Of the many places we love to sail to in Puget Sound, Port Townsend is among our favorites.

It’s got cool old Victorian buildings. It has a great marina with a family-owned Chinese joint where the food is garnished with intricately carved vegetables. It has the charming, century-old Rose Theatre, one of the most beautiful movie houses I’ve seen anywhere. It has several good watering holes. It has a thriving community of marine tradespeople.

And of course, as it has every weekend after Labor Day since 1977, it has the Wooden Boat Festival, when some 20,000 people descend on the town of 9,000 for the popular annual event. There are other wooden boat festivals held around the region—in Seattle, Victoria, Vancouver—but those involved with Port Townsend’s, though they may be, say it feels somehow different.

I don’t doubt that’s true; there are few places I go as a boater around here that feel as authentic as Port Townsend. It has a vibe that’s both traditional and quirky: you can take a course on rigging techniques, pick up produce at the local co-op, spend an evening listening to a hot jazz string band.

With marine trades making up a sizable chunk of the town’s economy, there are a substantial number of locals who make a year-round living from one aspect of boating or another, whether it’s sail making or selling boat insurance. And Port Townsend now has the newly built Northwest Maritime Center, a waterfront facility intended to both preserve and promote the town’s unique standing as one of the few remaining places in the country with a real working waterfront.

A sailboat travels by Port Townsend's picturesque waterfront.

“Port Townsend has this distinct sense of place,” said Dave Robison, the Northwest Maritime Center’s project manager, when I spoke with him the other day. “It’s a maritime place. It’s a boat town.”

Indeed it is. And appropriately, we usually get there by boat. This weekend will be the first time I’ve ever traveled to Port Townsend by road, and I hope it’s the last for a long time.

Regardless, we’re looking forward to getting there tomorrow and taking in the festival—meeting other boaters, taking in the floating eye candy and if the forecast is correct, enjoying a sunny weekend in one of this area’s more interesting places.

We’ll be working as well, taking photos and collecting ideas for future stories. Marty will be Tweeting over the weekend with updates (@MartyMcOmber, for you Twitterati). And of course, we’ll also be making a stop—or several—at our favorite local bar, Sirens.

If you see us around, say hello. Better yet, join us for a drink.

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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