving until it got on the barge,” Bradford said. “If the ferry had started to tip, they’d have done a world of hurt. It was a happy group when the boat was finally on the barge.”

The Dunlap Towing tugs Rosario and Port Susan delivered the barge to Dakota Creek Industries in Anacortes, where a Syncrolift transferred the ferry to the water. On Friday, the two tugs guided the ferry safely back to La Conner, where it is moored near Mavrik.

Presuming the MV Dorado passes its March sea trials in the Puget Sound, it will journey to San Francisco under its own power. According to Thomas Hall, WETA public information and marketing manager, plywood will be nailed over the windows near the bow and other measures taken to secure the ship for its 36 to 48-hour trip.

WETA plans to christen the new ferry at a public celebration in April and executive director Seamus Murphy says the agency is excited to welcome MV Dorado to its fleet.

“To say that I’m proud of our team at Mavrik is an understatement,” said owner Zach Battle. “What they have accomplished here in La Conner with the final product is amazing and so cool.”