T H E C E N T E R FOR W O O D E N BOATS
The above painting is by R.A. "Ritchie" Benson. Drawing on his love of boats, lighthouses and anything nautical, he has won numerous prizes, including The Watercolor Society Best of Show. Benson has had two one-man shows at Seattle's Frye Museum and has done five Pike Place Market posters. He lives in Coupeville, Washington in a boathouse/studio over the water. Posters commemorating the 17th Annual Lake Union Wooden Boat Festival are available for $8.00. Signed and numbered prints will be put up for auction.
PRESENTS T H E
17TH A N N U A L L A K E UNION W O O D E N BOAT FESTIVAL AND F U N D RAISING AUCTION
JULY
3,
4
&
5
Program of Daily Events Saturday, July 3 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Water colors - R.A."Richie" Benson - North side of Armory Toy Boat All Day Building - West Side of Armory Sawmill Demonstration, cutting windfall native woods - Wawona Courtyard 15 Minute sliding seat rowing program every 2 hours. - Armory Folk Music - C W B pavilion (noon to 6:00) Framing and Sewing skin on 23' Aleut Baidarka Kayak. Strip plank Kayak construction demo and free trial - Outside NW Comer Armory Old Gas & Steam Engines Pulling & Sailing excursions on the 18th century replica boat Frame Lamination Demonstration - NW Comer of Armory Rope fender making demonstration. Wawona Courtyard Rope Strop Block Making - North Quay (every 2 hours) Food Booths - Entrance to Naval Reserve Base Folding Kayak demonstration - West side of Armory "Historic Ships of Puget Sound" a photo and artifact exhibit - Armory Knotwork with the International Knot Tyers Guild - Wawona Courtyard Water Taxi Tours - C W B Boathouse and North Quay Ballots for People's Choice Awards C W B Store west side of Armory Boat Raffle Entries - C W B Store west side of Armory 11:00 Noon 12:30 1:00 2:30 4:00
Rich Kolin - Oarmaking seminar - C W B Boatshop Quick and Daring Boat building - Big Tent Steve Philipp - Maritime Skills of the Puget Sound Native Americans - Armory Lee Ehrheart - Caulking demo, North side of Armory Rich Kolin - Oarmaking seminar - C W B Boatshop Lake Union Classic Yacht Race, North Quay
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Shavings July 1993
The First Ten Years
4
Dick Wagner
A Great Museum For A Great Maritime Heritage
6
Colleen Wagner
A Friend Returns To Lake Union
8
Morry Edwards
"Harriet Spicer": From Desolation Sound To Victoria
10 13
Noah Oldham
GAATAUWAS Festival: A Stroke Towards Indigenous Unity 14 The Sail Race That Ended In Fishing Frenzy
14
Nils Lucander Chas Dowd
15
Ed Clark
Micro Mania
17
Bernie Wolfard
The New Vikings
19
Leif Karlsen
Looking For The Wilderness Chas Dowd
Carter KenDick Wagner Carl Lind Paul Henry Roger Coulte Horace Ingram
Sailing Coordinator: Vern Velez Volunteer Coordinator: Leslie Oldham
Board of Trustees Celeste Archambault, Ross Anderson, Duncan Bayne, Caren Crandell, Grant Dull, Steve Excell, Bill Keasler, Carter Kerr, Blake Lewis, Mike Milburn, Kim Nolan, Bob Pickett, Scott Rohrer, Ron Snyder, Bob Tapp, Bill Van Vlack, Vernon Velez.
Shavings
Boater's Bookshelf: Setting Sail With Aubrey And Maturin.... 16 To The Captain
President: Director: Shipwrights Info Manager: Livery Manager:
Bob Allen
Our Ancient Mariner's Race
The Center for Wooden Boats 1010 Valley Street Seattle, WA 98109 (206) 382-2628
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This special 17th Annual Wooden Boat Festival issue of Shavings was published by Richard Hazelton, production by Karen Higginson, ad sales by Amy Shepard, with special thanks to 48째 North Sailing Magazine. Reproduction of materials contained herein without permission of The Center for Wooden Boats is expressly prohibited. C W B is a 501(c)(3) non-profit corp.. Printed in Canada.
Shavings July 1993
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Festival Event Listings
Program of Daily Events (continued from front page)
Sunday, July 4 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. All Day
Page
Water colors - R.A.Richie Benson - North side of Armory Toy Boat Building - West Side of Armory Sawmill Demonstration, cutting windfall native woods - Wawona Courtyard 15 Minute sliding seat
17th Annual Live Auction - We've limited seating for this one so buy tickets first then read the following! This year the Auction will be one of Seattle's best In addition to all the Auction excitement, we will be serving a Steelhead B B Q Dinner, Live entertainment, and ringside seats to Seattle's Lake Union Fireworks show! $20 for adults, $5 for children under 13. Caulking with Lee Ehrheart - Master Shipwright Lee Ehrheart will show you how to do it right, including hands on instruction. 1 pm Daily.
rowing program every 2 hours. - Armory Folk Music - C W B pavilion (noon to 6:00) Frame Lamination Demonstration - NW Corner of Armory Framing and Sewing skin on 23' Aleut Baidarka Kayak. Strip plank Kayak construction demo and free trial - Outside NW Corner Armory Old Gas & Steam Engines Pulling & Sailing excursions on the 18th century replica boat Rope Strop Block Making - North Quay (every 2 hours) Food Booths - Entrance to Naval Reserve Base Folding Kayak demonstration - West side of Armory "Historic Ships of Puget Sound" a photo and artifact exhibit - Armory Knotwork with the International Knot Tyers Guild - Wawona Courtyard Water Taxi Tours - C W B Boathouse and North Quay Ballots for People's Choice Awards - C W B Store west side of Armory Boat Raffle Entries - C W B Store west side of Armory 8:00
Breakfast!!! Fruit Rolls, eggs, meat, coffee - all for $5 - Big Tent
9:00
Lake Union Classic Yacht Racing Awards - Big Tent
11:00
Rich Kolin - Oarmaking seminar - C W B Boatshop N O O N
Quick
and Daring Boat building - Big Tent 12:30
Steve Philipp - Maritime Skills of the Puget Sound Native Americans - Armory
1:00
Lee Ehrheart - Caulking demonstration - North side of Armory
2:30
Rich Kolin - Oarmaking seminar - C W B Boatshop
3:30
"How to Buy a Wooden Boat" - Panel Discussion including marine
4:00
Clancy World Championship Regatta - North Quay
Caulking for Kids - Master Shipwright Lee Ehrheart enlists the aid of young "apprentices" to show that caulking can be done by anyone. 3 pm Monday Cedar Culture - The Maritime skills of Puget Sound Native Americans. Steve and Dorothy Philipp describe how the native peoples of the region utilized their natural resources. Ongoing exhibit of canoe models, tools, artifacts, - even a model longhouse. Special presentation at 12:30 Daily. Clancy Racing - World Championship Clancy racing - The Clancy is a new 10' training dinghy designed by C W B ' s Rich K o l i n . Bob Pickett, who has built several, will be on hand to answer questions. If you would like to race, check in at Rounder Bay Lumber Booth on the north side of the Armory by 2 pm Sunday. Classic Yacht Race - The Northwest's finest classic wooden boat race here on Lake Union for everyone to see. This is an official Wooden Yacht Racing Association Event. Begins at 4 pm Saturday. Folding Kayak Demonstration - Whalecraft's folding kayak will be exhibited and assembled every two hours. Folk Music - A lively offering of songs and merriment for land and sea, featuring the talents of: Mike James, Peggy Sullivan, Paul Greve & John Weeks, Pike Her, Leslie M c K a y , Warren Murray, Kevin Jones, Band Wagon, Laura Smith, Lindy Barrett, Robert Blake, Andy Weigand, Mountain Thyme, Larry Marante, Tim Hall, Liz Savage, Richard Reis, Bill Imhoff, David Lovine (the lead Shantyman on Lady Washington), Dan Roberts, Lee & Hella Spector, Bob Perego, Mike Aldritch, B i g Picture, Tom Rawsn, and V a l James.
surveyor, banker, and insurance man - Armory 6:00 6:30
Festival Closes for Evening.
Live Auction,
Steelhead B B Q Dinner, Live Entertainment, & Fire-
Historic Ships of Puget Sound - Puget Sound Maritime Historical Society will show some of their 70,000 historic photographs, artifacts, and records. There will also be an interactive display where visitors can read and write about their own maritime experiences. Kids can color signal flags and make a "name" necklace. Children of all ages can learn the signal flag alphabet.
works. Limited seating.
Monday, July 5 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. A l l Day
Water colors - R.A.Richie Benson - North Side of Armory Toy Boat Building - West Side of Armory Sawmill Demonstration, cutting windfall native woods - Wawona Courtyard 15 Minute sliding seat rowing program every 2 hours. - Armory Folk Music - C W B pavilion (noon to 6:00) Framing and Sewing skin on 23' Aleut Baidarka Kayak. Strip plank Kayak construction demo and free trial - Outside NW Corner Armory Old Gas & Steam Engines Pulling & Sailing excur-
People's Choice Award - Visitors are encouraged to find their favorite sail, power and Quick and Daring boats and submit their votes for the People's choice award. Pick up your ballot at the C W B store on the west side of the Armory Building. How to Buy a Wooden Boat - A panel discussion with an expert marine surveyor, a banker, and an insurance agent. Learn what to look for, how to finance and what to do about insurance. 3:30 Sunday, Armory Oarmaking Seminar - With 25 years of oarmaking experience. Rick Kolin knows how it's done. Watch him work Saturday and Sunday or attend his half hour seminars 2:30 Saturday and 11:30 Sunday at the C W B Boatshop.
sions on the 18th century replica boat Rope Strop Block Making North Quay (every 2 hours) Rope Mat making Demonstration Wawona Courtyard Food Booths - Entrance to Naval Reserve Base Folding Kayak demonstration - West side of Armory "Historic Ships of Puget Sound" a photo and artifact exhibit - Armory Knotwork with the International Knot Tyers Guild - Wawona Courtyard Water Taxi Tours - C W B Boathouse and North Quay Ballots for People's Choice Awards - C W B Store west side of Armory Boat Raffle Entries - C W B Store west side of Armory 12:30
Steve Philipp - Maritime Skills of the Puget Sound Native Americans - Armory
1:00
Lee Ehrheart - Caulking demonstration - North side of Armory
3:00
Lee Ehrheart & Apprentices - Caulking for Kids - North side of
3:30
Quick and Daring Boatbuilding Lake Union Challenge Cup Race -
Old Gas and Steam Engines - There will be a working display, and a variety of classic gas and steam engines. Pulling and Sailing Excursions - The Hewitt R. Jackson, a replica of an 18th Century Ships' boat will provide hands-on 18th century boat experience. Quick and Daring Boat Building Contest - Two person teams race to see who can build a fast seaworthy boat in a shortest amount of time. Then they race them on (and sometimes under) the water. Building begins at high noon Saturday and Sunday in the Big Tent Racing begins Monday at 3:30. Sawmill Demonstration - cutting windfall native woods - Robin Tomer will show how trees become planks for wooden ships. Sliding Seat Rowing Demonstration - Wayland Marine will show how to row on a sliding seat every two hours.
Armory North Quay 5:30
Award Presentation - West Side of Armory
6:00
Boat raffle Drawing - West Side of Armory
Strip Plank Kayak Demonstration - Paul Ford will demonstrate his easy construction Strip plank Kayaks, and give free trial paddles. Toy Boat Building - Come build a toy boat! We supply the wood, glue, nails, tools, masts, sails, and everything you need. This is one of the favorite events of the Festival so don't miss out. Water Taxis - Take a ride in a 1906 Steam Launch, a 28' Monterrey Clipper, a Poulsbo boat, a variety of classic wooden row boats, & a plethora of sail boats to try. Board at CWB or the North Pier of the Naval Reserve Center.
monthly events see Calender on page 21.
165' 1897 Schooner Wawona - Welcome aboard the Last floating Lumber Schooner from the Pacific Northwest. W i n a Boat - Stop by the C W B store on the west side of the Armory and enter the drawing to win a lovely classic wooden boat.
The schedule for the C W B Marine Skills Workshops
Wooden Boats - The whole reason for the Festival! Expect to see over 100 wooden boats of all sizes in addition to our own fleet of nearly 100 small wooden boats. A l l the big ships will be in port as well; Adventuress, Zodiac, Red Jacket, Krestine, and of course the Wawona!
For a complete schedule of The Center For Wooden Boat's
is on page 22
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Shavings July 1993
The First Ten Years Dick Wagner
The convolutions of getting started on our Waterway 4 site had as many twists and turns as an Agatha Christie Murder mystery, but without the murder. It all began in 1980 when a bunch of bright eyed, rosy cheeked and politically naive friends of traditional small craft decided to get serious and apply for a field for our dream museum of hands-on-history. A letter to our mayor, Charley Royer, generated a phone call from our Director of Engineering David Moseley, which was followed by a meeting with our Superintendent of Parks, Walter Hundley, who strongly recommended we apply for waterway #3 or 4, at the south end of Lake Union (SLU). I was in favor of developing waterway #17 or 18 flanking Gas Works Park. They had a built in bucolic setting, parking lot & restrooms. However, board members, Charlie Bond, Dave Cox, and Myron Richards recognized the value of being a pioneer in changing South Lake Union from its state of grimy entropy. At that time South Lake Union was the lowest level
of an urban planners Inferno. On the west edge of S L U was the Lone Star Cement plant, a dust belching, slurry dumping arena, with roaring, raging concrete carrying trucks. Next to that was Henry Pier, a ghetto of shacks housing ship repair crafts, and embellished with rusty engine parts, puddles of old crankcase oil and hydraulic fluid, and periodic fires from amongst the elephant graveyard of commercial vessels. The fires were due to either spontaneous combustion, welding sparks, or desperate owners of the rusty over mortgaged cargo vessels. Next west, Waterway #4, our blessed home, had heaps of sand and gravel on the water edge, used by the city for road maintenance, and the scorched earth remains of 70 years of asphalt making. Only two growing things were there then, and are still flourishing: an elm and hawthorn tree. If the Pacific yew has a resin that may be a cancer antidote, the life fluids of our elm and hawthorn must have powers that can bring back ozone in Antarctica and peace on Earth. Barbara Oakrock and I pre-
pared drawings of the proposed Center for Wooden Boats at Waterway #4 in 1980 & submitted them for Shoreline, Waterway Use and Building Permit in May, 1980. The Shoreline permit involved examinations by every government agency except the one for pet pigs. Within 3 months, all had approved our plans except the Dept. of Natural Resources(DNR), who owned the Waterways. They interpreted the dedicated use of waterways as places for commercial maritime use. Building or wrecking vessels or transferring cargo would be fine there, but not maritime education, preservation, and public access. Here's where we learned about political realities. C W B member John Black visited our legislators and pointed out that CWB's development proposal at Waterway 4 was endorsed by the Mayor, Superintendent of Parks, majority of the City Council, The Naval Reserve Center on the west, the shipyard from hell on the east, and over 2000 citizens. Black and the legislators whipped up a bill giving exemption to C W B to by-pass
DNR's stone wall. DNR sniffed the wind and called for a meeting with C W B . They said, if the Board of Public Works (the heads of all municipal departments) unanimously approved our Shoreline Permit Application, they would too. This maneuver allowed the DNR to keep control of the Waterway. In Academic circles its called "compromise" In the political trenches its called "preserving the empire." At any rate, on May 21, 1983 - three years after submitting our application, we were awarded our Shorelines Permit, Use Permit and Building Permit. Our Boatshop was already built, through a grant from the Oakmead Foundation. Our Pavilion was shortly started, with funding for half the materials from the Seattle Foundation and donated labor from Seattle Community College's schools of carpentry, boatbuilding, and
Looking much like the artist's drawing (opposite page). The Center For Wooden Boats as it looks today is always a work in progress.
Shavings July 1993
metalwork. Floats and the Oarhouse were built by volunteers. Landscaping began slowly with donated ditchdigging cutting through the crust of asphalt and removing decades of anaerobic fill and soil. Finding good dirt was an adventure. At first I followed dump trucks passing down our road, but this was a low percentage game, because few trucks had good topsoil. Then the inspiration (this really could have come from an Agatha Christie mystery) to call cemeteries. Bingo! A timely grant from the Committee of Thirty-Three completed our landscaping by the spring of 1988. Then construction of the last piece of our development, the Boathouse, began in the Summer of '88. Construction had to be completed and Occupancy Permit had to be obtained in 1988, before our Shoreline Permit expired. If not, we would have to apply again, and what took three years then would probably take four now. Bureaucratic inflation. Anyhow, our contractor said "no sweat" and sure enough the walls quickly rose, the roof and windows and doors followed. By fall Boathouse carpentry was almost finished and then came the plumbers, and electricians. They weren't the problem, but the holidays held sacred by the contractors were: Rosh Hashana, Yom Kippur, Columbus Day, Veterans Day, Thanksgiving, Chanukah, Full moons, Eclipses, Equinoxes, National
Skiing Day, The Bosses Birthday, and whatever. By Christmas, the last drippy faucet and loose electron was fixed and we made an appointment for the Building Inspector to inspect and give us the Occupancy Permit. But all those with seniority were on vacation till the New Year. Only one inspector was available. He came on the last working day of December and gave us the coveted permit. Almost anywhere else we possibly could have avoided the last minute stress with an honest bribe. But Seattle is Seattle: pure, fresh and honest as steam coursing through Starbuck's espresso ground Columbia Supremo. But that's the technical stuff, which is part, but not all of the saga of our first decade at S L U . The most important element of the Center for Wooden Boats is: A. The Coffee B. The Food C. The Boats D. The Staff E. None of the Above. The correct answer is was and always will be E: The
Visitors. Of course A through D are the magnets that bring them here but the purpose of our collection is education, and its' measure of success is not the numbers of bodies that file past the relics; it is how many come again, how many linger and learn the process of making or sailing the relics. Another means of evaluation is whether we involve the whole fabric of our community, from the silky smooth to the blue denim. We have, I believe, served our community well. At risk youth are learning to build and sail boats. Physically challenged folks are becoming traditional sailboat fanatics. Our basic and advanced sailing instruction program for able people are attracting half of each gender. We are embarking on a traditional maritime skills program for our homeless teenagers. Kids get free rides on KIDS' D A Y . About 1000 toy boats are built by children at our festi-
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val. And, believe if to not, we even offer a traditional boatbuilding program for a rare genus urbanus: middle class, middle age professionals. We have accomplished much in ten years. In the next one thousand years we expect to provide more fun, wholesome and challenging programs. The reason for our existence, we promise, will remain the same: to enhance the cultural awareness of our community. Our means of support, we fervently hope, will remain the same: people who appreciate and cherish the exciting environment we have created. We feel we have earned their support. Dick Wagner is the Director and Founder of The Center for Wooden Boats. In the years before our museum on Waterway #4, Dick and his wife, Colleen ran the Center's progenitor, the Old Boathouse, out of their home on the north end of Lake Union.
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Shavings July 1993
A Great Museum For A Great Maritime Heritage Colleen Wagner Why is it important to save an old ness. These first natives left us many of ship's wheel, a bell, a compass, or bin- our place names: Tacoma, Duwamish, nacle? These artifacts as well as numer- Suquamish, Snoqualmie, Snohomish, ous old photographs, ships' logs, ship Seattle. The early explorers, traders and models, and other memorabilia are about settlers came by sea. The first nonall we have left of our maritime past. native settlements were by the Spanish. They represent the very foundation and growth of our Northwest towns and cities. In this region so intimately connected to our maritime past so few people know about the events that happened; the boats and ships so numerous and important; the people, cargos and the maritime crafts so much inCaptain George Vancouver came volved. here from Great Britain in 1792 on a Take a glimpse of this vital and voyage of discovery to find the fabled impressive past and you will agree how Northwest passage and to negotiate with much a maritime heritage museum is the Spanish for ownership of the Northwest. He sent a boat with eight oarsman needed. Through centuries Native Ameri- to chart the inland sound. Vancouver cans developed beautifully crafted ceÂŹ was so pleased with the outstanding dar canoes, second to none in seaworthi- work of charting that he named this
place Pugets' Sound in honor of Peter Puget, who supervised the work. What do you know of the first settlers who came in the little schooner Exact, the 24 men women and children that landed at Alki in 1851 to found
everywhere. One of these, at Port Blakely became the world's largest. Ships came to Port Blakely from around the world. Today nothing remains of the Port Blakely mill, town and shipyard. Have you ever caught a ferry at the Colman Dock? Did you know that James Colman (an engineer for the Yesler Saw Mill) built the first dock in 1882 as a rickety 60' shed like structure? The dock was rebuilt several times until in 1908 it was705' long and had 14 slips. Colman Dock had become a terminus for the Mosquito Fleet. These little steamers would stop almost anywhere and carry almost anything. People needed them to get from one place to another, to deliver mail, and farm produce, and take them on Sunday excursions. Many of these early steamboats with their sternwheels or side wheels burned wood or coal but never as much as the Hudson Bay Co.'s Beaver.
"We have had a maritime past filled with adventure, courage, hard work, ingenuity, romance, even piracy and smuggling. There were colorful, creative and charming characters. Rascals and reprobates, too." Seattle? Only one month after they arrived they took on the task of loading, a brig, the Leonesa that came in the Sound looking for a cargo of 50' poles. A year later, at Henry Yeslers' newly established steam sawmill they took jobs cutting and loading timber for the many sailing ships that carried away the fine Northwest lumber. Sawmills sprang up
Shavings July 1993
That side wheel vessel first arrived on Puget Sound in 1836 and used 40 cords of wood a day. Today only one Mosquito Fleet vessel remains-Virginia V built in 1922. I doubt there is anyone who hasn't seen a Foss tugboat on the Sound. Did you know that the Company was started in Tacoma by a woman, Thea Foss, in 1890? She began the tugboat empire with a $5.00 rowboat. Large numbers of three and four masted wooden schooners were built in the Northwest to carry our lumber to California, Mexico, Chile, Fiji, Samoa, Australia, and South Africa. They never had engines. Steam tugs were used to get them to the docks. The last lumber schooner surviving in the Northwest is Wawona, built in 1897. When steam ships became the dominant cargo carriers, most of the lumber schooners became cod fishing ships and sailed from Puget Sound to the Bering Sea every spring, with dories on deck to handline for cod. Most of the schooners were brought into Lake Union's fresh water and protected anchorage and were hauled out, painted and repaired at Lake Union
Dry dock, a shipyard still in operation. Many stories could be told about the other ship builders and yards where they built beautiful wooden vessels, including the numerous gillnetters, trollers, seiners, tenders, and halibut schooners that fished in Puget Sound and Alaskan Waters and still do.
Society (PSMHS) has accepted the exiting challenge of creating a maritime heritage museum! PSMHS is a nonprofit organization founded in 1948. Since 1953 it has produced two exhibits a year in the maritime wing at the M u seum of History and Industry. PSMHS sponsors monthly dinner meetings with Or we could tell you about the Steam- maritime speakers. It publishes "Sea ship Portland that brought the miners Chest", a nationally recognized scholand the first ton of gold from Alaska to arly maritime heritage journal. PSMHS Seattle and started the gold rush in 1897. collects and preserves artifacts and hisThis event made the settlements along toric maritime photographs. The photo the Sound into boom towns almost over- collection now numbers 70,000. It collects and catalogs historic books, marinight. And what about the battleship time records and reports. PSMHS has Nebraska! Construction began in Se- displays at many public events includattle in 1900, only 49 years after Seattle's ing the Kingdome boat show, Lake founding. Nebraska became the flag Union Wooden Boat Festival, Maritime Week and Fish Expo. An Outreach ship of the Great White Fleet of 16 ships which sailed around the world in 1908. program for elementary school children has begun. The membership includes We have had a maritime past filled many with outstanding expertise in mariwith adventure, courage, hard work, intime history. genuity, romance even piracy and smuggling. There were colorful, creative and Our vision is a maritime heritage charming characters. Rascals and rep- museum, part of the South Lake Union robates, too. This is a story that needs to Maritime Heritage Center, where the be told in a maritime museum. visitors can get involved with the sights Puget Sound Maritime Historical and sounds of the sea and ships; where
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they can experience the feel of a sailing ship at sea; where they can see miniature ships being built and take classes to make one or learn how to put a ship in a bottle or tie knots. Classes, lectures, and fun educational programs for kids will be continuous. The museum will be a place where education is entertaining and visitors will want to return. It will also be a place were other maritime organizations can be represented and conduct meetings and programs. If you want to find our more about the museum and how you can help it happen; or about PSMHS and how you can contribute through membership and volunteer work, please call or write: Colleen Wagner, 2770 Westlake N., Seattle, WA 98109, (206) 282-0985. Colleen Wagner is a Board Member of Puget Sound Maritime Museum and a member of its' Museum and Education Committees.. She was one of the founders of the Center for Wooden Boats, was Manager of the Museum of Sea and Ships, Seattle's former maritime heritage museum, and Director of Programs, Events and Education aboard the schooner "Wawona "for five years.
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Shavings July 1993
A Friend Returns To Lake Union Fourteen festivals and many visiting wooden boats ago, on the eve of July 4th, 1980, Dick Wagner got a phone call from a stranger. Would it be O K , Bob Holcomb wanted to know, if he brought to the show a Friendship sloop he had built in Alaska?
Morry Edwards
also measured the Friendship Pemaquid ex-Florida,built by Abdon Carter on an island several miles from Friendship in 1914. It was this set of lines that appeared in Howard Chapelle's book, American Small Sailing Craft in 1951, and served as the plans for Amie.
x
Amie shows construction fairly typical of her type. Her backbone is oak, her planking cedar, and she is fastened with galvanized nails clenched on the inside. In Maine, beech was plentiful and sometimes used in lieu of oak; planking was often red oak or clear white pine.
"A Friendship? I was thrilled," Dick recalls. "Of course I invited him to join us." West coast admirers of the Friendship sloop have come to know this turn of-the-century Maine fisherman's craft almost exclusively through the medium of the printer's ink, from published lines drawings and narrative accounts. Rare indeed is the chance to study one "in the timber" so far from home. The 25' Amie (ex-Aquila) showed up at the 1980 festival wearing a "FOR S A L E " sign in her shrouds. She left the show with geologist Hal Hanson at her tiller. Now she's back, and this time she expects to linger awhile. Hal Hanson has made a generous gift of Amie to the Center for Wooden Boats. Henceforth she will lie at our dock as a floating exhibit, and will serve in our advanced sail training programs. To pick her out from the holiday crowd this July 4th, you don't have to know your gammon iron from your gaff halyards (she has the latter, but not the former). Look for the enormous boom that overhangs her stem, for the single mast, far forward, and the long, aggressive bowsprit. "Damn the calm winds of summer!" she seems to say. "I'll carry canvas enough, and then some!" Under her 'sprit you'll find a fair clipper bow and the promise of swift cleavage to any lump of a sea that blunders in her way. Her bold sheer line rises forward to warn off all but the most determined sheets of spray. By the cockpit, she dips her rail close toward the water's edge, in memory of the Maine fishermen who hauled heavy lobster traps and flipping codfish onto the decks of her ancestors. Think picnic baskets and ample leg room for your friends. You'll feel right at home in Amie's roomy cockpit, surrounded by a warm and sturdy barrelstave oak coaming. How about that lovely elliptical counter stem? Is that a transom lover's turn-on, or what? Once you've found her, and admired her, there are three things you should know about Amie aside from the obvious French origin of her name. First is her nautical pedigree; second is what she's made from; and finally there is an ineffable something about her that poet Gerard Manley Hopkins might have called her "inscape" - a synchronicity of purposefulness and aesthetic charm better experienced than described. She did not come from a boat shop in Friendship, Maine. Nor did the original sloop whose lines she reproduces. Not even a majority of Friendship sloops
were built in the town they advertise. But when builder Wilbur Morse made proprietary use of the name after moving his boatworks to Friendship in 1882, his prodigious output of several hundred of these sloops gave the entire fleet its identity, wherever their backbones may have been laid down. If it wasn't one of the Morse brothers, it was surely a McClain or a Carter. These three island families, healthily intermarried and handy with tools, comprised the boatbuilding preeminence of the fishing community of Maine's Muscungus Bay during the last half of the 19th century. Who among them was first is a mystery that even the Friendship expert Roger F. Duncan cannot solve, though he relates various claims to that honor in his book The Friendship Sloop. (Loaded with fact and photos, solid research and good writing, Duncan's book is the bible of Friendship buffs worldwide. Hal Hanson has donated a copy to the Center's library). The sloops ranged in length from the mid-teens to over forty feet. They came first with centerboards and then full keels as improved rail and steamer access to the Boston markets brought a surging demand for Maine seafood, and especially lobsters. The fisherman went further from shore, fished a longer season, until his dory or peapod no longer answered his needs. Slight variations of hull shape and deck arrangement differentiated the sloops of different builders, but overall, Friendships were remarkably consistent in the features which give them their distinctive look and seaworthy reputation. According to our gum of American wooden boat history, Howard Chapelle, these features were dictated largely by design "fads" received from the schooner industry of Gloucester. In any event, they admirably suited the demands of the Maine coast. The fisherman wanted a boat he could maneuver handily around fixed gear and at the dock, yet would hold her way on the commute to and from the fishing grounds in varying and often hostile combinations of wind and sea. The answer was a deep and sharply raked keel, and a sail plan that balanced well in both light air and storm. A working man required that his boat sail on her bottom, not tipped to the
rail with decks awash and the sea rushing perilously close to the great open cockpit. He didn't want to swamp and lose her, and he watched to see that his load didn't shift. Besides the usual fish and lobsters, seasonal cargoes might include apples or quarried granite or sheep. Great breadth (a third the overall length, not including bowsprit), powerful lines and a heavy displacement under low-aspect gaff rig gave the Friendship great initial stability. When the breeze heeled you to the rail, you reefed, regained a semblance of level sailing, and drove on. She had to handle the big Atlantic seas that roll up the deep water fingers of Muscongus Bay. Running with them, she wanted sufficient reserve buoyancy in her quarters to prevent tripping, or "stuffing" her bow. And within her shapely transom there had to be lift enough to raise her stem above the following sweepers. So capable was the Friendship sloop that inevitably a number ended up in yachting service. In 1961 their loyal owners organized themselves for annual races and good fellowship, and their ranks have since grown as original boats are found and restored and new ones built. Two companies have also produced fiberglass versions along the way. Amie shows the usual effect of yachting concerns in her long house and shortened cockpit. If you'd like to see an original Friendship fully restored to its fishing configurations, you'll have to travel east. Estella A, built by Robert McClain in 1904, is on display at Mystic Seaport, Connecticut. Iocaste from Charles Morse in 1907, is at the Maine Maritime Museum in Bath. x
When engines came aboard and the sailing fleet lost its competitive edge, the yachting entrepreneur Fred Dion, of Salem, Mass, made a specialty of buying used fishing vessels for conversion to pleasure service. He picked up 3 of Charles Morse's later round-bowed Friendships. These raced well and drew the attention of Boston designer John Alden, who measured the boats and studied their lines. Years later, Alden's celebrated schooner yacht Malabar I showed strong Friendship influence, and, indeed, he had her built at the Charles Morse yard in Maine. A naval architect in Alden's employ
Rarely did the sloops have floors, sawn or grown. Amie has a few, and her garboards, quite hollow as is characteristic of later Friendships, are stronger for it. True to form, her mast is stepped directly onto the keel. There are no bilge stringers; full interior ceiling provides longitudinal strength. Absent, too, are shelves and clamps; the deck beams are instead let into a heavy fore and aft beam called the sheer timber, or lock strake, a construction technique that is apparently unique to these sloops. This lock strake is made up of several scarfed sections molded to the curve of the top plank, against which it butts firmly, being notched to fit around the rib ends. In Amie it appears to be assembled from fir 2" x 10" dimensional stock; oak was the material of early preference. Amie's deck is glassed plywood; white pine strips originally served this purpose. When Wilbur Morse was at his peak, it took his gang about six weeks to finish a sloop, keel to launching. The modern amateur typically measures his progress in years. Friendships may in fact hold a record for do-it-yourselfing with the 28' Daystar's 50 years in the building. Bob Holcomb put six months of long hours into Amie's construction over the course of a single year, launching her on a day that has acquired some significance in her life: July 4th. Bob had sailed since childhood, but his only carpentry warm-up to the 25-footer was construction of a Whitehall rowing skiff. He rented an unused boatyard on Pennock Island, across the channel from Ketchikan, southeast Alaska, where he worked as a fishing guide. He lofted out the offsets of Pemaquid directly from Chapelle's book, correcting and filling in the many illegible numbers as he went along. Working alone with an antique bandsaw on the abandoned greaseway of the old boatyard, he had to devise ways of pushing and pulling things into position by himself When it came to bending in the ribs and coaxing a heavy oak plank to take the curves of the deckhouse sides, he brought the crucial extra pairs of hands across the channel by boat. His quick progress on Amie he modestly attributes to the natural advantages of building in the far north. "Long days," he recalled recently. "Light til midnight, one o'clock. And no distractions."
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His results show the care and skill of nice curl off her bow. Suddenly she's a determined and talented amateur. Amie got the force of a charging locomotive. is not the last word in fine yacht joinery, When it is my turn at the helm, I'm but she reflects the solid and competent amazed how light and responsive the utilitarian style that encouraged so many tiller feels. Her rigging creaks with the individual fishermen to build this type strain, foam boils past the leeward rail during the idle months of winter. It could and Hal, who knows even better than easily have been Pemaquid's builder, Blake and I that Amie wants to sail more Abdon Carter himself speaking when upright, sits high on the windward Bob Holcomb reflected, coaming. "It's just a pile of wood. You cut it and shape it and then you start at the bottom and work up." The one real challenge for Bob, as indeed it had bedeviled many a fine Maine man before him, was the complex transom. "For me as a learning boatwright," he admitted, "the transom was hard, getting the right geometry to it." The transom came out fine. A much more difficult moment came a year later, when Bob Holcomb moved inland, and realized he had to sell his lovely new creation. He put his wife and five-yearold son aboard and sailed Amie down the inside passage to Seattle. On July 4th, 1980, he signed her over to Hal Hanson. Amie belongs to the Center now, but Hal has come visiting and he sits contentedly at her tiller, ghosting across Lake Union toward a windline that's rippling the water in front of the drydocks. If she carried a topmast like most of the Friendship yachting crowd back east, we'd be making better progress. Still, with our enormous main and twin headsails we're pulling well ahead of the Center's Blanchard Junior while its occupants watch in frustration. Blake Lewis, an experienced racer, member of the Center's board of directors and volunteer instructor sits crosslegged on AMIE's ample stem deck, ever vigilant. It was his job to bring her long bowsprit and overhanging boom safely out from the Center's crowded little marina, without a motor of course. He will take her back in when we're done. Hal is telling us of his youthful adventures on the Kuskokwim River in western Alaska, where he worked aboard the old steam powered sternwheelers to pay his way through college. Years later, he and his son built a Sailfish, and then a Windmill. They took 4th place in the 1965 nationals, father and son. I ask if he didn't have to be quite an acrobat to sail those light and notoriously fast but tippy racers. "You had to be able to swim," he says with a twinkle. The sails fill with the breeze; Hal eases the heavy mainsheet and falls off a bit to run down the shoreline. Blake draws Hal's attention to two small grey inflatables rafted together dead ahead. "Shall we go between 'em or around 'em?" Hal asks with a chuckle. Already he has hardened the sheet and comes up a couple of points to give them wide berth. As we sweep past, we get smiles and waves from the recumbent admirers. The wind veers west and stiffens. Amie leans to her business and throws a
Blake, whose easygoing manner combines the patience of Job with the clairvoyance of Nostradamus, clears his throat significantly. I notice a seaplane diving for a landing across our bow. "Lee-o" I sing, and put her over quickly. Amie twirls on her big belly. Her mainsheet block rattles across the traveller and the stays'l tends itself across on its club, just as it's supposed to. Hal is already snugging the lee jib sheet as she leans into her new tack with a purpose
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another puff. Now the fickle breeze is ahead, coming straight out of Horace's wind machine at the livery office. Blake falls off, swings Amie toward the 'longside pier for an upwind landing. I Then Lake Union pulls its usual trick and the wind dies off and goes work the stays'l. The bowsprit looks really squirrley on us. Blake tacks Amie hungrily at the bay windows, then slowly up channel and gives us our changes its mind and seems to make landing orders. I am to stand at the straight for the glass at the back of stays'l club, ready to back it on com- Leslie's desk. Hal and I glance at one mand. Hal will help tend the sheets. another. Blake stands calmly at the helm. Alongside the Naval reserve wharf the I notice he holds the tiller lightly bebreeze dies to nothing. Amie coasts ahead tween thumb and two fingers, like a until Blake finds a puff of air swirling conductor's baton. Amie continues her slow turn and ghosts to a stop alongside around the Center office. We come about in the pocket of the the pier. I've almost forgotten where I marina just across from our dock that am, and stand by to offload our day's little gap which seems about right for a catch of fish. tacking beetle cat. I back the stays'l, Morrey Edwards showed up at the Blake reaches out and holds the boom Center about 6 months ago and has been from catching on a bow pulpit and she one of our most valuable assets ever swings around ever so neatly and catches since.
and goes charging off. She hasn't missed a single stroke of those big invisible pistons. Her power is almost frightening.
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Shavings July 1993
"Harriet Spicer" From Desolation Sound to Victoria I have decided not to attend the Victoria Classic Boat Festival this year. This decision has nothing to do with the raw sewage question; we send enough acid rain and cultural pollution into Canada to at least beg the question of who gets to criticize whom. My decision is based on the trip we took last summer. My partner Lyle and I took our Seabird yawl, Harriet Spicer, on a three week trip to Desolation Sound. Lyle had to be back to work by the end of the second week. Our friend Ti drove Lyle's car to Squirrel Cove and we traded crew for the return trip. Most of the trip up and back was under power, but the sailing in Desolation Sound was spectacular; we were able to go virtually anywhere under sail except into the narrow anchorages. Our plan was to spend a week going up. a week cruising and a week coming home, stopping in Victoria for the Classic Boat Show. Two weeks of fine weather passed uneventfully until the last day after Lyle left when we were marooned for a day in heavy rain. We moseyed down through the Gulf Islands under pleasant skies and arrived in Sidney after some brisk days under sail, on Wednesday in the late afternoon.
Bob Allen Wednesday evening before the show: About two hours after Harriet arrived in Sidney, a beautiful bulletproof 30,000 lb. Tahiti-type ketch motored in skippered by one of those Australian types who do by themselves all those things we have friends for: sail, cook, sew, navigate, climb in and repair rigging, etc. This guy was going to Victoria the next day regardless of weather. He said this with nonchalance as if weather were the preoccupation of the timid. I factored in the Australian machismo quotient, divided it by the length of his boat, multiplied it by the sail area to displacement ratio and concluded that he was about 60% nuts. My goals were more modest: I simply did not want to feel bad about myself, and a disappointment to T i , if we didn't get to Victoria on Thursday. Thursday morning before the show: I ran into Bill Van Vlack with his new love, Nautilus and rookie crew in the Port coffee shop watching the clouds as
were we. Bill is an accomplished sailor but had not been in the waters on the southeast side of Vancouver Island and was open to suggestions. Lyle and I had learned the year before (1991) how deceptive calm water outside Sidney can be when one is anxious to get to Victoria. I joined Bill and his crew at their table and babbled about the weather for twenty minutes or so, telling them all about our trip the year before. Go or no go is one of the hardest decisions in cruising, especially when you are responsible for crew safety. The weather report for Thursday was calling for 25+ knots from the west, increasing to 35 knots in the afternoon, in the Straits of Juan de Fuca. The water outside the Port of Sidney was as smooth as a plate of cat's milk. Bill was planning to leave until I showed up in the coffee shop. Bill and I decided to wait a day and leave on Friday; a boat show is not that big a deal. I discussed with Ti the
possibility of cutting across to the San Juans and sailing around through Anacortes and down behind Whidbey Island if the weather didn't let up. That would mean missing the show altogether, but, hey, sailing is like that. On my way back to Harriet where Ti was making breakfast, I met up with Mr. Tahiti ketch who must have somehow read my mind and seen my decision not to go: "You should go, mate. The wind's from the west; if it's blowing down there you can always tuck into Oak Bay and wait it out. That way, you'll be practically in Victoria and can make it in a single shot". There was a lesson in this: N E V E R LISTEN T O A N Y O N E W H O S E B O A T WEIGHS M O R E T H A N T H R E E TIMES Y O U R O W N . The converse is also true: never give advice to someone whose boat weighs less than a third of your own. My theory is that people are so wedded to the performance characteristics of their own boats they do not appreciate how differently another boat might perform in the same weather and sea. Harriet's original design dates to the turn of the century; produced by a committee under the direction of Tom Day, editor of Rudder Magazine. Tom
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Day took two other men and crossed the Atlantic in Seabird in 1911. She is proven vessel; slow and sturdy like a DC-3. Harriet gets her ability to survive at sea from her buoyancy. Rather than plow through seas like a heavily ballasted deep draft boat, she rides over the sea like, well, a seabird. This distinction, one of the great "Ford vs. Chevy" arguments among sailors is a crucial distinction in sailboats types. I went back to the coffee shop where Bill and his crew were still mulling over the day's itinerary and told them about my talk with the Australian. We talked ourselves into going. Two people making the wrong decision do not produce a right decision. Most often, we do not learn that we have made the wrong decision until well into negotiating with God, Fate, or whatever, about getting us out of this one. The first third of the way down the coast was uneventful and pleasant. As anyone who has made the trip knows, there is no shelter between Sidney and Oak Bay (about 15 miles) if the wind is from the north, south or east. What we discovered is that there is also no shelter if the wind is from the west. About 10 miles out of Sidney, Vancouver Island got flatter and the wind began to pick up accordingly. You could actually see the windshadow on the water, matching the topography of the Island. We were about a quarter of a mile outside the relatively protected water within the windshadow when we dropped the mainsail, leaving her under her standard heavy weather rig of jib and mizzen. A short time later, both of them came down and we were under power. The chop built up fairly steeply and Nautilus pulled away from us, being deeper, longer and heavier. We crawled around the northern tip of Oak Bay into the full force of 30+ knots blowing against an outgoing tide. The chop was now short steep waves about 4 feet high giving the Bay the appearance of the bottom of a gray egg carton. Harriet was overwhelmed trying to go forward. So we turned. I remembered my good friend Dave Baker of Victoria, an expert sailor, telling me that "if you ever get stuck in a blow on Oak Bay, you can always duck into the Chatham Islands". Well, imagine our luck: there they were not sixty yards behind us. Turning 180 degrees in that wind was dicey, but once she had her tushy into the wind she rode like a duck. We scooted into the first bay; barely large enough for Harriet to join another boat already at anchor. Ti was at the helm and I in the bow setting the anchor and feeling a slight lessening of the tension that had tightened my shoulders and knotted my stomach for the last five hours. Not five minutes after the anchor was down Ti shouted, "fire!!!" We were about fifty yards from shore with nowhere else to go, watching the island going up in flames in whose lee we had hoped to find shelter. Actually, all we saw was smoke, lots of smoke. I watched for signs of flame and any
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"Two people making the wrong decision do not produce a right decision. Most often, we do not learn that we have made the wrong decision until well into negotiating with God, Fate, or whatever, about getting us out of this one."
shifting of wind that would bring the smoke down on us. We were about 2 degrees above the smoke line; as long as the wind didn't shift more than 2 degrees north, we would be o.k. I also worried about burning embers drifting over onto us. There were a lot of things to worry about and I was being expert in
finding all of them. The current was at an angle to the wind so Harriet would not ride evenly on her anchor rodes; I worried that the rode would chafe through and we would be on the rocks on the other end of the anchorage. Even in the lee, the wind was about 15-20 knots, although the
surface of the water was reasonably untroubled. I unlashed the heavy storm anchor and got it ready to drop if we needed it. There was too little maneuvering room and too much wind and current action to try setting a second anchor. The fire showed no sign of dying out, so I worried about that. I
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worried that we might have to leave the anchorage and head back into the open. As I turned to look "into the open" (towards San Juan Island), I saw the Adventuress under main and jib alone, her rails awash. Adventuress weights 100 tons, Harriet, barely 4. We opted to stay. The fire, apparently started by careless campers, was spreading to the lee side of the island. After a bit, I could see little tongues of flame in the underbrush but the larger trees did not seem to be burning. About a half an hour after we anchored, a small plane circled overhead; we knew we had been spotted. Fifteen minutes later two Coast Guardsmen zoomed into the bay in one of those all-weather Zodiacs. They were cheerful and relaxed as if this happened often. Maybe it does. Maybe "Supernatural British Columbia" is more exciting than we think. Like a phantom from my childhood came the DC-6. I grew up near the San Francisco Airport and used to ride my bike over to the runway to watch the planes, many of them DC-6's and 7's. Low and powerful, he circled the island and vanished for a moment in the smoke. A moment of quiet followed by a deafening roar as he came in, flaps down, over the treetops barely a hundred feet
Shavings July 1993
over our anxious little heads. I wasn't sure what he was going to drop, but the open bomb bay doors looked ominous. We were directly downwind of it; red powdery stuff like cayenne pepper. Tons of it. He made three passes over the fire before going back for another load. Two more trips back and forth, three passes each time. Fire under control; Harriet looking like a Mexican dinner entree. Smoke. Lots and lots of smoke. No horizon to the west or south. The Coast Guard guys told us that as long as the wind didn't veer north, we would be alright. Of course, the Coast Guard didn't know if the wind would veer north. I rose several times during the night to check the anchor. Even though it was my first experience of anchoring under duress, I had mastered the art of not going fully asleep, like a cat, waiting for any unexpected movement. Never having anchored in these conditions, as I said, left me not knowing just what were the expected vs. the unexpected motions. The wind blew all night and Harriet continued to yaw at her rode. In the darkness, burning embers cast an erie glow through the smoke like a haunted bog in a Gothic horror movie. Friday morning before the show: It was barely light when the helicopters arrived with the flame troopers. The whole scene was sci-fi: helicopters descending into the smoke and blowing great clouds of it around while guys in day-glo orange and yellow suits jumped five feet or so to the ground. There was a feverish unloading of things and lots of scrambling around. Visibility was about a hundred yards so the whole event had the appearance of taking place inside a smoke-grey enclosure. After some furious chopping and shouting and running
about, the yellow and orange guys appeared to have the upper hand. The smoke changed color and began to dissipate. A l l my careful plans about anchoring, measuring the depth with my handy dandy lead weight and knotted cord were useless. I calculated the depth at three fathoms when we dropped anchor, and we did so at the low tide. In all this futzing I assumed an even bottom. True, the tide in the morning was at the same level as the night before, but the bottom wasn't in the same place. Somehow, Harriet had drifted into a bathtub enclosure surrounded by rocks. She touched bottom slightly just as I was waking up, speeding up the process like six cups of strong coffee. I jumped up on deck in my undies and looked around. She was like a pack horse, home out of the storm, in her stall as if nothing had happened. We couldn't go anywhere until the tide lifted us over the rocks. The forecast was for continuing wind, but not as strong. We were tired. We wanted to get out of there and into Victoria before the wind picked up. This sailing thing was cutting into our rest and relaxation.
that he would leave after seeing that we had not arrived by Saturday. Bill Van Vlack told folks that Harriet was last seen running east probably toward Whidbey Island. Lyle assumed Ti and I had gone back to Sidney as Lyle and I did the year before when we were stomped on. But we did make it. Other boats followed us in like cats out of a swimming pool. Not a happy gathering. A number of boats never showed up at all. I walked over to Adventuress to see how she did during the blow. A neighbor of mine is a volunteer aboard her and was one of four at the helm during the magic westerly. She told me that while Adventuress was looking so Wooden Boatish on her trip from Friday Harbor, she took green water over her deck several times.
The Boat Show was pleasant, but a letdown after Desolation Sound and the excitement of the previous 24 hours. Harriet was rafted three out from the dock, barely visible to onlookers for whom we had so valiantly struggled to bring her. I stood on her tiny foredeck surveying the red cayenne spots all over everything that faced windward. In one By 10:00 hours the tide had risen just enough to let us crawl out into of those moments of clarity, I knew that deeper water. We made Victoria by I had outgrown Victoria as a final destilunch to learn that we were better off nation; as a geographical limit. We had sheltered by the Chatham Islands than taken Harriet on a real trip, not nearly as were some of the boats exposed to far as she is capable of going, but far weather in the Inner Harbor. By one enough for me to realize that sailing account, Bijou II did better than 15 knots horizons are endless. coming into the Inner Harbor where the P.S. Mr. Tahiti ketch cracked his harbormaster was upset because they mizzen boom and blew out his jibsail. were under sail past the "No Sailing Beyond This Point" sign. I fear they Bob Allen is Bob Allen. He is an would have scraped Harriet off the har- artist, craftsman, writer and sympathetic bor wall if we had been unfortunate observer of human conditions and vaenough to have made it that far. The garies. If for nothing else, building the Fates protect us in strange ways. We 26' yawl "Harriet Spicer" as his first were not expected at all. Lyle was boat should be recognized as an outplanning to take the ferry Coho from standing individual achievement, comPort Angeles and meet us in Victoria on parable to Nelson at Trafalgar. Saturday morning. My concern was
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Our Ancient Mariner's Race Noah Oldham 6:00 am. The alarm blared in my ear out for the start line of the Ancient telling me to wake up. I groggily agreed Mariners race. We circled around as (and got up to take a shower). After Bob told us about the Ancient Mariners picking up my friend Jon, he and I and Society, the race course, the boat that my dad packed into my car and drove always wins this race, Bijou II, and down to the Center for Wooden Boats. basics about how to crew his boat. Some Upon arrival we found two or three of the more interesting basics were things other people as punctual as we were and like, "There's a head below, but I just sat down for a cup of coffee as we waited use this blue tupperware bottle, feel free for the rest of the armada to arrive. As to use it, too". The race whistle blew and the sailors began arriving we rustled our we were off to a pretty good start with stuff around and prepared nervously to Bijou II at the back doing 360 penalty meet our skipper. My dad went with Lin turns. Jon and I laughed at them thinkFolsom on Myrica and Jon and I were on ing it would mess up their race, but Bob board Harriet Spicer with Bob Allen. the Wise knew better. Moments later, as Up to this point all I knew was that Bob the three of us tried to find the most Allen was a character and that he had comfortable seat to be able to maneuver built a huge contraption that somehow the boat, Bijou went flying by (two or split Oreo cookies, and my compatriot three knots is pretty fast when you're didn't even know that, yet. Was I ever spitting in the water to see if you're off base. Bob was no ordinary character, moving) with the crew ablaze trying to Bob was an Artist, the best kind of get to the front of the race. character. Not only an artist, but one For the next couple of hours Harriet with an affinity for sailing. All of these crawled along slowly falling to the end things put together make up a pretty of the line but we didn't notice, we were incredible personality, but to this point, too busy laughing at the stories Bob was I still didn't know any of this. I just saw telling us. We discovered that in addithis character who had an Oreo splitter at tion to his all wood Oreo Cookie Splitter home. We boarded Harriet Spicer, a 32 he also had a Cigarette Shredding/Air foot Seabird Yawl with a gaff rig. A Freshener Machine and that he painted beautiful boat, to say the least. I came to cars for people. find out that the Harriet Spicer, or Harriet, The time passed pretty quickly conwas built by Bob himself. This really sidering how slowly we were going and impressed me since the crafting of the in no time Bainbridge Island was in boat seemed extraordinary. sight. All of a sudden a storm started to As we made our way toward the roll in, the visibility dropped, the waves Ballard locks I started to realize that got rougher and the wind started blowgetting along with Bob was going to be ing. A dramatic change from what the easier than I thought. At first I wasn't day had been up to that point. We then sure what the dynamics between the found out that Harriet isn't the best boat three of us would be, since Jon and I for rough seas, even with only the jib were teenagers, in high school, and Bob and mizzen sails up. Bob then made an was an "Adult". We frantically made executive decision, to turn in without our way through the Locks and started doing the other two legs of the course.
The decision was made based on a combination of factors, one, that he didn't want to push Harriet too hard, another was that since we didn't see any of the other boats, we assumed that they had all finished the race already and were in the harbor pulling up to the dock. When we reached the dock we realized that we were among the first boats to pull in and that everyone else was just finishing the race. Oops. As the other boats pulled in we got our things together to go to the potluck at the house owned by the skipper of the Bijou. We walked the half a mile or so up to the house and eagerly helped ourselves to dinner and post race talk. Again Bob started telling stories and keeping the table laughing about different things, a real crowd pleaser. After dinner the judges calculated handicaps, announced the winners and awarded the trophies, I don't even remember who won. By that time Jon and I were on our way back to the dock laughing about how jovial Bob had been throughout this whole thing and what a neat boat Harriet was. The three of us slept on board that night, Bob and I inside the cabin and Jon situated on deck under a boom tent. After a long day of sharing anecdotes, the constant rocking put me to sleep like a baby, leaving me refreshed and ready to go the next morning. We shoved off and headed home the next day on a broad reach with only the mizzen and jib sails up again, a course that was much easier for Harriet and one that kept her more steady. The sail back was one of the best sails I've ever been on, nice and relaxed. We encountered a "plastic" boat race on the way back near Shilshole and tried to stay out of the way. You know those fiberglass people
though, always worrying if maybe the sails were trimmed one more inch that maybe they might be able to win that all important race and put another notch on their belt. We encountered a lot of yelling and screaming that we needed to get out of their way because their plastic torpedoes were so fast that there was no way in hell that a barge like Harriet could make it out of the way in time. We didn't even come close to disturbing their race as we made our way to the locks. We all thought everything was fine. We made it to the locks just in time and prepared to hand lines up as the gates closed and the water lifted. We made small talk with the people on the boat we were rafting with and then Bob tried to start the engine prior to the gates opening. Unfortunately the engine wouldn't start and the boats in front of us were moving out quickly. Again, quick on his feet, Bob arranged for the boat we were rafting with to tow us out. As we got to the first bridge miraculously (and a change of spark plugs) the motor started. We gave a wave of thanks for their help and motored on back to the Center. I will never forget that race with Bob and Jon, even though we didn't win, or even finish the race, I gained a lot of respect for the Noble Harriet Spicer and the funny man who built her, Bob Allen. If you ever see a Seabird Yawl with a gaff rig flying the pennant of a rose, give a wave of respect for one of the better boats and captains around this area. Noah Oldham is a 17 year old senior at Garfield High School, his mother, Leslie, works at the Center for Wooden Boats.
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Shavings July 1993
GAATUWAS Festival: A Stroke Towards Indigenous Unity
The G A A T U W A S canoe gathering will take place in Bella Bella, British Columbia, from June 27, to July 3,1993. This historic gathering of maritime indigenous people is initiated by Native people, for Native people. G A A T U W A S means "people Gathering Together in One Place." Some 20 ocean going canoes from Alaska, British Columbia, and Washington will arrive in Bella Bella for the gathering, which is being hosted by the Heiltsuk people. Seven canoes from Washington have confirmed their attendance so far — Tulalip, Port Gamble S'KJallam, Jamestown Klallam, Lower Elwha Klallam, Quillayute, Hoh River, Wads Wad (an international canoe), and Suquamish/Duwamish. Other tribes may join also, as their canoes become available. In addition to those travelling by water, many elders, spiritual people, and supporters will travel to G A A T U W A S , to greet the canoes and to participate in the week of activities. It is estimated that 3000 people will participate. The intent of G A A T U W A S is to affirm the cultural resurgence of canoe culture amongst native people, and to demonstrate empowerment and positive self esteem by supporting a drug and alcohol free event. The gathering is an opportunity to share the unique perspective and values of Northwest Native people with the world. As an outcome, G A A T U W A S will challenge the problems of loss of cultural identity, deterioration of values and the decline in traditional skill which so adversely affect Native communities, and particularly native youth. By providing a healthy, traditional experience this gathering is expected to positively impact young people. In the short term, G A A T U W A S will develop a group of committed, healthy individuals who, in the long term, will become leaders of the respective tribes. The gathering will create an environment for participants to come together to discuss common problems, develop strategies, and cement bonds for future unified action.
The Sail Race That Ended In Fishing Frenzy Nils Lucander I really don't know what day it happened during the two weeks of pure hell that took place near the City of Wiborg on the Karelian Isthmus in Finland. The pure hell caused by four million Soviets attacking 250,000 Finlanders. But Between June 23 and July 6, 1944 my regiment of 3,000 went into battle and only 288 came out alive, me with seventy one holes caused by shrapnel, stones, wood and dirt. I never knew just when I was wounded. Those seventy one holes in my back, from my ankles to my neck, gave me a month's leave, part of it spent cruising with my parents in the Skerries, islets
and islands of the south coast of Finland, part in a sailboat race no one will ever forget. After my two week cruise with my parents, our local yacht club, BS, had a sailboat race. BS stands for Brando Seglare or translated, "Sailors of Island Brando". It was an active and respected sailing club, never mind what Americans think of BS. So there we were racing on Kronbergsfjarden (Crown Hill Bay) just east of the capital, Helsingfors, when a flight of Soviet bombers paid a visit. Since white triangular things obviously were military targets to the Soviet bom-
bardiers, they dropped all their bombs on the sailboat fleet. It was quite a turbulent situation and even if it was a sunny and dry day, all sailors got rather wet from the spouts created by exploding bombs. Not a single boat was hit and nobody was hurt, but nearby anti-aircraft batteries hit five Soviet bombers. The race ended then, but not because of the danger or fear, but because the bombs had killed nearly all the fish in Crown Hill Bay and since food was scarce, all the sailors became fish gatherers as the creatures floated all around. Just on my father's 43' sloop, Briseis (or Small Breeze) we had over fifty kilo-
grams of assorted fish in the cockpit and that evening every person in our communtiy had fish for dinner, fish the next day for breakfast, lunch and dinner again because such things as refrigerators and freezers were scarce. Well, anyway, now you have heard the ultimate "Fish Story" of how a sailor caught over 100 pounds of fish while sail-racing. You just need a few Soviet bombers to help you. Nils Lucander is a boat designer residing in Tacoma, WA. He has been in the vanguard of energy efficient design of hulls, keels, and rudders.
Shavings July 1993
Growing up in Ohio during the fifties and sixties, wooden boats dominated the yachting scene. Chris Crafts, Matthews, Richardsons and Lymans composed the majority of power boats, while Aldens, Lightnings, Thistles and Flying Dutchmans were the dominant sailboats. Almost everyone had a wooden boat. My family was no different, my father, "the Captain", insisted, "if God wanted fiberglass boats he would have made fiberglass trees". So our boats were of wood. First we had a Lyman, then purchased Champion Spark Plug's company boat, a 1949 fortysix foot Chris Craft and named it the "Seven Cee's" (for the seven C Larks). The boat was kept on Lake Erie at a place called Bar Harbor on Marblehead Peninsula. The summers were spent not only cruising the local islands, yes, Lake Erie has islands, but also cruising north to Lake Huron, the North Channel and The Georgian Bay. (A couple of summers I went off to camp in Maine. In my family there were no two week summer camps down the road, it was "get this kid out of here for the summer!". At camp I sailed and raced dinghies and small one-design sailboats.)
To The Captain Ed Clark After each winter the boat would be put back in the water and the annual ritual of sanding, scraping, sanding, varnishing, sanding, and painting would begin. My father was a master of starting a project, assigning us tasks, then announcing he had to "get something from the Marine store", only to return hours later when the project was done. I beginning to understand why my parents had five kids. But the hard work lead to many great adventures. And so, for me the cycle was repeated season after season until I graduated from high school. Eventually I went off to the U.S.Navy, then college, a job, marriage and a son of my own. During that time, I got away from my love for wooden boats, until they were only distant memories and dreams of the future. I had hoped that when I moved to Seattle I would get back to sailing, but once again I got wrapped up in my work.
I did manage to do some racing on "nonwood boats". Finally, I discovered the Center for Wooden Boats. Seeing the wooden boats brought memories of the past, (sanding and varnishing?) I promised I would come back and be a volunteer, but promises are easy. The catalyst came in the form of my brother, Tom. When Tom came out to visit Seattle, I played the tourist guide showing him the various sights of Seattle including the Center for Wooden Boats. I told him that one of these days I would come down and volunteer. The next thing I knew he stuck a volunteer slip in front of me and made me fill it out. The next week I was checked out by Vern and started teaching "Sail N O W ! " the following week. My eleven year old son, Wheaton lives in Denver with his mother and often comes out to visit. The highlight of his visits are when we go to the Center to sail, help out, or race in one of the
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regattas. And so, the link continues from grandfather to father to son. Last summer Wheaton took the "Sail NOW!" course and soloed in a Beetle Cat. I have never seen him so excited and confident. Since that time his grades have improved (honor student) and I have witnessed his growing maturity and self-reliance. Last Christmas, Wheaton and I went to Columbus, Ohio to see his grandparents. With photos in hand, Wheaton, his grandfather, and I looked through pictures of the Center, our sailboat trip in the San Juans', Wheaton's solo sail in the Beetle Cat, and especially,the pictures of Wheaton's Windmill which he named "Seattle Summers". My father passed away in February of this year and with him passed a link in the chain. But the memories of "the Captain" remain and when Wheaton asks about his grandfather, I will say, "lets go down to the Center and take out a real boat and I'll tell you about the time the Captain...." Ed Clark is a member of CWB's crack team of sailing instructors, and is an ardent advocate of classic wooden boat racing.
Shavings July 1993
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The Boater's Bookshelf
Setting Sail with Aubrey and Maturin Chas Dowd In 1938, on the eve of World War II, C . S . Forester created Horatio Hornblower, a courageous, resourceful British sea-captain whose exploits in the Napoleonic Wars were intended to fan the U.K.s fighting spirit. Popular success was immediate, and Forester added to his creation as the dictates of the war required. In 1945, during the WWII alliance with Russia, Hornblower was promoted to commodore and involved in combined operations with the Russians in the Baltic. Later, when peace set in, Forester introduced an earlier Hornblower as an enterprising third lieutenant, managing both superiors and Spanish soldiers on the Main. Late in the series, the chrysalis Hornblower appears as a lowly mid.
The main actor, Lucky Jack Aubrey, is open, expansive, and filled with lively animal spirits. He's described in one place as of "a sanguine temperament; he liked most people and he was surprised when they did not like him," a much more pleasant character to read about than the reserved and unapproachable Hornblower, he loves puns, clenches, and bad jokes,"gaining more enjoyment out of less wit than any man I've ever seen," says a shipmate. He is, of course, brave as a lion, but then he's surrounded by so many courageous shipmates that his bravery is only usual. And though the loneliness of command- a favorite theme of Forester's - is very much with him, O'Brian gives Aubrey associates to socialize with, subordinates to teach, There have been at least three at- and a whole cast of shipmates - some of tempts to duplicate the Hornblower saga, them right awkward buggers - who folfollowing an officer's rise from snotty low him from command to command. to Star and Garter. Alexander Kent's He has two great defining characRichard Bolitho series wore thin pretty teristics- a love for music and incredible quick and a mean-spirited series star- seamanship. When Forester made ring someone named Rage and Hornblower tone-deaf, he only created a unmourned in the pure action genre. physical quirk. Aubrey's love of music Bernard Cornwell tried much the same and his carefully-described duets with thing for the infantry that Forester did Dr. Maturin reveal the harmony of his for the navy with Rifleman named being. Jack's devotion to music is a sign Sharpe. The failure of these attempts that he is "all of a piece." Out of many have been because they have clung so conflicting elements, Jack Aubrey is tightly to the Hornblower model that shown to be made into a single, unified they verged on plagiarism. character. Patrick O'Brian and his Aubrey/ Maturin novels use the same narrative device, but with an exhilarating difference. O'Brian has created engaging, three-dimensional characters, full of life, enthusiasm, and very understandable human motives, in place of one solitary, insecure officer. This new series has crossed Forester's hawse, clawed him cruelly, put three broadsides into him in five minutes, and is currently off his quarter, mauling him with carronades. Here is a set of novels that easily out-Hornblowers Hornblower, with better sea-fights, better boat-and ship -handling, superior expositions of nautical lore and custom, and an entire cast of people to get involved with.
breaking point exactly." That's not just good seamanship, that's seamanship as an art form. There is certainly a parallel between the Aubrey involved in his music and this other, more vigorous Aubrey involved-in fact, virtually submerged, in his trade.
move away or avoid someone socially, it seems as if people worked hard at it. Again, Hornblower's personality makes Forester's job harder; it's much more enjoyable to read of friendship than it is to hear the internal monologues of someone who's afraid to make friends.
Best of all, O'Brian gives Aubrey a friend. Stephen Maturin first appears as a physician without a practice, marooned in Gibraltar by the death of a patient. His first appearance is in the stock character of the absent - minded professor, giving O'Brian an opportunity to give us a tremendous amount of information about matters maritime, disguised as explanations to Stephen.
For the avid reader, O'Brian has a wonderful ear for language. His characters speak the speech of their time, and a wonderful speech it was, filled with slang, cant, and curious syntax. In maritime jargon, he has no equal. He even comes up with "dyce," as a helm command: "Keep her dyce now, d'you hear?" So far, I've been unable to find it in any of my maritime dictionaries or reference books. O'Brian doesn't save the language for direct quotes but uses it throughout the narrative. "The daughter of the horse-leech was moderation made flesh compared to Captain Aubrey let loose in the Tom Tiddler's ground [of the Navy Yard], "is a pretty typical example.
When he becomes a naval surgeon, he forms a bridge between Jack and his officers and often, between Jack and the lower deck. As a literary device, Maturin is the New Man, the rationalist, the measurer, the analyst; the perfect balance to Jack Aubrey, the deep-dyed Tory, ally of tradition, and a copper-bottomed romantic. But by the third novel, Maturin has become as important to the series as Jack, adding to his role as cellist to Jack's fiddle the role of world-renowned natural philosopher, enthusiast for Irish and Catalan Independence, thwarted lover, and intelligence agent. His latter occupation gives the author a chance to combine the historical sea novel with And then there's the seamanship. the espionage novel, a particularly fruitWe know Hornblower was a good sea- ful alliance. In fact, one entire book is man because Forester tells us so. But concerned with Stephen's activities bearleading a double agent and a goodly part O'Brian shows us Aubrey in action: "For a glass or more the watch on deckof another show him in the U.S., spreadhad been waiting for the order to lay ing disinformation within its infant esaloft and reduce sail before the Lord pionage services. reduced it Himself: yet still the order Moreover, the relations between did not come. Jack wanted every last Jack and Stephen give O'Brian a chance mile out of this splendid day's run; andto show what friendship was like. Toin any case the frigate's tearing pace, day, home and family have major imthe shrill song of her rigging, her noble portance, but in Hanoverian England, running lift and plunge filled him with very much a man's world, friendship delight, a vivid ecstasy that he imagined was the center of man's social orbit. to be private but that shone upon his People were more settled in one place face... Completely identified with the then, so often friendships were life-long ship he was on the quarterdeck, yet at and might even span generations. It was the same time he was on the straining no less difficult being a friend back then, studdingsail-boom, gauging the but because you were often unable to
And he isn't adverse to little flights of literary fancy. In one place, he uses the example of a sloth brought aboard by Maturin to give an idea of what the sailors had to endure,"It was perfectly adapted for life at sea; it was uncomplaining; it required no fresh air; it throve in a damp, confined atmosphere; it could sleep in any circumstances; it was tenacious of life; it put up with any hardship." It's a dense style, rich in exotic punctuation. I find it charming. A l l the books in the series are interesting, though there is a somewhat arid stretch in the center few. Best are Mater and Commander. Post Captain. H.M.S. Surprise-named for a ship that becomes a character herself in several of the books, Desolation Island - which contains an appalling running sea battle in the high south latitudes - and Letter of Marque. Of course those are only may favorites. I urge you to look into the whole series and find your own. Chas Dowd has contributed to Shavings for 10 years, and is a professional writer for the Boeing Corporation.
Shavings July 1993
Micro Mania
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Bernie Wolfard outing, my wife went below and took a two hour nap while I sailed up the Columbia. When she woke up, all she could do was comment on how much room there was and how comforting the water slapping against the hull is while under way. Coming about can be described as majestic. With her full-length keel, Micro doesn't pirouette like a 16 foot Centerboarder - she carves through the eye of the wind like a 40-foot yacht. Her jib headed cat yawl rig, with sprit booms, is easy to handle by one person from the cockpit.
After the dreadful sound of the crash of my home built ultralight airplane, the ensuing moments seemed unusually quiet. I looked at my contorted legs and thought, "I wonder if drowning hurts as bad as crashing." I had lots of experience crashing, having been paralyzed from the waist down and now use a wheelchair for mobility because of a hang gliding accident in Ecuadorian Andes in 1977. Suddenly, building a boat seemed like a good idea. I figured it couldn't be any more difficult than building an airplane, maybe even easier. Bolstered by my naivety, I started to explore what was available in the world of home-built boats. Almost everything I read contained mystical words like lofting, jigs and lapstrakes. I didn't have a loft, couldn't jig and didn't want strakes, whatever they were, in my lap. I just wanted to build a boat, not learn a new language.
One of Micro's nicest features is that she is self-steering with the wind anywhere before the beam. One of my favorite tricks is to trim Micro for selfsteering then go below and peek out the portlights. When I see another boat come over to see if my boat is a runaway, I come slowly up on deck to ask them how things are going. There is no other small cruiser I know of that you would want to try this with, without expensive self steering gear.
Plans for the boat that would get my creative juices going and start me daydreaming about sailing, as well as motivated enough to finish the project, appeared to become more and more elusive. I bought several plans from well known mail order boat plans supermarkets, but they seemed overly complicated or called for more expensive doodads that I could afford. Then I noticed an ad for plans for a "cute" little sailboat called Micro. The ad said the boat was designed by some guy named Bolger, and I vaguely remembered there was something about boat "cartoons" by Bolger in the same magazine (the late lamented Small Boat Journal). The ad also said something about "instant type construction" (just add water?). The boat was unusual enough that I sent away some hard-earned money to what was then La Rowe Boat Plans (now Common Sense Designs).
my shop for a week and the boat would service business, and he delivers true build itself. value for the dollar. I didn't know Bolger from Adam, The only real problem I had was that and La Rowe's enthusiasm was fun but my shop was 16 by 10 feet with 1 1/2 not contagious. However, building Mi- foot wide work bench along one of the cro seemed so doable I decided to go long sides. Micro is 15 foot 6 inches ahead with the project. In November of long and 6 feet 6 inches wide. In my 1984, I started building, at a leisurely wheelchair, I need at least 2 feet to get pace on weekends and after work. Eight around. Building a boat in a bottle months and a few dollars later, I put the couldn't be a bigger challenge. Fortufinished Micro in the Columbia River. nately, help in building a boat was much The building turned out to be even easier easier to get than help building an airand more straightforward that I had plane. Probably more people wanted to thought. I learned a lot in the process of go sailing than wanted the same obligabuilding , not only about boat building tion from me to go flying. With my but about Phil Bolger and Elrow La flying record, this isn't too hard to unRowe. derstand.
What I got back was unlike any plans set I had ever seen. There was a lot of printed material by La Rowe, who was not overly modest about the plans he was selling. There was a numbered step-by-step guide to building the boat, which coincided with numbers on the plans. Then there were the plans themselves. They showed a little boat that had so few parts and seemed so easy to put together that all I needed do is buy some wood and leave it with the plans in
Bolger's Micro is the embodiment of Frank Lloyd Wright's mentor Louis Sullivan's statement that form follows function. Everything in Micro has a purpose and there is nothing that isn't necessary for the finished boat to accomplish its design objectives. La Rowe was encouraging, helpful and very responsive throughout the building process, answering letters and putting out an informative newsletter on Micro and other Bolger designs. Plans selling is a
How does Micro sail? Very well indeed! When building Micro, you start to feel that with all of its interior space, cockpit room and sprawling out comfort, you would be happy if it can only sail well enough to stay out of its own way. It is very gratifying when you first sail away from the dock to find Micro is no sea slug. In fact, she is more than a little spirited. As you sail away, the dock gets smaller in a hurry, She is also very comfortable to sail. On our first
Micro has all the fundamentals for cruising. These include being self-righting, being watertight in a knock down, having a rig that can stand up to a wide range of conditions and with enough room to accommodate two people and supplies. I have single handed her on three and five-day trips and have gone with my wife on several more. I find I have always liked the boat as much on the return trip as when I left. The only thing I don't much like about Micro is that she outclasses any other pocket cruiser I have seen by a wide margin. Therefore, racing has not been much of a challenge. Centerboarders don't seem to like the conditions I can sail in, and taking on much bigger boats is fun but can create hard feelings if I do too well. The only way I see out of this dilemma is for enough enterprising backyard boat builders to get their Micros into the water so we can have some class competition. Because of her virtues, I don't think I will have to wait too long. Bernie Wolfard believes in Phil Bolger's designs. No kidding! Bernie, the irresistible pixie of simple, functional boats, owns Common Sense Designs, in Beaverton, OR.
Shavings July 1993
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items. Bechervaise, writing about 1820, said that "Thursday, making and mending clothes occupies the whole day, when Jack has a fair opportunity...of examining his ditty bag and having a view of all the little presents he had from his friends or sweethearts ere he left home." Other common items in the ditty bag were a marlinspike, a fid, a palm and needles, a bullock's horn filled with grease, and sundry other articles to make work easier.
The Sailor's Traditional Ditty Bag & Ditty Box An Overview of Their History & Make-Up Louie Bartos John Rogers in Original Sea Terms calls a ditty Bag "A small bag in which a sailor keeps tools and equipment, also personal articles." But what is a ditty bag and how did it evolve? There are innumerable variations of the ditty bag; some are very intricate but most are simple and functional. They will always have one common purpose: to hold the sailor's personal possessions and tools of the trade. The ditty bag has a long history closely tied to traditional maritime life. We know a fair amount about its use and construction, but its origin is lost to history. The ditty bag was the first project for an apprentice sailmaker or seaman. According to William Mcleod's Canvas Work, "making a bag is good practice for other jobs...", and, "Among the 'Old Timers' there is a tradition that a 'proper sailor's bag' must contain five flat seams, the bottom also being put in with a flat seam." Making a ditty bag taught the novice about seams, making twine grommets, and sewing eyelets, all valuable skills aboard a sailing ship. When completed, a ditty bag was a companion to the sailor's sea bag or sea chest, and hung from a hammock ring, a hook, or
peg next to their bunks in the forecastle. Ditty bags varied in size, quality, and intricacy, however, the average bag was cylindrical, had a diameter of 6 to 7 inches, and length of 14 inches. A lanyard rope handle was attached to the top, and could both pull the bag closed, and serve as a convenient handle for carrying and hanging the bag. The legs of the lanyard would come to several eyelets along the top edge of the bag. Lanyards varied a great deal, not only in length, but in style as well. The average length was about 18 inches, with each leg one half to two thirds the circumference of the bag. The fancy work on the lanyard handle is six to eight inches long. The lanyard was fastened to four to twelve hand sewn eyelets, sewn around hand layed marlin grommets. The bags were made of No. 12 duck canvas or lighter. Another classic design can be seen in Hervey Garrett Smith's Marlinspike Sailor, "ditty bags were from 6 to 8 inches in diameter and 12 to 15 inches deep, generally with a simple round bottom. Around the top were 4 to 8 holes, hand worked into which the legs of the lanyard were spliced. The lanyards were often quite elaborate affairs,
depending on the skill and fancy of the sailor." The common ditty bag was flat bottomed, but there are some examples of bags made with round or bowl shaped bottoms. One in particular was made of four panels, five inches wide and twelve inches deep. The four longitudinal panels seams were sewn together with a black cloth piping. The bottom, a continuation of the side panels, was cut at approximately one half inch larger than half the diameter. The pieces were then cut into slightly curved gores that when sewn together with piping formed a bowl shaped bottom. There were ten lanyard legs, fastened to one quarter inch (outside diameter) eyelets that were sewn into a one and one half inch tabling.
In 1867, Admiral Smyth, in his Sailor's Word Book, said that the ditty bag got its name from the word "Dittis" or Manchester stuff, from which it was once made. In 1923 the Mariners Mirror wrote on the origin of the bag and the derivation of the word "ditty". While the history is ambiguous, The Mirror pursued the word "Dight", which means to repair, put to rights, put to order. The latest instance of its use in general speech is put at 1580, however, dialects carried it as late as 1877. Another possible derivation are the Scottish words "dudds, duddies, or duiddies" meaning clothing, especially working clothes. The ditty box was similar in concept to the ditty bag but held a slightly different assortment of valuables, such as letters from home, photographs, etc. In 1872 Dr. Gihon of the U.S. Navy, advised that ditty boxes should replace ditty bags. The bags would become filthy when unwashed, and he believed boxes were easier to clean. Boxes also had the added advantage of doubling as a writing desk. The U.S. Navy issued 6 x 6 x 12 inch white wooden boxes to its sailors before World War I. They had ink wells, and pencil holders built in, and in turn were stowed in specially built storage shelves. Ditty boxes also varied in size, shape and style. Some resembled miniature sea chests, some were short and round and some were tall and round. The most common shape is a small round box with a fitted lid. The Peabody Museum of Salem, Massachusetts has the most exquisite box I have seen. It is approximately 5 inches in diameter, three inches deep, and it is made of baleen. It contains original sewing items and scraps of cloth. There is no question that the ditty box was used by sailors on the early whaling ships that plied the icy waters of the far north, and they seem to have given ideas to the local Eskimo fisherman, because the Eskimos also use a small sewing box they called "wives".
The contents of a ditty bag were similar to those of a sewing basket of a frugal housewife, with the exception of seagoing paraphernalia, thence the name Louie Bartos is a retired engineer "housewife". In the Royal Navy they and traditional sailmaking expert living contained beeswax, needles, buttons, in Ketchikan, Alaska. He would like to pins, white tape, Dutch tape, a thimble, thank the staffs at the Peabody Museum whitened brown thread, black thread, of Salem, Mystic Seaport Library, San worsted blue and scraps of light duck, Francisco Maritime Museum Library, all this was in a small wooden box, or and many old sailors and sailmakers for rolled in cloth, tied and carried inside their help in his ongoing research on the ditty bag along with other personal sailmaking.
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The New Vikings Leif Karlsen My wife Jane and I were recently invited by Sigurd Bjorkedal and his sons to see the launching of their new Viking Knarr in western Norway. We flew to Norway, and watched and participated in some living history. On Saturday morning, May 8, the Vikings once again entered the fjords of Norway. The weather was as clear as any day in the first millennium, when the men of the North roamed the World. The proud ship was hauled out of the boat house in the mountain valley, by the traditional Norwegian Diesel, and the famous "Norwegian Steam", about 50 strong people. Captain Ragnar Thorseth directed the effort and later would have the privilege of manning the steering oar. Records show that the builder's ancestors were building boats in this area since the 16th century. The village is located several miles from the sea so all the boats had to be pulled by men and horses down the mountain to the water. Bjorkedal is the only place that trees can be found tall and straight enough to build the bigger ships. The staff of the Sunmore Museum, which commissioned the ship, turned out for the launching in colorful Medieval garb. They also held a traditional ceremony complete with speeches, a brass band, home brewed beer poured into beer steins, and a leg of smoked reindeer, which was eaten with the knives everyone wore on their belts. After the launching we danced until the light of dawn.
The ship is a replica of a deep sea trader, Skuldelev I, one of five viking ships excavated from Skuldelv harbor, Roskilde Fjord, in Denmark. The ships were sunk deliberately to block the narrow channel, and protect the town of Roskilde. Roskilde was the sight of the burial ground for Danish Royalty and the home of the Viking Kings. The four
other ships recovered were; a warship, a longship, a small ferry, and a coastal trader. The deep sea trader was the backbone of the Viking fleet because of its size and range.
replica, the Saga Siglar, that sailed around the world, then went down in a violent storm in the Mediterranean last year.
Archaeologists have determined that Leif K. Karlsen is a retired merthe ancient ship was built in the same chant marine officer and now an ardent area of Norway as the modern replica. volunteer at the Center for Wooden The new ship is identical to another Boats.
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Looking For The Wilderness Long ago, watching the launch of our 18-foot rowing boat, Deborah and I had visions of exploring remote, deserted beaches, rowing past looming rocks covered with wildlife, or sitting in an empty cove, watching the sunset. Wiser rowers shook their heads. Any wilderness within reach of a rowing boat had already become a big boat destination. Wilderness had moved on, out of striking distance for weekend rowers. Job was known for comforters like these. Over the intervening years, we've found these doomsayers right in the main, but over-pessimistic in the particular. Finding wilderness can depend on the volume of wilderness you need. It's a matter of definition... Over the years, Deborah and I have come to define wilderness as no buildings in view and no other people in sight or hearing. This more commodious definition has allowed us to find several wild spaces just by going where big boaters can't - or won't. We've also learned that one way to find an unpeopled wilderness is to go off-season. We took The Lady Deb to Vancouver Island late in September and stayed at Sproat Lake. Sproat is actually two lakes, joined by a small passage dotted with islands. The shoreline of one lake is lined with cabins and small resorts while the shoreline of the other is empty and stretches up into a provincial park. This arrangement presented the best of both worlds. We could row from our cabin to the Fish and Duck Pub for a Guinness and a pasty or go the other way and pull into a lake as big as Lake Washington without a boat or a person in it. However, signs along the bank indicated that during high summer the whole empty blue expanse, wrapped in
Chas Dowd mountains, would have been filled with water skiers. In another carefully-scheduled wilderness experience we rowed across Strathcona's Upper Buttle Lake to Phillips Creek and found a gin-clear stream flowing out of the tall uncut without a single footprint on the bank. The water was so limpid that my photo of the boat pulled up on the bank looks like a magic trick — an 18-foot wherry stuck in a cliff edge by its forefoot with 17 feet jutting out unsupported in mid-air. Both going and coming, we saw nothing but forest and completely empty water. No people, no fishing boats, not even a kayaker. But it was Thursday, according to statistics the day of the week when the highest proportion of people make it to work. Or you can get lucky... Two years ago, we discovered a real wilderness within four hours drive of Seattle. There, on a salt-water bay, a conservation group has purchased a wild river. Nobody has farmed or built on its margins and the last logging was done by hand so long ago that the forest has naturally regrown. Starting at the river's mouth, one of only five undredged, unrip-rapped, uninhabited estuaries left on the west coast, this conservation group preserved steadily upstream, first saving the riverine plain and eventually the hills that are the river's watershed. The charts and maps showed two possible launch sites, one twelve miles from where the river flowed into the bay, one across the bay in a cove. Between both ramps and our goal, the chart read "strong tidal currents".
Twelve miles fully against the tide both ways made the first option impossible and when we visited the other location, the harbormaster didn't know anything about any launch ramp. We were about to write the whole venture off as a missed opportunity when I noticed some rusty boat trailers parked in a nearby field. The unmarked, anonymous ramp hidden on the far side of the trailers was a classic unsurfaced vehicle trap — mud, sand, and precious little beach gravel stretching into a murky brown cove. It looked like a cash cow for the local towing company. "They probably have the maintenance contract," I remember thinking as I petulantly kicked at the slimy mud. It was a hard, vicious kick, filled with unexpressed spleen, and it uncovered beneath the mud a lovely ramp of concrete cross-ties, all nicely textured and supported by two rows of railroad track. Looking around the harbor, I suddenly realized it held only working boats for the local oyster industry. Could it be that these hard-working watermen concealed the whereabouts and quality of this fine boat launch to discourage private small craft that could disturb their oyster reefs? Once we launched, quite undiscouraged, the "strong tidal currents" made it one stroke for our destination and one stroke for the tide for an hour and a half. The day was grey and overcast and the wind was chilly and from dead ahead, but as we rounded the point that marks the south border of the river mouth, we came into a pleasant lee. Water reeds walked off the edge of the mudbanks into the stream and greater yellowlegs stalked among them. Flat
islands made a delta of narrow waterways flanking either side of the main outflow and dowitchers stood in the shallows, doing their sewing-machine imitations in search of food. A small flock of sanderlings darted back and forth in a dense cloud. Except for a rickety-looking white wooden bridge across the narrow river mouth, there was no sign of human activity. Under the bridge and well into the river, wide reed plains stretched to the base of the low banks. The river turned in great oxbows. A kingfisher ratcheted past. High standing snags were pocked with pileated woodpecker holes and in one place, scarred by bear claws. At the outside of the bends the river slid sideways to run along the tree-lined bank, taking us past tall stands of pine, fir, and hemlock, mixed with spruce, yew and cedar. Willows and alders stood in pocket bogs, up to their knees in salal and Oregon grape. Even to someone whose plant identification is uncertain, this was different from the Weyerhaeuser tree farms we'd driven through on the way here-ranks and ranks of Douglas Fir planted at so many "stems" an acre. This was the ancient forest. The river began to narrow. The reed plains disappeared and the sun came out. I nosed the bow into the bank and sitting there, the water drops falling from our oars seemed so loud that we expected echoes. The sun was burning down now, and ahead the river flowed out of a cleft where the bankside trees mingled their branches across the stream. There wasn't an insect or bird sound. No traffic. No airplanes, chainsaws, weed whackers, barking dogs, or distant sirens. Not even any purling water. It was so quiet, we could hear our clothes stretch as we breathed. No place we looked was there a sign that human beings were even on the planet. The silence sank into our bones. We sat there until a shift in the stem told us the tide had turned. Pushing back into the current, we drifted for a while, until the sun's decline reminded us we had a goodly row home. Reluctantly, we took up our stroke and started the long pull back into the tag end of the twentieth century. Chas Dowd's favorite boat is his Piscataqua River Wherry, "Lady Deb ". Chas is a connoisseur of craftsmanship in boats, words, beer, and Japanese prints.
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Monthly Calender Of Events June 18 Friday
CWB MONTHLY SPEAKER 8 p.m. Boathouse
A talk on the current status and plans for O D Y S S E Y , a Contemporary Maritime Museum, on Seattle's Central Waterfront. Scott Powell, Project Director will give us an update, and show a conceptual model of the museum and education center. This 40,000 sq. ft. facility will be the centerpiece of major waterfront revitalization around Pier 66.
July 3 Saturday
CLASSIC YACHT RACE
A classic yacht race open to all wooden boats. The General Handicap System allows every boat to race against a computerized performance program. Every participant receives a plaque and trophies will be awarded for first, second, and third place. Write or Call the Center for Wooden Boats for a registration and information packet.
July 3-5 Saturday, Sunday, and Monday 17th ANNUAL LAKE UNION WOODEN BOAT FESTIVAL The annual panorama of wooden boats, maritime skills demonstrations. Quick and Daring Contest, Toy Boatbuilding, Classic Yacht Race, Auction, and lots of warmth, fun, friendship, and shared know-how. $2 suggested donation- $3 for families $1 for Seniors and Students Just Don't miss it.
July 4 Sunday 17th ANNUAL CWB AUCTION & BBQ DINNER
6:30 FIREWORKS
This year's Auction will be one of Seattle's Best! In addition to the excitement of a hot night of bidding, guests will be served dinner and following the auction - ring side seats to Seattle's July 4th Fireworks! We are still looking for auction items and services to accompany a Lifetime Subscription to Wooden Boat Magazine, and a signed Photo of the Cheer's Gang. If you have any great ideas please call the Center for Wooden Boats. Don't miss out on the fun! There are only 150 available seats. Call to reserve seats for you and some friends!
July 16 Friday
CWB MONTHLY SPEAKER 8 p.m. Boathouse
"Full and By", a presentation by Warren Scholl on a lifetime of boating experiences. Warren has sailed on or with the legendary Northwest boats and skippers. His session will include yams, poems, tricky knots, and tales of memories, including passages on dinghies, a twelve-metre, and naval craft in WWII.
July 30 (5th Friday, a one time change) 8 p.m. Boathouse CWB SPECIAL SPEAKER Doug Wilmot helped create a living museum of Boats and Boat Building on the coast of Norway. The yard has become a mecca for classic boats, especially Northern European work boats. He will discuss the evolution of his museum and the wonderful exhibits that have found their way to his shop. $3.00 Entry Donation.
September 17 Friday CWB MONTHLY SPEAKER 8 p.m. Boathouse Denny Moore will discuss sailing around the world with his wife in his 50' square sail ketch, Prospector, a Concordia design featured in Roger Taylor's Good Boats. Mr. Moore has written a wonderful book on his adventure, Gentlemen Never Sail to Weather. Contact the Center for Wooden Boats for more information.
October 3 Sunday
WOODIE ONE-DESIGN REGATTA
This race is open to all wooden boats. Three or more of a class will have a fleet race, two will have a match-race and all single entries will race in an "open" class. Registration is due by September 25,1993. Contact the Center for Wooden Boats for Registration Packet. Pot Luck dinner will be held following the race. $15 Registration fee $ 5 Member Registration
December 26 Sunday Merry Christmas FROSTBITE REGATTA The Frostbite Regatta features both single and double-handed classes. Registration ($2 per skipper) is from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Boathouse. Qualifying and semifinal heats begin at 1 p.m. and the Big Finals start at 2:30 p.m. Semi-finalists qualify for the Mid Winter Regatta in February. Yet another Pot Luck dinner will be held following the race.
I'll Build a Ship for Thee W.S. Scholl I'll build a ship for thee and deck her out like a Christmas tree Of teak and oak and spruce and pine with a brilliant turquoise waterline; Brightwork varnished for all to see, rich Honduras Mahogany; Bagak, luan, yew and fir, nothing will be too good for her; Ironbark for guards and trim and boarding ladder so we can swim; Stainless steel and fiberglass and an inlaid wheel to give her class. With copper and bronze and bright cast brass. Stout carved bitts and gleaming glass, She'll leave a wake as smooth and fine As a striping brush in turpentine. She'll take kindly to sea, a salty home for you and me. Her cabins will hold legions of things Our years of endless drifting brings; Teak what-not shelves, a commodious hold, Driftwood treasures, pearls and gold; And dawns and sunsets will fire and gleam as doors to our universe And it will seem that all that's dear, that's dear to us Is here or there and we'll not fuss; When the wind is high we'll batten down, Escaping urbanites left in town. We'll eat like kings when tides run out (enjoying brandy extra stout) Since oceans of life are home at sea, we've natures mother for company. Flying fish on deck in the early dawn like mana from heaven they skip and fawn. Essence of kelp and turtle steak, halibut cheeks, succulent hake; Seaweed salads in soya sauce; aboriginal feasts 'neath the southern cross. Our hibachi kamado will burn just fine with kukui nut branches And you'll be mine and I'll be yours upon our ship and we'll be hers; Slogging it out or rolling home we'll steer a course that is ours alone; And even the seasons will pause in time as the chronometers tick and the hours chime; We'll cross meridians, set date lines; the northern lights or tropic climes Will landfalls be; latitudes and platitudes get lost at sea. We'll be gnarled and healthy like cod liver oil, Our wake will foam and froth and boil; While we split watches and navigate, The sleepless sea cradles our fate; If life grows dreary for you and me, LET'S SHUCK IT ALL AND GO TO SEA! Warren Scholl has been part of the Seattle yachting scene -crewing, skippering, repairing, rerigging, and refinishing - since it all began. His thoughts and words and cadence are real and true as an eagle's dive for a salmon in Desolation Sound.
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Marine Skills Workshops All year 'round (Classes Every Day!) LEARN TO "SAIL NOW!"
July 10 and 11 Saturday and Sunday LOFTING WORKSHOP
11 & 1:30 Saturday and Sunday 5:30 p.m. Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday C W B Boathouse Fee: $125 per person (includes a one-year C W B membership) Students will learn to sail small classic craft in one session of classroom work and four (or more) sessions of hands-on instruction in our small boats. Students will graduate when able to sail a variety of keel, centerboard, sloop and catboats by instinct. You may begin any Saturday, space permitting. Please call ahead for reservations. For the student who is only free on weekdays, or prefers to have oneon-one instruction, we continue to offer individual lessons ($15) on Weekdays. Call for an appointment.
8:30 a.m. - 5:30 p.m. each day C W B Boathouse Fee: $115/$125 Instructor: Eric Hvalsoe Students will loft a classic boat from a table of offsets. This workshop will enable students to read plans and understand the arcane mysteries of bevels, rabbet lines, deductions and construction drawings. This class is highly recommended as a prerequisite for our boatbuilding workshops. Limited to 6 students.
ADVANCED SAILING SEMINARS Our Advanced Sailing Seminars are scheduled frequently all summer long. They usually include an overnight, a race and or some navigation, and cruising techniques. These classes are open to all graduates of Sail N O W ! and sailors with basic skills. Contact the Center for Wooden Boats to sign up for the next available seminar.
June 13 Sunday SAIL AWAY CHALLENGE
Fee: $60 2 days 9:30 a.m. - 3:00 p.m., C W B $30 1 day A learn-to-sail clinic for people with disabilities. Volunteer instructors from Footloose Sailing Association and the Center for Wooden Boats will teach the basics of Sailing. The Sunday afternoon session will be a race in which the participants will test their skills. There will be some boats with adapted seats which will allow individuals with limited mobility control of the boat. For more information: Ron Singleton - 528-0362
June 25-27 Friday-Sunday HEALTH CARE AFLOAT
Fee: $150/$165 7- 10 pm Friday materials incl. 8- 5 pm Saturday 8-4 pm Sunday C W B Boathouse Instructor. Dr. Randal Franke. The Center for Wooden Boats is introducing a new and very exciting course on Medicine at Sea. The course covers a number of topics including the evaluation and management of common health emergencies, medical provisioning and voyage preparation. Several practical skill sessions are scheduled. Students will practice taking vital signs, suturing, administering injections, bandaging and splinting.
July 17 and 18th Saturday & Sunday SAND CASTING AND FOUNDRY TECHNIQUES
Fee: $40/$50
10 a.m. - 4 p.m. C W B Boathouse and Northwest Seaport Instructor: Prof. Paul Ford Basic foundry know-how will be covered in the first session. Students will cast simple forms. The second session will involve more complex casting. Students will also learn how to build a cheap, but effective foundry. Limited to 12 students.
July 17-25 Saturday through Sunday LAPSTRAKE WORKSHOP
Fee. $550/$600 8:30 a.m. - 5:30 p.m. each day C W B Boatshop Instructor. Eric Hvalsoe The instructor has had extensive experience in building and teaching traditional wood boat construction. The class will build a 14" Acme skiff from the drafting board of Bob Baker. The classic upright stem and wineglass transom involve the challenges of traditional boat building on a manageable scale. The completed boat will be launched Sunday afternoon, July 25. Basic woodworking skills are required. Maximum 7 students
July 26-29 Monday through Thursday THE ART OF MARINE SURVEY The annual Art of Marine Survey seminar will be held July 26 through the 29th, 1993 at the Center for Wooden Boats. The course will be taught by Lee Ehrheart, of Havorn Marine Services. For anyone seriously considering buying a boat this course would be a valuable investment. Learn how to properly assess the value of a wooden boat. The price for this course will be $275.00. For more information contact Lee Ehrheart at (206) 789-7043 or call the Center for Wooden Boats.
August 14 and 15 Saturday and Sunday SAIL AWAY CHALLENGE
Fee: $60 2 days
10:00 a.m. -3:00 p.m., C W B $30 1 day A learn-to-sail clinic for people with disabilities. Volunteer instructors from Footloose Sailing Association and the Center for Wooden Boats will teach the basics of Sailing. The Sunday afternoon session will be a race in which the participants will test their skills. There will be some boats with adapted seats which will allow individuals with limited mobility control of the boat. For more information: Ron Singleton - 528-0362
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Classifieds First two weekends in August take all three as a package A U G U S T W O O D W O R K I N G WORKSHOP P A C K A G E August 14 BASIC W O O D W O R K I N G
The Classified Ads are available, free of charge to CWB members. Please contact Roger at CWB if you would like an ad to appear in Shavings or Sawdust.
Saturday 8:00 - 5:00
FOR SALE
Instructor: Charlie Mastro
August 15 Sunday 8:00-5:00
P L A N E M A K I N G & CHISEL USE Instructor: Charlie Mastro
August 21-22 8:00-5:00 C W B
OARMAKING Instructor: Rich Kolin
September 25 (Saturday) SAIL DESIGN, MAKING, AND REPAIR! 9:00 - 4:00 pm, C W B and Buchan Sail loft Instructor: Robert MacLean Bob MacLean has one of the more successful sail lofts in Seattle and has extensive experience in sailmaking and repair. His shop also has one of the best inventories of sail cloth in the area. The courses will cover the basics of sail shape, design and performance, in the morning. The afternoon session will move to the loft, where students will learn some invaluable secrets of sail building and repair through hands on practice.
October 2-10 Saturday through Sunday CARVEL WORKSHOP
Fee: $550/$600 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. each day C W B Boatshop Instructor: Eric Dow The instructor is a Brooklin, Maine, boat builder with extensive experience in building traditional wooden boats and teaching others how to do so too. The class will build a carvel planked dinghy of classic design, incorporating all the challenges of traditional boat building but on a manageable scale. The completed boat will be launched on Sunday afternoon, October 10. Basic woodworking skills required; class limited to 7 students. NOTE: Fees indicate member/non-member costs. A $100 non-refundable deposit is required with registration for all boat building workshops, with the balance payable one week prior to the workshop. Pre-payment in full will insure your place in all other workshops.
20ft Lapstrake Mermaid Class Sloop. Built in Denmark in 1956 and is similar to a Folkboat. There are two mains, one jib, and a seagull outboard included. $2000 O B O . Andy or Erica Ericson (206) 282-2788 1/3 h.p. Baldor Bench Model Grinder/Buffer. $50. S T U 525-9928 16' Great Pelican Sailboat 80% Completed. Includes new Sails, spars, misc. hardware and most materials needed to finish. Occume fly/ epoxy must sell. Priced well below materials cost. $2500/O.B.O. Ralph Merriman 776-0661 or 545-5076
WANTED Looking for a crew to work out a partnership in the restoration of a 40ft Owens Cutter Zingara a local boat since new 1945. Walt Marshall 362-6984. Seeking four retirees to explore sharing ownership & use of a classic cruiser Al Arnason (206) 821-5513 12" Band Saw, older model Delta or Craftsman. Repairable O K . Also Needed Quality Miter Box S T U 525-9928 Model sailing boats sloop or Ketch style- old or new. 2 feet to 8 feet long with sails. Also would like to commission someone to build me three, seven or eight foot sail boats models. Phone- Mary Jasper 808 822 1703 or write to 2752 Nokekula Cr. Lihue, HI 96766 Waterfront Lawn Near Madrona/Leshi/Montlake I have a 27' racing shell that I would like to leave near the water so I can row every day. Emilie 322-8242 Seagull outboard 3-3' HP. Robert Cox (510)373-9684 (Fx) 373-7905 12' Porta-Boat. Bob Hay ward (206) 363-4236 Service Wanted: Handyperson to assist with maintaining a 15' class dinghy at Leshi. Small projects at mutually agreeable times, such as light carpentry on the dock, occasional fiberglass work, fiddling with the rigging, etc. Corbin Houchins, day 343-9597, eve. 725-2440, messages 948-9353.
OTHER COURSES WE M A Y OFFER IN T H E F U T U R E (not yet scheduled) The Salish People and Their Skills, A cruise aboard "Zodiac", Half hull models, Model Ship making, Canoe Repair and Restoration Strip Plank Kayak Building, Metallurgy, Wooden Boat Restoration, Traditional Wooden Boat Building,
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