Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/118161
The two 2010 graduates of Gabriola Island's Silva Bay Shipyard School – the only fulltime wooden-boat-building institution in Canada – barely had time to take their gorgeous, hand-built, 25-foot cutter Françoise de la Rosa for a maiden voyage in Trincomali Channel off Gabriola Island before sailing here to show alongside more than 200 other vessels moored at Port Townsend's Point Hudson Marina. "This was our goal, to get la Rosa finished in time for this three-day event," says a smiling 30-year-old Brown as festival-goers parade past. "It's been an incredible apprenticeship. We probably put 4,000 hours into her." know, theirs is the only replica. And judging from the response so far, the cutter's beautifully crafted lines are not going unnoticed in this tight-knit world of boat building. "If this is the only thing you guys do with your life, consider it a success – best in show," commends a passerby with a strong Boston accent. Brown and Low take the attention in stride. They're hoping la Rosa is not the ultimate moment but the first big step in their nascent boat-building careers. They're certainly in stellar company. Wooden boat lovers flock from across the continent and beyond to walk the Point Hudson docks, view slideshows, listen to sea shanties and opted to forge a living here out of her sailmaking skills. "It was pretty quiet when I came here," she says. "Most of these buildings were empty. Thirty years later, though, Hasse and Company Port Townsend Sails is just one of dozens of successful local marine-trade enterprises – including the Point Hudson Boat Shop, a space redolent with the sweet scent of freshly planed red cedar where owner and shipwright Steve Chapin has dedicated his working life to maintaining the wooden rowing-shell tradition of Seattle's George Pocock. The late master boat builder perfected the art of using steam to bend cedar planks 1/10th of an La Rosa has a retro look but is so new the citrus smell of marine-grade wood preserver remains pungent. Her blocks (rope-rigging pulleys) are hewn from hard-as-steel yew, her decks from Douglas fir, her hull from western red cedar and her spars from solid sitka spruce – lumber all harvested on Vancouver Island for a design that originated on the eastern U.S. seaboard in 1913 with a oneoff commission. As far as Brown and Low sign up for workshops on everything from ocean navigation to wood preservation, turning artsy Port Townsend into boat-nerd central for the second weekend in September. But then, boats have been synonymous with Port Townsend for more than 100 years. At the turn of the 19th century, this little outpost on the northeast tip of the Olympic Peninsula was pitted head to head with Seattle as the premier coastal hub of America's Pacific Northwest. Then in 1883, the Northern Pacific Railway linked Seattle to the rest of America, leaving Port Townsend to languish. When local boating legend Carol Hasse arrived in the mid-1970s aboard her 47-foot ketch, that's exactly what she found, too – a charming seaside town in an off-thecharts, half-forgotten sort of way. Hasse dropped anchor and, almost overnight, inch thick into one-and two-person shells – each one a floating work of art. Nestled in the cockpit of her 1959 Nordic Folkboat Lorraine, Hasse also recalls the early days of stitching sails in her airy, light-filled loft and working as a founding director of the Wooden Boat Festival. In the years since, she notes, the event has grown from a grassroots revival of Port Townsend's marine heritage into an international celebration of wooden boats and nautical-themed art and music – just as Port Townsend has grown, emerging from faded 19th-century glory into a beacon of progressive and artsy culture in the Pacific Northwest. Today, refurbished Victorian-era brick and stone buildings cluster impressively along its downtown waterfront. A few blocks inland, a steep hill rises toward leafy streets lined with century-old manors in various CANADIANS WERE WELL REPRESENTED at 2010's festival, a contingent that included two notable B.C. sailors: Tony Grove of Gabriola Island, an accomplished visual artist and wooden-boat builder and instructor, won its poster competition; Bent Jespersen, a Sidney boat-builder known as "The Man" when it comes to wooden boats in the West, received its lifetime achievement award. 34 W E S T W O R L D p32-35_PortTownsend.indd 34 >> FA L L 2 0 1 1 l-r (street) Jim Pivarnik, (Acoustic Blues Festival, Kinetic Sculpture Race, Water street, Point Hudson) Al McCleese 8/17/11 12:20:44 PM