Another Round of the Center for Wooden Boats

Two locals went in together and bought this old wooden  workboat, would you buy it?

How did you spend your winter?

RC boats on the pond at the CWB across the start Line

Rounding the first Mark

The skippers follow the fleet around the pond, I heard one yell "Overlap"

The winds pick up

Final mark to the finish

T37's you can build them yourselves or buy them completely finished and start racing tomorrow http://www.tippecanoeboats.com/t37-racing-sloop-2

Volunteer Appreciation Dinner for The Center for Wooden Boat volunteers at the Nordic Heritage Museum of Course!

Immediate Spiritual connection

This is a Viking Ship

In Good Hands

Deja Vu

finaaly got to meet a lot of the other volunteers

Thank you, I'm Loving it!

Also you can take a class where you carve your own Native dugout canoe out of a native log

Another Round of the Center for Wooden Boats

If you just want to do it with wood then the CWB is the place. It has been especially fun as a volunteer sailing instructor which continues my own learning curve. There is always something new going on that I have never seen or experienced before. There is a constantly changing display of vessels that come into the CWB docks for special events and a constant new class of adult Sail Now students either learning to sail for the first time or to brush up old skills.
I recently noticed a new boat at the docks, it was the smallest workboat tug I have ever seen. I asked Elena who runs the Livery what the story was on the vessel and it turns out these two local guys bought the vessel and did not quite know what they had got themselves into. The boat served in the logging industry for 30-40 years pushing logs around and getting them all tied up so that a larger tug could tow them to the mill. We learned on our tour of Mt. Rainier that a lot of the Mom & Pop logging companies and mills in Washington state have been bought out by Weyerhaeuser http://www.weyerhaeuser.com/ But if you google Washington Logging Companies you get a several page list of small companies still hanging on to the family business. I wondered if Skillfull was a casulty of some buy out and cast off to rot somewhere. Anyway Steffan explained it was gonna cost somewhere in the $40K range to get this boat back to working condition and of course all that work could be done at a yard on Lake Union.
We decided to attend the volunteer appreciation dinner at the Nordic Heritage Museum for two reasons, we wanted to see the museum and I rarely have a chance to talk to the other volunteers so I thought this would be a opportunity to meet a few and make some PNW connections. The event was attended by I'm guessing about 200-250 and I learned about several other interesting opportunities to volunteer. Interesting enough I earned the "Calm Coach" award for my efforts as a sailing instructor. When the winds pipe up on Lake Union things can get challenging for the Freshman sailors, but I believe they have to be at the helm right from the get go if they are gonna learn in the short six, 2 hour lessons on the water so sometimes it gets interesting and I just enjoy the ride.
The real cool thing was being in this Viking Place where I could feel the spirit of the water was all around. The Admiral was not so sure about my spiritual connection but I felt connected to this historical sailing culture.If I hadn't mentioned it before "Steakley" came from "Steek Lays". They were Nordic, Viking Cattle Rustlers Steek meaning Cow and Lay meaning Pasture, the guys who stole the cows from the pasture!