The Wooden Boat Festival, Port Townsend, WA Sept 6-9

Off to Port Townsend, a little  village on the north eastern part of the Olympic Peninsula in Washington. Once we arrived we headed to the transit center/visitor center parking lot for some black top camping only to find out that the parking lot would be closed during the festival for shuttle parking. We parked there for the night and then moved on to the Elks about 4 miles from town.  There is a bicycle path all the way into town...mostly down hill, but that means mostly up hill on the way back...sorry about the hills, Joel. :)

If you like boats, you are at the right blog...its rather long this time.

This is the 36th annual Wood Boat Festival, and it is nor ordinary festival.  Yes, there are the food booths and vendor booths, but for the three day entry fee of $30 ($20.00 for us old people) you can attend any number of seminars during the festival, from how to build a stitch and glue kayak to how to apply different kinds of fiberglass and different epoxies to sailing the open seas for women.  When Joel mentioned we were going to attend this festival for three days, I groaned as I figured I'd be on my own exploring the rest of the area while he looked at boats. My attention span at these type of events usually is a maximum of 1/2 day.  Not so this time.  Much to my chagrin,  I spent  three  full days looking and learning, which left no time to explore the Olympic Peninsula.  

A nice calm slough/bay on the way to Port Townsend.

I didn't see any otters other than these.  Didn't know they were in the North West . These were located on the deck of the new maritime center.

Another interesting sculpture.

Beginning of a wooden boat.  Wooden Boat building classes are offered in the new maritime center.

Lots of boats to explore and check out.

Boats come into the harbor from all over and there are all shapes and sizes.  The weather turned out to be perfect. This guy looks like he is really enjoying the life!

 There were lots of kayakers.  These wooden kayaks were most likely built by their paddlers.

These are all home built kayaks from kits. They are just gorgeous as well as sea worthy.

Look at the detail of this one.  Truly works of art.

 Many of the boats on shore are dingys for the boats anchored out in the bay, other are for fun.

Then there were prototypes, hand built out of wood and fiberglass. The solar panels in this boat provide power to run two small electric engines.

 A tranquil view from one of the docks.  The clouds were moving in.

 There was a kayak roll demonstration with one of the wooden kayaks. As you can see it was a pretty popular event.

There were lots of paddle boards, and these were all made from kits.  Just beautiful!

This is the Pacific Grace.   It was really interesting watching her turn and get positioned just right to tie up when she came in.  Here she is actually leaving on the last day.

This is the beginnings of a SCAMP (Small Craft Advisory Magazine Project), a small wooden boat only11'11''  long and virtually unsinkable.  It is a kit boat and pretty simple to put together. 

 

This is a completed SCAMP

 A demonstration was given on how hard it was to cap size the little boat.  The skipper had to try  really, really hard to get it to capsize and when he did capsize it, it popped right back up and he was back in the boat within a matter of seconds and there was very little water in it from the capsize.  It is touted as a "self rescue" boat. Amazing. Looked like a lot of fun.

These folks are taking some time off and enjoying the day.  Note, Mt Baker on the horizon.

Port Townsend has lots of Victorian Homes, and this is just one example.

The paper mill is one of the main industries of Port Townsend. The use all recycled material to make nearly 20 million grocery bags and other paper products.  Note the stacks of recycled bundles of paper

and they also use sawdust waste.



Port Townsend's has a huge working boat yard, which is a major part of the economy. It is  probably one of the largest non government boat yard I've ever seen.  Most of the boats in the yard  are older boats being restored. This ship is being restored by a non profit and they expected to  be in port only for a few weeks while they cleaned her up and do some repainting. Looks like more than a few weeks job to me.

 This was a smaller boat being worked on.  Pretty sweet.

The ferry crosses the straits every hour and goes to Whidbey and Keystone Islands.  We'll be taking the ferry when we leave Port Townsend over to the island on our way to Cascade National Park our next destination in a few days.

We didn't get to explore area around Port Townsend this time as we need to move on.  Joel's daughter  is due to have her baby boy any day as I write this, and we have to be in Arizona in less than a month so  we must move on is we want to see any of the Cascades and see the new baby when he comes.