On the Waterfront: Port Townsend
A journalist sets a course for Port Townsend
My long, private affair with Port Townsend began 29 years ago this summer, when I first surveyed the waterfront from the helm of a small boat on the bay.
It was one of those still September days when the sky was hazy blue above a dense band of autumn fog that hugged the shipping lanes. Cruising north from Seattle in my 21-foot sloop, bound for the Wooden Boat Festival, I clung to the Peninsula shore, hung galley pots from the rigging to reflect radar, occasionally rung a bell to announce my presence to any fellow mariner who cared.
Rounding Marrowstone Point, I emerged from the fog and gazed transfixed at the Port Townsend seascape dead ahead. 
I had been here before, driven up for a weekend, strolled Water Street, snapped some photos, stopped for a beer at the Town Tavern. But the vista from Port Townsend Bay was of another place, a dreamy maritime image available only from the sea. An hour later, I eased into Point Hudson and rafted alongside a big wood-hulled halibut schooner.
That was the day I knew I wanted to live here. It’s taken nearly three decades to make it happen. As a professional journalist, I thought I needed a city, worked 30-plus years for The Seattle Times, covered politics and environmental issues and, whenever I could get away with it, the waterfront. When I needed to recharge my batteries, I’d come back to Port Townsend, preferably by sea.
Now, finally, I’m here, living in a shingled cottage overlooking Discovery Bay. My wife, Mary Rothschild, is a newly-anointed master gardener well underway toward creating a garden worthy of her botanical title. I moor my 24-foot Monk sedan, vintage 1941, a short walk down the hill at the Cape George Marina.
We’re growing to love the Mediterranean summers, the views across the strait, and even those gray, wintry gales that whip across the peninsula, seeking their shortest route south into the sound.
I realize that the same qualities that lured us here are drawing too many more like us -- refugees from Seattle and other cities looking for a better life. And I regret that we collectively are beginning to stress the fiber of this community, driving up rents and home prices, jamming the roads, threatening to turn Port Townsend into something resembling what we left behind.
But, for better or worse, I‘m here to stay. And now the editors of this intrepid journal have offered me a chance to write about the maritime life of my new home. As the new guy on the docks, I have much to learn. But I’ll learn it the way I know, as a journalist. And perhaps I can bring some homeport readers along on a voyage of discovery through the nature, culture and politics of this salty outpost on the edge of the continent. 
There were plenty of good reasons to live here. I wanted an authentic town, a place with a soul, a community big enough to attract a broad range of people and small enough where any one of them can help make it an even better place, a culture that equally respects people who work with their hands or with their heads, a town where rich people are welcome but where wealth is trumped by character.
My town needs real architecture, buildings with personality, and PT is famous for that. But it also needs people who are determined to preserve that ambience. My town needs a thriving arts community with theater and music and galleries.
My town needs a healthy business district where I can buy what I need from people knowing that my money supports neighbors and their families. It needs a good book store, and Port Townsend has three of them. I need a town able to govern itself, with a grand old city hall and courthouse full of people trying to make local government work.
I wanted a town of smart people, critical thinkers, Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, blue collars and white collars and striped collars, Christians and Buddhists and atheists, each looking for wise solutions and each respectful of the other‘s views.
I needed a legitimate local newspaper, and Port Townsend has this, too. Like every other town in America, people here love to trash their local paper. But the truth is that most towns of this size are stuck with flimsy rags owned by somebody who lives somewhere else. The Leader is owned and produced by people who live here, and that makes for good journalism.
I was looking for all these qualities. But, most of all, I needed a town with an ocean. Port Townsend is many things to many people, but it is first and foremost a port. Without the port, there would be no townsend. To live here is to live with water views, ferries and foghorns, the omnipresent scent of salt air and seaweed. Walk a straight line from any point in town and, sooner or later, you’ll step into the Pacific Ocean. From our docks and picture windows, we watch that daily parade of fishing boats, cruise ships, freighters and Trident submarines steam through Admiralty Inlet.
Many of us have our own kayaks, dories, gillnetters or wood-hulled sloops. We must own more boats per capita than anywhere in America.
This town is home to people who need to live on the edge of the continent, and frequently yearn to escape it. We are a community of salmon fishermen and skilled shipwrights, flat-water kayakers and blue-water yachtsmen, seafood gourmets and fishmongers, PhD biologists and self-educated naturalists. We are people who don’t just play on the water; many of us work on it, harvest it, study it.
And we understand that what we value is in jeopardy. It’s not just the ever-diminishing runs of salmon and herring and shrimp. It’s leaking septic tanks and concrete bulkheads that kill eelgrass beds. It’s million-dollar mega-homes with great views that inflate rents and home prices beyond the reach of shipwrights. It’s franchise restaurants and big-box stores that would blithely drive our neighbors out of business. It’s the threat of turning an authentic harbor town into a cutesy Kirkland or, worse still, another Aspen.
Still, for all this, Port Townsend and its natural environment seem remarkably healthy. Many of our neighbors arrived long ago, got their piece of real estate and a share in the economy. The boatyards and hardware stores are bustling. There is the promise of a classy public project that preserves the essence of Point Hudson. So far, so good.
I live here because Port Townsend is absolutely real, and can remain so. And I believe that good journalism can help us to understand who we are, what is important and what is not, and preserve that authenticity. This is my professional mission. I intend to learn everything I can about the culture and history, the ecology and economics of this place -- and write about it as I go.
I’m a reporter, not a teacher. I begin this voyage with a small boat and an open mind. If I do the job, I learn at least as much from my readers as you learn from me. If you have a question about Port Townsend’s maritime life, send it my way; reporters often can get answers that other people can’t. If I get something right, I’d like to hear from you. If I get it wrong, as I know I will, let me know that as well.
Because we sail as a crew.
