Wooden Boat Festival

Dan and Sharon generously offered us their Port Townsend cottage. We chose an exciting weekend, the annual Wooden Boat Festival. We arranged to meet Rick there, as he is docenting on one of the exhibits, a tugboat called Sandman, just over 100 years old. It had motored up from its home port near Olympia.

Many visitors came by boat. The weather was fantastic, clear and around 80°F afternoons, with cool but comfortable evenings.

The 90', 1938 yawl Odyssey, a Sparkman & Stephens design, was tied up outside the exhibit area. It is used by the Tacoma area Sea Scouts. I wonder if I am too old?

Inside the exhibit hall were some beautiful examples of small boat workmanship and exhibitions of boat-building tool use. The adjacent exhibit docks were not up to demand, with many more boats included than could be tied-up end-to-end, so some were rafted together up to four deep.

Debby caught me standing on the deck of Orion, a 57 foot, 1934 yawl. It is a beautiful specimen, yet another design from Sparkman and Stephens. I love yawls.

The Sandman was rafted third out from the dock, which presented a challenge. We all made it over and back with no slip-ups. The first boat we went across was the Elmore, a 68-foot, 122 year-old Puget Sound tug, outfitted with a large and functional galley.

Pictured are Rick and Debby in front of the Sandman's wheel house, a view of the wheel inside, and Rick commenting on Debby's exit onto the neighbor boat. We borrowed Rick from his docent duties to have a leisurely lunch and catch up with his recent activities.

About town, we took pictures of some local landmarks. There are many Victorian houses, some of substantial size, dating to the early years of the town, shortly after the Civil War.

Our loaner cottage is well located, walking distance to parks, market, and the old town. We visited Chetzemoka Park at the end of the street. I photographed Debby and the view to Whidbey Island, across the main shipping channel in and out of Puget Sound. Debby photographed a girl practicing dance (in a tree). I got a photo of some other local critters.

We bought groceries and made breakfasts and dinners at the cottage, but ate lunch in town. In the quiet time at the cottage, I re-acquainted myself with the poems of T.S. Eliot. Now that's a well-appointed lodging.

We attended the festival's concert/dance Saturday night under a big tent, seen above behind the salmon sculpture. Headlining was The Better Half, a local Port Townsend R&B Funk-Jazz group that got the audience on their feet with a solid beat. The audience area was split down the middle with drinkers on one side of the fence and abstainers on the other. Being a boating crowd, one side was much more occupied than the other.

We returned Sunday, first taking a drive out to Sequim to see the area, noted for a climate more like SoCal than Puget Sound. Being 9/11, the ferry home had an escort: an ~25' Coast Guard port defender with manned bow-mounted machine gun, presumably to ensure no other boats came close. I had never seen that level of vigilance here before.

It was a great weekend. Thanks Dan and Sharon.