770 Crosspoint Dr. Denver NC, 28037 • 704-489-8771

770 Crosspoint Dr. Denver NC, 28037 • 704-489-8771

Digh began looking for new applications for his fiberglass skills. Experience in the parts fabrication side of the business led to the design and manufacturing of Admiral’s line of Dock Boxes. These convenient contraptions are mounted on docks for slip-side storage and keep boaters from having to lug stuff to their vessel.

In 1996, Admiral Marine built 412 Dock Boxes – those convenient contraptions – for Peninsula Yacht Club on Lake Norman and they are still being used today.

Over the years, the Discovery Place museum, the Carowinds amusement park, Autobell, and Holman-Moody are a few that have had fiberglass products fabricated by Admiral Marine. The list even includes crosses now mounted on cell phone towers.

Digh has boats in his blood (and probably fiberglass, too!) and gets a lot of joy from working on boats and fiberglass products. You see that enthusiasm in the quality of workmanship turned out every day at Admiral Marine.

For Mike Digh, repairing boats is a family tradition. At the ripe old age of 12 he started working with his father, Waco, and grandfather, E.B. Digh, at E.B. Digh & Sons Boat Repair. But it was 1953 when E.B. Digh bought a run-down building and shed on Wilkinson Boulevard in Charlotte for his business. Twelve years later, in 1965, he and his son, Waco, built a concrete block building on the site and the business thrived there.

Mike worked in the family business for many years before launching Admiral Marine, his own repair company, in 1981. The city of Charlotte bought the Wilkinson Boulevard property in 2000, so Mike moved both Admiral Marine and E.B. Digh & Sons to a new, modern repair facility he had built in the Triangle Business Park in Denver on the southwest corner of Lake Norman.

 

The location of the family business is not the only thing that has changed over the years. The boats he and his family repaired through the 1950s and 60s were made of wood. In fact, in the very early years of the business, E.B. Digh and Waco worked on the once popular wooden station wagons – Woodies – before turning to wooden boats.

 

As technology changed and fiberglass became the new,

go-to material for watercraft, the Dighs had to change too. The business that repaired boats, with Waco and his early experience in car repair, also began fabricating race car parts. Fiberglass became a big part of Digh’s life and the primary focus of his Admiral Marine business.

 

Along the way, Mike helped Glastron Carlson with its move from California to eastern North Carolina in 1985 to learn more about Glastron and their fiberglass production techniques.

Boat Repair at its Finest!