Below is a short film documenting my visit to this year’s Port Townsend Wooden Boat Festival. I lived up to my promise to Stamps-With-Foot again this year and did not buy a wooden sailboat, but there was 2-3 in my price range (and about 100 waaayyy out of it…) that made me drool.
Tag: Port Townsend
A Weekend On and Around Puget Sound
I spent this past weekend ignoring my grass, projects in the house, and garage organization/completion and took to the road.
Saturday afternoon found me at the Port Townsend Wooden Boat Festival. There were no puppies allowed at the show, so Stamps-With-Foot stayed at home for a grueling round of puppy sitting/reading in the sunshine duty. Despite a serious and prolonged case of Wooden Boat Lust, I succeeded in not buying a wooden sailboat at the show. It was the ONE thing that my wife made me promise before leaving the house, which means that since I was able to fight off the boat-buying minor demon on my shoulder, am staying married.
While packing/planning the night before going to the festival, I decided it was a fine venue to work on a short YouTube film ( which will be uploaded by Friday), so I took a couple of GoPros, camera mounts, my drone, four extra SD cards, and a bunch of batteries. The weather kind of sucked, but between pockets of rain/mist I shot the whole festival and some of the boats out on the water from the sky as well as the dock-side happenings.
There were so many cool boats and interesting folks in for the weekend! My favorite trailer-sailor, OPUS, was there and the museum boat PIRATE from the Seattle CWB made it. I really enjoyed talking to Tim Lemon, the owner of a Devlin Sloop named MR. MALLARD. His sculling prowess on a sailboat is impressive. Designer and builder Graham Byrnes, of the cat ketch CARLITA was probably my favorite builder that I talked to. I would definitely buy a boat from him if not for the above mentioned promise to my wife… Pygmy Boats has a stitch&glue wineglass wherry rowboat that I would love to spend part of the winter building and I MAY be putting some funds back to do just that. Howard Rice and his Scamp SOUTHERN CROSS had a fantastic story story to tell about adventures in Terra del Fuego. Really enjoyed the Festival and love Port Townsend! Stamps-With-Foot is definitely coming next year.
Side note: If Lee Bjorklund & Larry Goerss ever decide to sell OPUS, my wife has given me permission to buy her. She is the only wooden sailboat that I am “allowed” to purchase. Just saying is case Lee and Larry and hankering to move on…
Sunday afternoon was spent on Vashion Island and both my bride and the furry monsters puppies came with. We really like the island and the coffee produced by Vashion Island Roasters. After a short ferry ride, we went over, drove a round a little, took in the sites, had lunch near the marina, and bought 10lbs of Guatemalan medium-roast coffee. We sampled the goods while there, played a little chess, and split a cinnamon roll before heading back to the ferry and back home for dinner.
I did not buy a boat or tools at the 2016 Port Townsend Wooden Boat Festival
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.
