They’ve been made of grass, cardboard and even popcorn. Sometimes they float; occasionally they don’t.

Organizers of the Lake Union Wooden Boat Festival are never sure what type of inspired or harebrained creations might emerge during the Quick and Daring competition, a longtime festival favorite.

Teams of two have 24 hours to build a boat and then race it against other teams’ boats. The boat’s hull must be made of a plant-based material and everything on the boat must be built during the contest. Aside from that, pretty much anything goes.

“We want people to see it as an experimental lab where you can try out crazy ideas about a different type of design or a different type of construction technique, but it all has to be based on a hull made of cellulose matter,” said festival founder Dick Wagner.

“We’ve had so many different variations over the years. It’s really been fantastic.”

Festival organizer Eldon Tam said the boats frequently defy expectations. “You look at a boat and think it’ll never float and it wins the race,” he said. “Other times a boat will look very sturdy and it gets in the water and sinks.”

And the popcorn boat? “I think they knew they weren’t going to float, but they liked the idea of building a boat out of popcorn,” Tam said. “They put it in the water but it didn’t go anywhere.”

The contest is part of the fun at the 33rd annual Lake Union Wooden Boat Festival July 4 and 5 at The Center for Wooden Boats in Seattle. The annual festival, open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. both days, includes hands-on exhibits of about 150 classic wooden boats of varying sizes, free boat rides and marine skills demonstrations.

Attendees can tour the 1904 lightship Swiftsure, which served as a guiding beacon for ships entering the Strait of Juan de Fuca, and the 1889 tugboat Arthur Foss, which carried miners and supplies to the Alaskan goldfields in the late 19th century.

Tall ships on display include the 127-foot Zodiac, built in 1924 and retired in 1972 as the last working pilot schooner in the United States; the 133-foot Adventuress, built in 1913 for an Arctic expedition; the WN Ragland, a 1913 charter vessel once owned by musician Neil Young; and the Lavengro, built in 1927 as part of the Biloxi Schooner fleet that harvested oysters and shrimp in the Gulf of Mexico.

A future shipwright at work? Children build their own toy boats at the festival

Kids can compete in treasure hunts and pond boat racing, sit in on pirate story time and build toy boats they can take home. Admission to the festival is free, but donations are encouraged and benefit The Center for Wooden Boats’ public programs.

The festival’s roots date back to 1967, when Wagner and wife Colleen started renting out old wooden rowboats and sailboats from their houseboat on Lake Union. A community of sorts developed—Wagner taught sailing and people would come down to help restore and maintain the small boats.

“It became apparent that we were providing something for the public that they were searching for and didn’t know what it was until it came,” said Wagner, now 77.

Over the years, an idea began germinating. The Wagners thought about establishing a nonprofit that would create and run a different type of historic museum—an accessible, affordable place with exhibits that people could play with instead of just look at behind glass.

They decided to hold a boat show to gauge the level of interest, organizing their first wooden boat festival at the Naval Reserve building on Lake Union in 1977. The event drew about 75 boats and an enthusiastic crowd, and The Center for Wooden Boats was established as a nonprofit the same year.

The festival grew to become a July 4th tradition attended by 15,000 to 20,000 people, with parents who once built toy boats at the festival now showing up with their own children in tow.

“Many of the moms and dads will say, ‘When we were kids, our parents brought us here,’” Wagner said. “A lot of them will say, ‘I still have that boat I built back in 1979, on the mantle over the fireplace.’”

And though various activities have been added over the years, Wagner said the event’s focus has remained essentially the same.

“It’s sort of like a Christmas tree that you keep adding new ornaments to,” he said. “But the basic idea is that there are going to be lots of boats to see, boats that are free to board and you can get a lot of advice from owners, builders and designers about maintenance, cruising, navigation, all that stuff.”

The Center for Wooden Boats is located at Lake Union Park, 1010 Valley St., Seattle. Additional information is available on the center’s website.

About Deborah Bach

Deborah Bach is the editor and co-founder of Three Sheets Northwest. She is an avid sailor and long-time professional journalist. You can find Deborah aboard Three Sheets, an Island Packet 38, with her husband Marty and their cat Lily.

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