Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/118161
getaway Sailors' Delight A friend in the know once likened boat ownership to taking a long, warm shower while tearing up $50 bills: pleasurable but not exactly financially rewarding. Yet here they are. Mariners by the hundreds who have happily hemorrhaged a chunk of their life savings, all gathered this overcast September afternoon for the 34th annual Port Townsend Wooden Boat Festival aboard schooners, dinghies, ketches, junks – every kind of wooden sail and power vessel imaginable. Some are already tied at the marina, others bob around like toy boats in a bathtub on the rippled waters between Washington's Whidbey Island and the historic waterfront of Port Townsend. Overhead, seagulls swoop and squawk noisily as a light wind scuds clouds across the sky and clusters of boating enthusiasts gather dockside to gawk at the gathering flotilla. For Jon Brown and Alex Low of B.C. this three-day regatta is particularly remarkable, though. In just two years they've fused raw materials of wood and metal with their own sweat equity into something beautiful and worthy of showing at North America's first and largest wooden boat festival. The romance of the seas is written in the sculpted grain of gorgeous wooden boats by Andrew Findlay A WHO'S WHO OF WOODEN BOAT EXPERTS and enthusiasts, Port Townsend's annual Wooden Boat Festival honours the industry's centuries-old traditions while promoting lively debate and demonstrations of the latest adventures and innovations in boatbuilding, equipment and skills. Wooden Boat Festival, l-r from top opposite: Al McCleese, (vintage sailboat) John Terence Turner/All Canada Photos, (winch) istock, (waterfront) Al McCleese 32 W E S T W O R L D p32-35_PortTownsend.indd 32 >> FA L L 2 0 1 1 8/17/11 12:20:08 PM