Suva

This year Schooner Suva celebrates its centennial anniversary by offering public sails for the first time at the Wooden Boat Festival.  We will be located at the NW Maritime Center dock just outside the festival harbor.  For tickets, please visit our website at www.schoonersuva.org. 

The Schooner Suva has been owned by the Whidbey Island Maritime Heritage Foundation (WIMHF), a nonprofit, since 2015.  She is operated and managed entirely by volunteers, including captains and crew, maintenance workers, and dockside hosts.

Suva was built in 1925 for Frank Pratt, a Massachusetts lawyer who moved to Whidbey Island in 1908.  Pratt commissioned Ted Geary, a prominent naval architect in Seattle, to design a vessel for Puget Sound waters that could be used to entertain clients and friends.  Suva was built almost entirely of old growth Burmese teak by shipbuilder Quan Lee in Hong Kong.  After being built, she was then shipped to British Columbia where her Sitka Spruce spars were stepped. 

Suva was originally designed as a gaff-rigged schooner.  Then in 1940, she was re-rigged to a staysail schooner.  And in 1960, the original Hall-Scott gas engine was replaced by a 140-horsepower Detroit Diesel 453.  An on-deck aft helm was added, as were life lines. The wood burning galley and salon stoves were replaced with diesel units.

From 1925 to 1940, Suva was anchored in Penn Cove on Whidbey Island where Pratt sailed before later gifting the boat to friend, Dietrich Schmidt (for one dollar), and later his son Alan Schmidt, who combined owned the boat for 40 years.  Suva then went to Bill Brandt of Olympia for about 25 years before returning to the North Sound/Port Townsend under the ownership of Scott Flickinger.  Lloyd Baldwin, who purchased the boat in 2009, sold the boat to the WIMHF in 2015.   Suva has always been kept in Puget Sound waters.

A nomination to place Suva on the National Register of Historic Places has recently been submitted with final listing anticipated in the coming months.