Wooden Boat Fest celebrates a modern rarity: the working waterfront
Sep 8 2009 in History, Life Afloat by Deborah Bach
Port Townsend shares a rich maritime history with other towns around the country that once prospered as vibrant, bustling seaports.
But unlike most of those places, where real maritime activity has been replaced with nautical-themed tourism, Port Townsend still derives a significant chunk of its revenue from maritime trades. In recognition of that ongoing tradition, “working waterfront” is the theme for the 33rd Annual Port Townsend Wooden Boat Festival, which runs this Friday through Sunday.
“Nearly 65 percent of our local economy is based on marine trades or support of the trades,” Festival Director Kaci Cronkhite said. “More people are employed here doing work related to boats than any other specific category of business these days.”
The town’s seafaring nature will be further strengthened with Thursday’s official opening of the Northwest Maritime Center, a facility offering year-round educational programs and opportunities for the public to observe maritime tradespeople at work. Publicity around the center, combined with the festival’s popularity, is expected to draw large crowds and attendees from as far away Australia and Europe, Cronkhite said.
Sail maker Carol Hasse demonstrates her work for a festival attendee.
This year’s festival includes world-renowned sailor, author and green technology advocate Nigel Calder, who will give talks on new battery technology, hybrid boats and diesel engines. Calder’s presentations dovetail with a new “green technology” stage featuring demonstrations of items such as eco-friendly bottom paints and composting toilets.
Also on the speakers list are Brazilian boatbuilder and author Luis Peaze and John Guzzwell, who chronicled his adventures sailing around the world in his home-built boat, Trekka. Other seminars focus on areas ranging from boat photography to pirates, and a series of hands-on demonstrations will provide information on topics such as rigging techniques, steam-bending wood and varnishing.
The 200-plus vessels on display, including 11 electric boats, range from Pygmy kayaks to the 136-foot schooner Adventuress. Vintage boats include the Lotus, a 100-year-old Edwardian houseboat cruiser listed on the National Register of Historic Places; the 107-foot gaff schooner Merrie Ellen, built in 1922; and the 68-foot schooner Martha, built in 1907 and now the oldest living flagship of the San Francisco Yacht Club.
Attendees can go sailing and rowing, get information about North America’s top boat building schools and listen to live music. Kids’ activities include a pirate treasure hunt, sea stories, a children’s play, and fish-printing on t-shirts at the Port Townsend Marine Science Center at nearby Fort Worden (bring your own t-shirt).
Though there are other wooden boat festivals around the Northwest, Cronkhite said Port Townsend’s concentration of people who work on wooden boats year-round gives the festival a unique feel.
“It is such a beautiful thing to actually craft these vessels and care for them,” she said. “For me, that’s what it’s all about, and the community that evolves out of that. We all step out of our rational, regular, bill-paying lives and revel in (this).
The Wooden Boat Festival offers something for boaters of all ages.
“There are all these sorts of reunions of people (at the festival) seeing boats they saw as kids or that they worked on in their lives or they had a picture of up on their refrigerator when they were in college and they’re finally seeing a dream come true,” Cronkhite said. “It’s romantic and it’s sentimental.”
The festival has grown and changed considerably since starting in 1977. Back then, festival founder Tim Snider said, there was a proliferation of classic wooden boats that had fallen into disrepair and were available for next to nothing. At the same time, there was a burgeoning community of people who wanted to get into boating but had little resources.
With few places teaching wooden boat building and little information available at the local library, “There was a thirst for knowledge from young, eager people who wanted to be boat nuts,” Snider said.
So Snider decided to organize a wooden boat festival. He spent much of 1976 traveling up and down the east coast of the U.S. in a Volkswagen van, promoting the newly established magazine WoodenBoat—started by a childhood friend, John Wilson—and searching for a suitable festival venue. After striking out on the east coast, Snider began looking around the Pacific Northwest. He met Port Townsend boat builder Sam Connor, who convinced him to visit the Victorian seaport on the Olympia Peninsula. One look and Snider was sold.
“I saw the Point Hudson Harbor and thought, this has to be the place—there’s a small little harbor and it’s got these great little buildings—let’s do it here,” he said.
In the spring of 1977, Snider set up shop in a building across from Point Hudson Marina. Sitting at his desk with a typewriter and telephone, Snider began calling wooden boat contacts he knew through his work with the magazine. He put together a faculty of experts, recruiting speakers from around the country, while Connor enlisted people from the local boat building community.
They hoped to attract 800 people for the inaugural festival, held the weekend after Labor Day in 1977. About 3,000 showed up.
Boats in the harbor outside of Point Hudson Marina.
“People came from all over the country,” Snider said. “It was this incredible exchange of information and ideas, and it was fun and exciting. There were seminars and discussions in every phase of the practical information of building and maintaining a boat—building sails, pouring bronze, making your own hardware, lofting and rigging, all the trades that you needed to do it.
“I didn’t realize it at the time, but this was the Woodstock of boats when it happened,” Snider said. “It was really a movement. It was the wooden boat movement.”
Snider and Connor soon established the Wooden Boat Foundation to offer year-round programs and promote maritime skills and heritage. The nonprofit organization now offers a range of educational programs, puts on regattas and other events, operates a chandlery and produces the annual festival.
Witnessing the event’s growth over the years has been satisfying for Snider, who lives in Port Townsend. “It’s wonderful to see the festival all grown up, like a smart child who is doing well,” he said. “Its breadth of people and watercraft bring such excitement to this town and to the Pacific Northwest.”
The Port Townsend Wooden Boat Festival runs from Friday, Sept. 11 through Sunday, Sept. 13. For additional information, check out the festival website.
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