Port Townsend Boat Heaven then onto Canada

I was sad to be leaving Seattle, I was getting used to the ‘in your face’ friendliness of the locals, or Seattelites as they are known, and had been bowled over by how helpful and friendly some of the people we met had genuinely been. It seemed like the whole of the sailing community there worked well together, with shops happily recommending competitor shops to me when they were out of stock. But having spent all my money on bits and bobs for the boat, it was time to move on. We had planned to get to the Wooden Boat Festival for Friday, but the mainsail repair delayed us so we would miss the first day.
Friday morning saw us heading north to Port Townsend, there was no wind, but we had good currents pushing us along and made good progress. The biggest drag was another submarine was heading out, the coastguard escort came and told me I had to clear the exclusion zone, and escorted me towards the beach, in almost the opposite direction to where we were heading, we were already a couple of miles from the subs CPA (Closest point of approach) but that wasn’t enough.  We took 8 hours to cover the 37 NM, arriving at 4pm, once we checked in we headed down to the festival as I read that bands were performing until late each night and we were pleased to find the gates open and free after 5pm, so we wandered around the stalls, mostly closing, bought some french fries and watched the bands performing on the music stage.  There were about six different stages setup for demonstrations and talks each day with maybe a hundred different talks all in all. Over the next two days I attended a talk on sharpening tools, this came from a guy who said he will sharpen his chisel maybe every ten minutes during a serious bit of boat building! I was thinking it was more of an annual thing. I also watched an impressive lady talk about varnishing tips, she had been varnishing for 31 years in Port Townsend, and really knew her stuff. I missed talks from Nigel Calder, a god in the boat maintenance world, and Brion Toss, a master rigger, both of these guys books have been on my bookshelf for many years. What was a bit worrying was that Brion was hobbling around in a plaster cast on his arm and leg, making me wonder if something had gone wrong while he was up a mast?

The festival consisted of scores of wooden boats, mostly quite old, demonstrations on the stages, a boat building competition, where 4 teams competed over the three days to build boats from scratch, launch and race them, live music, sea shanties, trips on the water on classic yachts/ tall ships and loads of other activities for kids. All in all it was a great festival, and I wished I had got there a day earlier and got to the festival earlier each day. In the harbour that held the festival there is an adjacent school of boatbuilding where demonstrations of woodworking were going on.

Some pictures from the festival are below.

“La Boheme is one in a series of William Atkin designed double-enders. This one is the Eric. Modeled after Norwegian rescue boats at the turn of the century, the Eric is said to be “the best boat for the worst weather”. La Boheme’s keel was laid in 1926. She was completed and launched in 1938 out of Victoria, BC and has plied the waters of the North West ever since. Constructed of Port Orford cedar on oak frames, La Boheme is stout, sea-kindly and extremely comfortable as cruiser.”

Boheme comes from the same Norwegian heritage as our own baba / tashiba boats, except those plank lines are for real.

 

One for Taffy.

 

 

Back at the boat we took advantage of a giant safeway store opposite the marina to stock up with everything we need for the next few weeks as we will be mostly at anchor on our way back to Malcolm Island.

It’s actually called the boat haven, but I think of it as boat heaven, it’s a decent walk from the haven to town and the other marina of Port Hudson where the festival is staged, but the Haven has everything a boat owner could desire, there are loads of workshops, I counted four travel lifts, a west Marine, a really good cheap hardware store that has a good range of stainless fittings. Shops, cafes, a fish stall and loads of classic and odd ball boats in every direction give the place a very nautical feel. It’s also has a huge area of hard standingBoats like this one above are scattered around the yard, this is an old classic cruise ship. One morning I looked up after hearing some swishing of the water next to us to see this yacht (below) passing by. A fairly common sight here. I think I will bring the boat back here next year to do any big jobs like the mast refurb I’m thinking of.

Kathy got herself into trouble again and I had to go downtown and bail her out. 

Actually it’s one of these cells under the old courtroom, now a museum, where Jack London spent the night once en-route to the Klondike.

Port Townsend was once, in the 1880s bigger than Seattle, and was scheduled for great things, but the panic/depression of 1893 put paid to that and the town went into decline. But not before several countries had built their imposing embassies here, and several very grand buildings were erected on the main roads.
Above one of these buildings we found an old cinema where we watched ‘Crazy Rich Asians’ The cinema was great, you could take a meal in, drink your wine from a glass glass and sit on a very comfortable sofa. The film was also fun as it was set in Singapore and Malaysia, so we recognised many of the locations.

Port Townsend is a lovely place, it seems when woodstock ended, a lot of people left for here to carry on the party, the general vibe is that of a laid back town, full of artists, lovely coffee bars, lots of art and craft shops, and of course this sits well with so many skilled boat workers, carpenters, steel workers etc. They even have a famous ‘forge’ here where you can get any rare kind of boat fitting cast. I could quite easily spend a year or two here.

Sadly we had to leave and start our trek north to Siontula, the days are getting shorter and colder, there’s less sunshine these last few days and I worry we will hit bad weather along the way. So I want to push on.

Today (Wed) we arrived in Sidney, Canada, a large town near Victoria on Vancouver Island. Check-in to Canada was as simple as saying hello , boat name, and no to ten questions, all on the phone, then we were in.

We are here until Saturday when we head over to Desolation Sound and explore the eastern side of the inside passage. We mostly stayed on the Vancouver Island side on the way down here. We will celebrate Kathy’s birthday here in Sidney, hopefully finding a nice restaurant, my birthday follows a few days later, but I’m more than happy with a cheese butty at anchor in desolation sound.

Paul Collister