I went to the Port Townsend Wooden Boat Festival this past weekend (the 40th anniversary) and succeeded in staying married to my lovely wife by not buying a sailboat, not buying any crazy expensive (yet stunning!) tools at the Lee Valley Tools booth (the plane hammer and plane irons don’t count), and by not getting shanghaied into debauchery aboard a three-masted sailing ship headed out into the Pacific for points unknown.  Instead, I drove up, saw the sights, talked to a few folks, lusted after a few tools, fell in love with one particular little wooden single-mast pocket yacht, then drove home in time for date night.

There were so many amazing boats there and I went up specifically to see a couple of the CLCPocketShips, a Scamp build, and to see if I could get on a 19’ West Wight Potter (while not a wooden boat, the Puget Sound Potters Group were in the vicinity…).

The Ruminator will be spending a good bit of his time next summer learning to sail and I may be in the market (grade and behavior dependent) for a little trailer sailor/pocket yacht for us to rebuild together.  The  idea of building or rebuilding a boat with one another interests me a great deal (sweat equity), but the Scamp is too small for us both (he is a big boy and I am tubby) and it is a 1000+ hour build.  The Pocket Ship would work and we could overnight in it like a 2-man tent, but it is a 2,000+ hour build.  The latter translates into 2 years of weekends and all my days off from work.  It would also tie up all of my new shop space for the duration of the build.  That is no está bien…  The “smart” thing is to pick up a Catalina or Columbia 22 and just sail, but the ones I have seen, been aboard, and sailed on have no soul.

I did get a very close look at Opus, a lovely little boat (named after my second favorite Bloom County character) that I have seen battened up at the Center for Wooden Boats a few times.  Her owners were there this weekend with her brass polished, decks scrubbed, and companion way open.  I am in love!  Opus has plenty of soul and personality just sitting dockside.  I got to talk to the owners a good bit about how she sails, her history, and explored her little cabin to my heart’s content.  I want her.  If I were to build a boat someday it would be just like Opus.  She is a Wee Seal MKII, designed by the noted Australian/Scotsman designer Iain Oughtred.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I also got to take a look at the Pygmy boats and kayaks (love their traditional kayak paddles) as well as the offerings from CLC.  Some of the wood, inlay, and detail work on these kayaks is amazing.  I don’t think I could put one in the water after I finished building it.  I would be way too guarded about where it went and where I put it.  CLC also has a little teardrop trailer that seemed to be one of the hits of the show/Festival.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I finished my tour of the show back at the Lee Valley booth and then walked out onto a long pier to watch all the sail boats playing in the 10 knot winds for a long while, before heading back to Seattle in the Forester by way of Port Gamble.