By WBF staff As anyone with a wooden boat will tell you, owning one is like having another member of the family. A little high-maintenance, yes, but strong and beautiful, with captivating stories and the scars to go with them, not to mention the kind of charisma that would induce you to expend a nice weekend going through stacks of …
Building a batana: a symbol of Croatian heritage takes shape in Gig Harbor
Michael Vlahovich says “from design to construction, from launch to adventure, from maintenance to restoration, wooden boats are what maritime stories are made of.” A master shipwright, commercial fisherman, and Tacoma native, Mike has dedicated his career to the preservation of maritime heritage from the Chesapeake Bay to the Pacific Northwest. Now living in his father’s birth village of Sumartin, …
Announcing This Year’s Festival Headliners!
Lin Pardey A pioneer of long-distance voyaging and longtime Wooden Boat Festival icon, Lin Pardey is most certainly the real deal. Since the 1960s, Lin has accrued more than 217,000 sea miles sailing on boats ranging from 24 feet to more than 60, the majority without engines on two wooden cutters she and her husband Larry built: Serafin and Taleisin. …
Riptide
By Pete Leenhouts, owner RIPTIDE was built in 1927 by the Schertzer Brothers Boat and Machine Company, then located on the north shore of Lake Union near the foot of Stone Way in Seattle. She is planked in Port Orford cedar, copper riveted to white oak frames over an Apitong backbone with a marine plywood pilothouse and a western red …
Meet the Artist: Steven Dews
Bio Famed for his spectacular maritime paintings, Steven Dews is one of the most successful living maritime artists in the world. After graduating art school and returning to his childhood home, he turned to art to express his love for the sea. He studied photographs, reference books, model ships, and architectural drawings while producing hundreds of pencil sketches, becoming a …
Meet the Artist: Chris Witkowski
Artist Statement Two years ago, when the Wooden Boat Festival team and I were brainstorming a concept for the 2020 Festival, little did we know that the image I created would be even more perfect for this year’s Festival. With research, we knew there were female ship captains in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and we decided to …
Feeling the love
By Bruce Bateau When I pulled up to the customs dock on San Juan Island on a sunny September afternoon, I was feeling good. Over the past six weeks, I had traveled some two hundred miles down Vancouver Island, traversed five major rapids, and used mostly paper charts to do it. Now, I had completed the final major crossing of …
Port Townsend Shipwrights Co-Op Turns 40
By Andy Gale As you walk the docks at this year’s Festival, take a look at the 83-foot schooner Destiny, the 44-foot sloop Inca, and 49-foot M/V Riptide—boats repaired or retrofitted by the Port Townsend Shipwrights Co-Op. A Unique Business Model in Marine Trades In 1981, a unique business ownership model in the marine trades arose when a few shipwrights …
If Ya Ain’t Rowin’, Ya Ain’t Goin’: Teenager Tackles SEVENTY48 Solo
By Ross Anderson Sixty miles into the SEVENTY48 race, Akeyla Behrenfeld decided she was done. The 14-year-old Port Townsend middle schooler had rowed her home-built boat solo through rain, three to five-foot seas, and 20-knot headwinds. She was soaked from the salt spray, her arms aching, hands blistered. The race had been won hours earlier by veteran mariners in high-tech …
The Purpose Behind the Project: Restoring Helma
By Robert d’Arcy For me, working on classic wooden boats is about values. Good design: these vessels are drawn for seakeeping—finely tuned to their purpose and environment, highly functional, and incredibly beautiful at the same time. Fine construction: these boats had to be well-built to survive a variety of wind conditions, sea states, and weather events, both expected and unexpected. …