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Be Happy

In Festival Boats, Festival Boats 2024

BE HAPPY is a 21 foot Tolman Widebody Skiff built for fishing and overnight cruising. Built from marine plywood and encapsulated in epoxy and fiberglass she took a little more than 5 years to build. Covid slowed the build process and then there was being locked out of the shop space because the building was unsafe. BE HAPPY was finally …

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Little Bean

In Festival Boats 2024

The 400 plus pound box of wood arrived in November 2021 just in time for a long-term Covid project. My wife had just had rotator cuff surgery and our outdoor adventures were cut short, so she knew I needed a project. I had built five pygmy kayaks before but never a sailboat. From bending wood to melting lead at 600° …

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Freyja

In Festival Boats, Festival Boats 2024

Originally built by Leiter Hokkett in 1938 in Ballard, WA, Freyja is one of two Viking Class sloops designed by Charles D. Mower. Originally designed for coastal New England, there were twelve of these built on the west coast. Initially, this boat first entered our family in 1969 and was sold in 1998. After a few years without her, our …

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BISH

In Festival Boats 2024

BISH is a Murray Peterson Susan schooner. Port Orford Cedar on steam-bent white oak frames. Teak decks on laminated doug fir deck beams. Hand crank SABB lifeboat engine. All standing rigging is galvey 7×7, parcel and served. Built by Karl Bischoff in Georgetown, Seattle. It’s taken 12 years so far. For each task, I had to do research and take …

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Camas Moon

In Festival Boats 2022, Festival Boats 2023

Camas Moon is the first boat built to Tad Roberts’ new CoPogy 18 design. She is 18’ LOD, 24’ LOA, 6’6” beam, and 9” draft. She is rigged as a gaff yawl, with an off-center pivoting centerboard, and has a 6 HP outboard motor in a well. Designed as a trailerable mini-motorsailer for one or two people, she will be …

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Golden Rule

In Festival Boats, Festival Boats 2024

The Golden Rule was the very first of the environmental and peace vessels to go to sea. In 1958, a crew of anti-nuclear weapons activists set sail aboard her in an attempt to interpose themselves and the boat between the U.S. Government and its atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons in the Marshall Islands in the Pacific Ocean. At that time …

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Sunshine Special

In Festival Boats, Festival Boats 2024

Back in 1972, the boat was brought to Seattle from the Great Lakes and the Sunshine Special got her name and her first yellow stripe and she has had the yellow stripe ever since. She’s a recognizable fixture in the San Juan and Gulf Islands. 18 years ago on our maiden cruise with the boat, we ran into 2 different …

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Black Dogs

In Festival Boats, Festival Boats 2024

A Northwest built version of a William Atkins “Rescue Minor” Article by James Thomas from Small Craft Advisor Magazine For some years I’d heard stories about a boat an acquaintance of mine, Mark Nelson, a skilled carpenter and machinist had built to allow his wife Lark and he to take day trips on the Rivers and Lakes in Oregon. Knowing …

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Discovery

In Festival Boats 2021, Festival Boats 2022

Jim McCurdy had Bill Garden Design Discovery for his 40th Birthday. She was built to Yacht standards by the Vic Franck yard on Lake Union in Seattle in 1963. She is strongly built of 1 3/8″ Yellow Cedar Planking on 2 1/8′ x 2 1/8″ steamed white oak frames on 12″ centers. She still has her original 100 HP Perkins …

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Little Packet

In Festival Boats, Festival Boats 2024

Christopher Jenkes commissioned a smaller version of Lester Stone’s personal yacht, when he saw the drawings he said, “That’s a nice little packet, and the name stuck. In addition the the commissioned Little Packet, the Stone yard built a sistership launched in 1967. We are the third owners of the boat. Dick Wren bought her in 1971 and was very …