Volunteering at the Center For Wooden Boats on the 4th of July 2015

I walked through Seattle center on the way to The Wooden Boat Center and noticed they were having the Naturalization Ceremony for the newly qualified legal immigrants. http://www.seattlecenter.com/naturalization/

Close to 500 new citizens of the USA from 80 different countries.

A longstanding tradition here in Seattle on the 4th of July

Here some wooden go fast boats.

Did not notice these here last year.

I wanted to build one of these with a friend of mine in Galveston in the 5th grade, but we could not come up with enough plywood.

I bet it is noisy

Hope they put them in the water!

The Admiral volunteered in the tent to help the kids build little wooden sailboats.

The parents pitched in to help, watch out for that hammer!

Others were working on building themselves a Kayak

Some special joinery work.

This one is getting the skin on.

A couple of finished products.

This sailboat was the inspiration for the 2015 Wooden Boat Festival T-Shirt

Lots of Wooden boats of all sorts on display this year, but no tall ships.

The Public Sail portion of The Center For Wooden Boats Wooden Boat show gave 400 free boats rides every day of the event. Ac lip from the Dock I was Standing working on: http://youtu.be/aNurGhYWA_E

This boat built inthe early 50's was 32' long on deck with a 14'-5" Beam, looked kinda fat!

So many restored wood Chris Crafts in the PNW, they are really popular up here 

When I first saw this modern racer I was sure it was fiberglass, but NO, she is all Wood as well!

The Lake is full of vessels anchored out enjoying the day and waiting for the night time traditional 4th of July fireworks on Lake Union. A clip after the lake filled up http://youtu.be/gZfSDDi35mY

Someone on Capital Hill captured this photo of the fireworks over Lake Union and posted it on the Duck Dodge Facebook page.

Volunteering at the Center For Wooden Boats on the 4th of July 2015

This year I worked as a Dock Wrangler at the Wooden Boat Festival for the Center of Wooden Boats. If your a volunteer at CWB this is the one event you do not want to miss. It is incredibly fun to be part of putting on this show. As a Dock Wrangler our job was to assist the numerous sailboats docking and departing under sail and a couple of wooden electric boats as well. About 10 vessels from large to small provided 400 free  45 minute boat rides each day of the festival on the very crowded Lake Union.
This year they needed extra help so I talked the Admiral into volunteering for the day. She helped out in the toy boat building tent and I have no idea how many hundreds of kids went home with a self built toy boat but every little kid who walked down to the docks to board a boat had one in their hand.
After they close down at 5pm on the 4th the Center for Wooden Boats does their yearly volunteer appreciation party and provides a catered meal and free Beer for the volunteers and their families. Then if you want you can stay and have a front seat for the evenings fireworks. But since almost every square inch of land space was consumed by humans this year due to the incredible weather his year we elected to just go home and watch the simulcast on TV at home.