2026 Festival Harbormaster, Working from Thursday to Sunday
TLDR: There are no shortcuts! Read this whole thing before you sign up!
These wooden boats have to get stuffed into the marina somehow…
We place over 150 boats into a marina designed for 83 of them, and we place them all in one afternoon.
The Harbormaster team includes dock and line handlers, RIB boat drivers and crew, and environmental inspectors. We get all the boats in, make sure everything runs smoothly for 4 days, and then usher the boats out.
We are:
Professional, salty, respectful, adaptable and take our responsibility seriously.
You could be:
- Warmly escorting a boat into the marina
- Small boat pushing on the bow on a large schooner
- Towing a sailboat off a beach in a squall
- Working with a team to quickly and efficiently ties up boats rafted four deep
- Monitoring the marina waterways for unsafe or unsavory practices
- Line handle a boat around a tight corner while an owner frets over their varnish
- Doing anything that makes our team look good and is helpful
- Always smiling, because our job is to carry the stress so the boat owners don’t have to.
You are:
- A competent human
- Someone who enjoys working with other people
- Have time on the water doing more than swimming
- Have, or really want to learn mariner skills
- Physically capable, or at least know your own limitations
- Lead with a smile and believe in yourself (ohm…bodhi, bodhi)
- Are willing to laugh, especially at yourself. And have fun!
The Process
Anyone can sign up, but each person will be vetted for suitability. You must enter the times you can be available, but there is no automatic guarantee. We are old school analog.
If you are new, you must attend the Harbormaster Orientation on Sep 6, 2026 at the Clubhouse at Cape George, and you can attend via the interwebs if you are out of town. (More details as we get closer to the date.)
Returning Harbormasters should attend because it’s a big feed and it’s Orientation, with lots of fun people and good stories, and you should reconnect with the people you are going to labor with.
New this year: We’ve created a series of optional (but highly recommended) trainings taught by professionals and experienced volunteers. Each session is tailored specifically to Harbormaster work at the Festival.
These trainings will be offered in August and each will cover a separate salient competency.
- Communication – Date TBD in August
- VHF radio use
- Customer service
- Escalation procedures (when to hand a situation off)
- Conflict resolution
- Leadership/mentorship
- Working within a team
- Emergency Response – Date TBD in August
- MOB
- Spill Response
- Other Emergencies: weather, fire, flooding, injury
- Chain of Command
- Boat Handling – September 8 in the afternoon
- Dock & Small Boat Safety
- Boat Handling
- Towing
- Pushing/Pulling other boats
- Communication on and off a boat
- Line Handling
- Knot tying for many situations
If you’ve read all this and still want to be part of the team, sign up below and state your shift preferences.
If not, please consider other volunteer roles for the Wooden Boat Festival. All of these roles are very important and needed for the success of the Festival.
If you have any questions, keep them to yourself.
Ha! Just kidding!
Please email:
Daniel Evans, Festival Harbormaster – harbormaster@woodenboat.org.
