Port Townsend Pocket Yachters Boat Show

Theres a new boat show in Port Townsend, Washington: Pocket Yacht Palooza.



Port Townsend’s Northwest Maritime Center will be the site of the first annual Pocket Yacht Palooza, a one-day boat show organized by the Port Townsend Pocket Yachters club to celebrate traditional small rowing and sailing boats.









The show, free to the public, is scheduled for Saturday, May 19, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.





Pocket Yacht Palooza will feature boats belonging to several Puget Sound area groups, including the Port Townsend Pocket Yachters and the Puget Sound chapter of the Traditional Small Craft Association. Boats from the Northwest School of Wooden Boatbuilding and the Northwest Maritime Center’s boatshop will also be displayed.


Organizers are appealing to owners of small rowing or sailing craft in the 10-foot to 23-foot range to participate in the event and everyone interested is invited to participate. Newcomers are more than welcome.
And, if you are in the process of building or restoring your small craft, theyre interested in that too.








“We’re eager to celebrate a wide variety of smaller boats, whether built of wood or fiberglass and we know there are hundreds of interesting trailerable boats on the Olympic Peninsula, so we’d like to hear from owners who might be willing to display their small craft during the Pocket Yacht Palooza.” says my friend, Marty Loken.

No entry fees will be charged, Marty tells me.

“This is not one of those judged shows where people need to worry about whether their boat is in perfect condition.” The main goal, he said, is to display a variety of interesting designs and appreciate the different ways in which designers and builders have produced smaller watercraft that are functional, seaworthy and suited for surprisingly lengthy cruises.






“Most of us appreciate the famous quote of Larry and Lin Pardey, a couple who circumnavigated twice aboard a pocket cruiser. Go Small, Go Simple, Go Now.”




The Pocket Yacht Palooza is co-sponsored by the Small Craft Skills Academy, a four-day program that begins May 20 at the Northwest Maritime Museum. The Skills Academy is being organized by small-craft adventurer Howard Rice, who will speak the same Saturday evening, May 19, 7 p.m. at the Northwest Maritime Center, describing his harrowing rounding of Cape Horn—both directions—in a small Klepper sailing canoe. The public is invited to attend. Admission will be $7.00 per person. Sponsored by the Northwest Maritime Museum and Small Craft Advisor Magazine.


The Port Townsend Pocket Yachters are great folks. I guarantee you will enjoy this show - the weather is always sunny in Port Townsend!

The address for the Northwest Maritime Center and location of the Pocket Yacht Palooza is:
431 Water St, Port Townsend, WA 98368





Those who are interested in bringing a boat to display in the water or on a trailer should contact organizer Marty Loken: Marty@islandboatshop.com

There goes Marty now...

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Port Townsend Wooden Boat Festival 2012 pre festival setup

The 36th annual Port Townsend Wooden Boat Festival was magnificent.  Port Townsends Wooden Boat Festival is the most education-packed and inspiring wooden boat event in the world. Featuring more than 300 wooden vessels, dozens of indoor and outdoor presentations and demonstrations, a whos who of wooden boat experts and thousands of wooden boat enthusiasts, theres something to do, someone to meet, or a boat to board at every turn. Expanded a little each year, the festival honors its traditions while inviting energetic debate and demonstration about the latest innovations in boatbuilding, equipment, skills, and adventures.

On Thursday, the busy setup day before Fridays start of the festival, I met Jay Thorpe and family with their lovely Pathfinder Gunvor at the boat launch at Boat Haven marina. Jay brought Gunvor up from Klamath Falls, Oregon, where he sails her on Klamath lake.

After launching, we sailed together for a few hours while awaiting our turn to enter the festival marina. The idyllic sailing conditions gave me a perfect opportunity to capture how majestic she looks under sail.

After we eventually tied up at our assigned slips, I ran into "Doryman" Mike Bogoger and we took a closer look at Gunvor.

Jay Thorpe and "Doryman" Mike Bogoger discussing Gunvor

Jay let me climb aboard. Very roomy

 Next up:  The festival begins

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Port Townsend Wooden Boat Festival 2012 day 2

Saturday, the busiest day of the Festival.


I headed over to sign up for a rowing/sailing trip aboard the longboats. These longboats are replicas of the longboats used by Captain George Vancouver to explore the Puget Sound region in 1792. Ive been wanting to take a tour on them for years, but havent been able to until now because they were either full or there were too many other things to see and do. There are so many things to do at the festival there is no way to do them all.

These 26 replica longboats are used by the Northwest Maritime Center School Programs. They are each equipped with 8 rowing stations and 3 dipping lug sails.  They are used to teach youth teambuilding, problem solving, and maritime skills.  Teenagers attend intensive 2-5 day programs of discovery and exploration where they learn to row, sail, learn navigation, compass use, knots, marine biology, history and more.  They are also used in the Pacific Challenge.

Fortunately, we had several of these teenage students aboard to help us learn to row in sync and teach us how to tack the three sails on our dipping lug rig.

The first lesson we learned was "Crab!".  "Crab!" is what you yell out when the rowers get out of sync and get their oars all tangled up, which usually brings all four rowers on that side to a halt.

To prevent Crabs, one rower is designated as the pace setter.  From the rowers point of view, its the rower on their right and all the way up front. The rowers are all facing aft of course, so that would make him the aft-most port-side rower.  Anyway, the rower to his immediate left is supposed to row in sync with him.  The rest of the rowers are all supposed to keep in sync with the rower seated immediately in front of them.  Sounds simple, right?  We had lots of Crabs.  All it takes to create a Crab is for one rower to lose focus for a second or two.

Tacking the dipping lug rig involved a complex sequence of  tacking the halyard, the sail tack, tacking the sheets, lowering the sail and dipping the yard, that I still dont fully understand.  It was unlike anything Id ever done before and required about 3 or 4 people on each sail.  I loved it!  I wish I were a teenager so I could sign up for these programs.  I also have a new found respect for the crew of these longboats. After only a half hour of rowing, my hands were numb and my back started to ache.  Vancouvers explorers often rowed for hours upon hours exploring and charting the miles of coastlines here.  Heres a bit of video.  Its not very good.  These are working boats.  Youre always rowing or sailing, or trying to stay out of the way of other boats.  There is very little opportunity for filming.

More to come.

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Port Townsend Wooden Boat Festival Part Three

Dawn, Saturday, the busiest day of the Festival, had arrived.  I spent most of the day aboard Ellie, answering questions, but occasionally sneaking off to watch presentations and view the other boats.

The Main Attraction today, for us Welsford fans anyway, was Scamp.  Howard Rice did an amazing talk. I wish I could have recorded it. The adventures Howard had taken aboard small boats are jaw dropping. He has gone around Cape Horn, both ways, in a sailing canoe, which ranks as one of the most epic journeys ever undertaken in a small boat.  No, hes not crazy.  Just the opposite. He trains Navy Seals in small boat handling.  Small Craft Advisor magazine did a series of interviews with Howard in issues 58 through 63.  In his presentation, Howard talked about his past and about the tests he had done aboard Scamp.  Howard was having a microcruiser designed for him by a French designer, but replaced it with Scamp hull #3.

John Welsford did another outstanding talk later that day entitled "The Designers Role: More Than Just Drawing".  This time I brought my camera and recorded the talk.  Unfortunately the room was packed.  My seat was near the back of the room, too far away to make a video, and the audio is not the greatest quality either.  But if you crank up the volume, it is well worth listening to.  John talks about the Designers role, which is turning your dreams into reality, and about how he designed Scamp to fulfill the specified design criteria.

 

 

I missed the majestic Schooner Cup races this year.  I was at Johns talk instead. There are so many things to see and do at the festival that its impossible to see them all.  Here is a little bit of the race.

Ive been toying with the idea of building a cedar-stripped kayak or canoe. I know next to nothing about kayaks, but the cedar strip kayaks at the festival are just so beautiful, and they look like they would be a lot of fun to build.  I went to Joe Greenleys Cedar Strip Canoe & Kayak building demonstration.  I went away from the presentation thinking they didnt look too difficult.  A typical kayak uses a quarter mile of cedar strips!

The musical entertainment at the festival is fun. There is live music at Bar Harbor all day long. Here is a sample from "The Whateverly Brothers".  Many people play their instruments on their boats and they are quite good and a lot of fun to listen to.

These boats are replicas of the longboats that Capt Vancouver used to explore Puget Sound in 1792. Every year I kick myself for not signing up early enough to go out for a rowing and sailing tour aboard them. Next year for sure!

Remember Captain Kirk Gresham, inventor of the home-made roller furler?

Heres his latest contraption he built for his Devlin cutter Eider.  It keeps his full-keeled Eider comfortably upright on the beach while the tide is out.  They say the tide waits for no man.  Well, Kirk waits for no tide!

Here are a few more photos that I took of a few of the boats. This is a tiny, tiny fraction of the boats at the festival, which number in the hundreds. I really wish the festival was a week long instead of only three days!

  

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