Port Townsend Wooden Boat Festival – 2019

September 10, 2019 / Matt Talley / 2 Comments

Another fine year for the Port Townsend Wooden Boat Festival. It is one of the weekends that I look forward to all summer. My plan was to go early this year, like leaving the house at 6:00 AM and fueling up on coffee and energy bars for the 2+ hour trip from Seattle early. The best laid plans of mice and men…

After a REALLY late start and failing to meet up with a boat builder friend at the show, my wife and I still managed to have a great day at the Festival. I think she went with me to keep me from buying a boat that “ Just needs just a little bit of work…” Unbeknownst to her, I went to but a boat that needed a LOT of work: I am building a boat this year and had 90% decided on the Pygmy Wineglass Wherry. I showed up planning to row the boat to make that number 100% and on taking one of their stitch&glue kits home with me. It was ON!

The Pygmy shop was really short staffed that afternoon and the person I spoke with initially didn’t really have the answers to show pricing, additional fiberglass, material for a sculling notch, etc… I was told to speak with someone else, but they were not available. Fine. I wondered down to the water for a test row and the boat was booked out with folks in line for hours. Ok. I am patient, I can wait.

I toured a few boats on the water and there was some stunners! Conspicuously absent though, was my favorite Puget Sound pocket-yacht, OPUS, an Ian Oughtred Wee Seal II design. I hope to see her later this month at the Lake Union Wooden Boat Fest.

After touring a few boats, we walked down to the Connecticut Light Craft booth and I happened into Jon Harris, the owner/designer for CLC. Even while tearing down the mast and sails for a customer to row a boat (talked to the guy later and he bought a kit) Mr. Harris took his time to discuss his design and answer my questions. His Northeaster Dory is everything I want the Wineglass Wherry to have after modifications (dagger board, sails, and notch) but is a little longer and is more money. After rowing it and watching how fast the sail and mast came down, I started looking hard at the Northeaster. My wife likes the Dory more, as does the boat builder friend we failed to meet up with earlier in the day, but I am not 100% sold (it is the additional cash and the kit delivery fee in all honesty), so I bought the Dory scale model and will build and paint if this winter to help me decide. In the end, I did buy a boat, just a 1/8” wooden scale model.

This year was Laurel’s first time seeing the CLC teardrop camper. She was all giddy and crawled around the thing like it was a big fluffy warm dag: all smiles. She has a new plan: She wants to split the cost of a kit and help me build it this spring. Really, she said those words. She is super into it! I guess we are now building a camper, but she stopped short of buying the kit right there. It was touch and go and I could see her Alaska Miles Credit Card vibrating in her pocket. The plan it to wait and save the cash up and build this spring for summer adventures.

In addition to buying a boat, my other hope/plan was to pick up another Clamptite from AKcooltools. They did not have a booth there last year, but I saw them on the vendor list this year. I looked for them some, but figured they hadn’t made it. My wife noticed their booth in a back corner, hidden away and asked me, “That booth says clamps, it is strange that we haven’t been there today.” (YOU CAN’T OWN TOO MANY CLAMPS!) Well, we/I ran right over, plopped my money down and now have a new stainless Clamptite to replace the one I dropped into Lake Union.

Like I said, These folks didn’t have a great vendor spot and I don’t think it was a great show for them, which isn’t really fair in relation to their level of customer cervicce, general attitude, and awesome products. Look them up, see if it is something you can’t live without. I am not affiliated in any way with the sellers, festival, tool, etc. and get nothing from this. I just really like what they are doing and don’t think they were getting the foot traffic they deserve. I made a YouTube video on using the tools as well.

At the VERY end of the day Saturday, I caught the two ladies manning the Pygmy test paddle area just before they put the boats up for the night and they were awesome about letting me take the Wineglass Wherry and my sweet wife out for a spin. The boat was really stable and tracked well. The wind pushed her a bit when not rowing, but that is to be expected from a 90 pound rowboat. I still really like this boat I love the lines and the transom. Like I said above, was almost sure I was going to build one with an added sculling notch, but I really want a daggerboard and a small sail. Both it and the dory are great boats. I have a decision to make…

Long Holiday Weekend and the Official Start of Summer in Seattle

July 6, 2017 / Matt Talley / Leave a comment

Our 4th of July weekend went really well this year. To kick things off right, I found out on Friday afternoon before the weekend that I could have Monday July 3rd off. A surprise and unplanned FOUR DAY WEEKEND!!

The 40th Annual Seattle Wooden Boat Festival was being put on and I took a Lyft down to south Lake Union and the Center for Wooden Boats on Saturday morning and hung out till about 12:00. I have mixed feelings about the show/fest this year and will expound on those in a follow up post, but while there got to see some boats and talk shop with a kayak builder and sail-maker. Before leaving the house, Stamp-With-Foot made me promise not to buy a boat. I succeeded in that, but I did look at a cute little 16’ sailing skiff that made me feel fuzzy and a 22’ day/weekend sailor…

I also saw Opus again – my favorite weekend boat/trailer sailor in the PNW. She is a Wee Seal MKII, designed by the noted Australian/Scotsman Iain Oughtred. Her owners weren’t there, but I still enjoyed seeing at such a sweet little boat. If Opus were for sale, I don’t think that the promise to my wife would have been kept…

We went to a colleague’s early 4th of July BBQ on Saturday afternoon/evening (the 1st of July). It was down in Enumclaw and had an AMAZING view of Mt. Rainier from the deck and rest of the property. There was beer, laughter, wine, 4-wheelers, BBQ, and fine people. The fireworks started at dark and no one lost any fingers and nothing burned down, so a successful party.

Monday and Tuesday were spent in our yard, my shop, and the house fixing, building, moving stuff around. I hired some labor on Monday the 3rd and spent 8 hours cleaning the yard, moving bricks, pulling weeds, re-finishing the patio table, cleaning the hot tub, moving boulders, and making 2 runs to the dump. I swear the people at the city dump know me so well by now that I will be getting Christmas cards from them.

The yard came together about 9:00pm the night before our scheduled BBQ on the 4th. We had friends, family, co-workers, neighbors come over for charred meat, chips, dip, booze, desert, and laughter. The holiday was also my backyard’s coming out party. She was finally ready to join the world and everyone fawned over the green, luscious grass. It made me so proud! It was also the puppies first time being allowed in the backyard unsupervised. They rolled and sniffed and frolicked like I made the yard just for them. There were no fights (human or puppy), no one got sick, everyone left full, no grass was destroyed, no cuts or scrapes, no fires, nothing blown up, and we had some very tired happy puppies that night – so another successful party.

I did not buy a boat or tools at the 2016 Port Townsend Wooden Boat Festival

September 12, 2016 / Matt Talley / 1 Comment

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.

Road Trip to the beach in Collioure, France

June 24, 2014 / Matt Talley / Leave a comment

We took a weekend road trip down to a small village near the Spanish border and stayed in a friend’s Aunt and Uncle’s Gite (sort of a B&B). Brodie came along and was fed all sort of yummies and got to pee on lots of new stuff – a very high priority on his list… We had a blast there and made side trips to the beach in Collioure on the French Mediterranean (VERY COOL), went to a local cherry harvest festival, and had many fine meals! Our friend’s aunt even made Stamps-With-Foot chouquettes, a local pastry specialty, for breakfast.