Index
Check out the Map
schedule, Maps: ...19-22
Lifetime achievement award for George Calkins ............................ 6 Festival Highlights ........................8-10 schooner Adventuress: Hands-on science, and sailing, too ....12 Women Who Have Rowed the inside Passage.................14 Festival exhibitors ...........................16 Festival sponsors ............................16 ticket info, Festival Rules ............ 18-19 Get Your Children involved! ..............24 Guide to 2008 Festival Boats ........ 26-34 Festival Faculty .......................... 36-38
Poster Conveys ‘rhythm of the Sea’ The 2008 Wooden Boat Festival poster artist is Chris Witkowski, a Michigan native who has lived 27 years in the Pacific Northwest. Sailing is one of her favorite loves and inspirations. “It seems to draw people from all walks of life, but their love of boats is a unifying factor. To an artist, they are beautiful, beautiful things,” Chris said. The Festival’s 2008 theme is “Rhythm of the Sea.” Chris said she is a “real fan” of artist N.C. Wyeth and his sailing imagery, particular the style of clouds. The poster art features a cloud in the shape of a treble clef, a closehauled sailboat, and a portion of a dock. The work was actually commissioned in 2004 by Port Townsend businessman Kevin Harris for his promotion of the fledging “Concerts on the Dock” series at Quincy Street Dock, the former ferry landing downtown. “The image really never got used enough to even remember it,” Chris recalled. She is best known locally as the artist who created “Flora,” the unforgettable Victorian Hat Lady that in 2003 helped brand what has become a fabulously successful Port Townsend Farmers Market. Chris had twice submitted designs for Wooden Boat Festi-
Let’s Make Way Together! Our new facility is rising from the ashes of the old Thomas Oil property like the proverbial phoenix bird. As you tour the grounds of the 2008 Wooden Boat Festival, listening to the informative presentations, building a boat with your child or viewing the exhibits, imagine a Wooden Boat Festival that lasts all year – without the crowds. The Northwest Maritime Center on Port Townsend Bay will be in motion from the day it opens, Festival 2009, and many of the activities you enjoy this weekend will be available for you to engage in year-round. In the Chandler Maritime Education Building Shipwrights Shop, you can see a variety of Pygmy kayaks: skin-onframe, traditional kayaks and wherries. There are also workshops and seminars tracing the history of kayak design. In the Messing About Boatshop, you can watch the Northwest School of Wooden Boatbuilding instructors loft and build a traditional longboat while allowing high-school-age “apprentices” the chance to spend a few weeks with them learning the craft. Youngsters ages 7–10 will have the opportunity to build a model longboat alongside professional boatbuilders while the real one takes shape. So let’s prepare to make way … and MAKE WAY TOGETHER! Stan Cummings, Executive Director
Chris Witkowski
val posters, and when this year’s “call for artists” came out, she thought of her dock art. Kaci Cronkhite, Festival director, was delighted with the quality and diversity of poster submissions for 2008. “In the end, the significance of ferries to our town’s history and development combined with Chris’ whimsical inclusion of the theme in a treble clef over a boat on the bay clinched it,” Kaci said. The Festival posters are printed by The Printery with soy-based ink. Clothing, printed with water-based ink on organic fabrics, is printed at BaDd Habit and available at Cupola House. Chris now spends most of her time marketing her art out of Sonoma County, Calif., including a new effort with art that promotes sustainable agriculture products. Check out her website, www. chriswitkowski.com, and see more at eatlocal.com.
4 • 2008 Wooden Boat FestivaL
Festival Committee & Captains The 008 Wooden Boat Festival Committee and Captains are (from left) Deeann Nelson, erik Wennstrum, Marc Perrett, Chuck Henry, Kaci Cronkhite, Jerry Fry, Kris Nelson, Bill Wise and Sammie Parker. Not pictured: Neville Pearsall, Jordan Pollack, Nancy Tocatlian, Matt Barnett, Don Mathrole, Steve Soltysik and Wooden Boat Foundation Board of Trustees: Carlyn Stark, Bryan Wentzel, Ted Pike, Carol Hasse and Steve oliver. Photo by Jan Davis
From the Festival Helm
Welcome to the 32nd Wooden Boat Festival and welcome to Port Townsend, a town where shipwrights, marine trades experts and apprentices, maritime artists, history buffs and educators are at work and play every day, all year, and where you can always find a sailor with whom to share your biggest challenge and your greatest hope. This year, we celebrate “Rhythm of the Sea” and all this phrase conjures and inspires. At the Festival, celebrate our working, wild and mostly still public waterfront, a place where the tides change four times a day and the centuries reveal the changes in our community and world. You can see what generations have valued here: from the deep-water paper mill to the 300-ton shipyard, to ferry docks, eelgrass protection zones and a well-preserved historic downtown, to the efforts of more than 1,500 individuals, businesses, agencies, educators and nonprofits in the Northwest Maritime Center project, to the Point Hudson maritime heritage district, and to the wild sandy beach of Fort Worden State Park and the Port Townsend Marine Science Center. Our shoreline priorities illustrate the rhythm of the sea and our connections to each other. Through passion and respect for wooden boats and by attending the Festival, your financial and intellectual contributions continue to keep all maritime communities strong and improve our legacy, our planet and our lives. Enjoy the weekend and stop by any time of year at the Northwest Maritime Center & Wooden Boat Foundation. We’re glad you’re here! Kaci Cronkhite Managing Director, NWMC & WBF Festival Director since 2002
Port townsend & Jefferson County Leader