Marlin (V)

George Schneider (Email to Nauticapedia 07/12/2021) stated "On the subject of boats you wouldn't expect to be documented, another California Department, Fish & Game, appears always to have documented their boats, and this one, MARLIN (1162962) is no exception. This is a 54-footer, one of 5 or maybe 6 they had built by Kvichak in Seattle. These were built during the times some bad aluminum plating got into the boatbuilding world, and many boats had to return to their builders for replacement of the plating. In many cases, in order to have them back in service in time, a complete new hull was built. Sometimes the documentation or hull number reflect this, sometimes not. The F&G documentation remained unchanged, giving the impression the existing hulls were replated for them, and they did seem to disappear from service for an appropriate period to support that. However, once they were back in service, Kvichak began marketing 4 (possibly 5) boats of this class, named DEFENDER I thru DEFENDER No 5 (note the change of number formatting), which I suspect are the actual replating of the original F&G Hulls. "