Puget Sound Journalism and Local Issues : Ross Anderson : RossInk

    The Copper River snakes across the Alaskan wilderness, cuts through the glacier-clad Wrangell Mountains, tumbles down to tidewater just east of Cordova, and ultimately flows into the seafood department at your local supermarket.
    Or so the spring marketing blitz would have us believe. That, along with the idea that it makes sense to pay 50 bucks or more for a slab of sockeye, or “red” salmon — and twice that for a king. But I don’t believe that either.
    Still, lots of perfectly reasonable people do. Witness the folks lining up at the local supermarkets buy a Copper River red for the weekend barbecue.  My favorite fishmonger, down at the local QFC, can barely keep up with the demand for sockeyes, on sale at $10 a pound. “These are absolutely el primo,” she says breathlessly.
     They know their pitch: The Copper River reds and kings are the year’s first major wild salmon fishery, arriving weeks or months ahead of most. And these fish store up extra fat – good fat, loaded with Omega 3 fatty acids, whatever those are – to fuel their long migrations upriver to their spawning grounds. Hence the annual feeding frenzy. 
    But not everybody buys in. Rick Ottman, the seasoned Port Townsend-based fisherman who sells his own Cape Cleare salmon, sighs when he’s asked what he thinks of the Copper Rivers. “It all depends,” he says. “It depends on what they’re eating. It depends where they are caught, and how they are caught and how they are handled. And you can’t see all that at the supermarket.”
    And so it goes every year in late May, when the ads hit the newspapers, trumpeting the arrival of the first Copper River kings and reds.
    All this for a fish that, not all that long ago, died in a gillnet and sloshed around in used crankcase oil for a few days before being stuffed into a tin can and shipped off to England to be processed into fish cakes and fried in batter.
    Whatever else you say about them, Copper River salmon are a case study of how far the Northwest salmon business has come in a couple of decades.
    The Copper is just one of Alaska’s long wilderness rivers that serve as perfect habitat for the fabled wild Pacific salmon. It emerges from the mountains just east of Cordova, the funky coastal fishing village which has been living off salmon for generations.
     It’s best known for its kings and sockeye, which live very different life cycles but which return each spring to the broad, intricate river delta known as the Copper River Flats.
     Fifteen years ago, I crewed with a grizzled fisherman named Tom Copeland, who had been fishing the flats since he was a teenager. On the night before the season opening, we climbed aboard his small fiberglass bowpicker and headed for the flats, bucking into an ugly rainstorm driven by 20-knot winds. Two miserable hours later, we anchored in the lee of one of the grassy sandbars that make up the river delta.
      We fished for several days, spreading that shallow gillnet across one of those braided channels, drifting downstream, retrieving the net, collecting those gorgeous, silvery sockeyes and the occasional king, stowing them on shaved ice, then repeating the process. My fingers ached from picking through nylon gillnet, and from yanking the gills so the fish would quickly bleed to death.
     As we drifted, Tom filled the time with stories of fishermen lost in the treacherous currents, of wild storms screaming off the Gulf of Alaska, of boats that sank from the weight of their sockeye catch, and of perennial price wars between fishermen and canneries.
     For most of a century, the canneries monopolized Alaska salmon. Remote fishing grounds, poor transportation and a red-meat-eating American public left few choices for Alaska fishermen. Whatever they caught, from humpies to kings, went into cans – mostly for export to Europe.
    Down on the flats, those gourmet fish were gillnetted by the thousands, then tossed into the bilge along with the crankcase oil, and eventually sold to a Cordova cannery for a few cents a pound.
    In the 1980s, that began to change. The Japanese invested heavily in Alaska fisheries, and they had no desire to eat wild salmon from a tin can. So, from Ketchikan to the Bering Sea, fishermen learned to treat salmon the way it deserved to be treated. They installed chilled storage tanks, separate from the bilges. They cleaned and bled their fish on board. They learned how to air-freight fresh or frozen fish. These days, a Copper River red can be netted at 6 a.m. on the Flats, and served in Seattle the same evening.
    Seattle marketing guru Jon Rowley took it a step further. He figured out how to use advertising and good public relations to create demand for a good product.
   And the Copper Rivers were ripe for marketing. Alaska has other early salmon fisheries – such as False Pass in the Aleutians. But Rowley figured nobody’s going to shell out $20 a pound for a “False Pass fillet.”
    And thus was born the Copper River Mystique.    But are they the world’s best salmon?
     “The fish is fabulous, and the folklore is even more fabulous,” says Ken Davies at Key City Fish in Port Townsend. “You put a Copper River red alongside a Quinault red, or a Fraser River red, and you won’t know the difference.”
    The Copper River migration is no longer or more challenging than migrations up the Yukon, the Fraser, or our own Columbia River. 
     Some businesses say it's just too  spendy.   The seafood manager at my local Safeway is holding off a few weeks until the prices drop a little. “I’d have to sell the kings for $23 a pound, and that’s too much,” he says.
     That’s my strategy too. I’m ready for my first Alaska salmon, never mind which river. But I can wait a few weeks. Don’t give me a fish. And don’t teach me to fish. Just sell me one at a price that doesn’t require me to dip into the grandkids’ college fund.

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   Alaska beckons. Down at the Boat Haven, you hear its siren song, whispering through the shrouds of the schooners and seiners: It’s time to head North.
   You wander the boatyard, absorbing the sights and smells of sawdust and fresh varnish and $200-a-gallon copper bottom paint. People are aching to get back on the water, stock up the galley, fire up that diesel and point the bow north by northwest.
  So it has been for well over a century – that deep, maritime bond between Port Townsend and isolated fishing ports from Ketchikan to Dutch Harbor. As far back as John Muir and Jack London, adventure-hungry Americans have stepped aboard steamers or fishing boats or private yachts to explore the Inside Passage.
    For some of our neighbors, it’s an annual migration. Each fall, they deliver the last of their salmon or halibut and limp south for the winter. They hunker down for a few months, wondering if they want to do it again, until that spring day when they hear that call of the North like the howl of a gray wolf. So they haul their boats for a coat of fresh paint, new zincs, a reconditioned prop… and the cycle is renewed.
   I feel the same tug. I don’t own an Alaska boat, and it might be years between trips north, but I hear it all the same. My first trip was some 35 years ago, when a couple of pals and I took the Alaska ferry to Skagway, hiked the Chilkoot Pass and floated the Yukon River to Dawson City. Since then I’ve cruised the Inside Passage many times – via Alaska ferry, BC ferry, private yacht, commercial fishing boats and, yes, a big cruise ship.
   It never gets old. From Admiralty Inlet to Glacier Bay, there’s enough grand geography and character and adventure to fill a lifetime. And I’m always amazed to learn how many people have lived here for decades, yet never cruised the Inside Passage, never laid eyes on those 5,000-foot mountain ranges partially submerged in 1,000-foot deep seas, never watched a humpback whale breach the surface of a deep, green fjord.
   For all its remoteness, the Inside Passage is amazingly accessible. Most people, of course, see it from the deck of one of those gigantic cruise ships. For $1,000 and up, you can sit in a comfy, sip something pink, read some John Muir or Jack London, and watch the wilderness float by. I took a mini-cruise some years ago – along with some 2,000 other people, plus crew. When we steamed to the top of Desolation Sound, the clouds parted and treated us to one of the world’s most spectacular views. And I practically had it to myself, because most of my shipmates were down below, pumping quarters into slot machines.
  There are better ways to cruise the passage – lots of them, in fact. Last year, I travelled with an old friend at the helm of his 46-foot Monk. We took two weeks to make the passage to Ketchikan, counting sidetrips up places like Kingcome Inlet, BC. Several times, we relaxed in wilderness hot springs that we had to ourselves, caught enough crab to gorge ourselves.
    People make the trip in small craft, but most prefer a bigger boat – say, 30 to 40 feet or more. While most of the route is “protected,” it is also an uphill course, where most days are spent cruising into the teeth of the prevailing wind and seas. And there are three major crossings, where boats are exposed to the open ocean.
   The most popular option is the Alaska ferry, the Columbia, which remains one of the great cruising bargains. It’s essentially a small cruise ship, which leaves Bellingham at 6pm each Friday, year round, steaming the Passage to Southeast Alaska. The one-way passenger fare is $240 to Ketchikan, which takes two full days; $325 to Juneau or Sitka, which is another full day. Kids 6-11 sail for half price, under six for free. (The vehicle fare is much stiffer -- $740 to Juneau. But what would you do with a car up there, anyway?)
  The hitch, of course, is accommodations. There are a few cabins, but they’re pricey and they’re usually booked months in advance. So most travelers bring backpacking tents and inflatable mattresses, and set them up on the stern deck. I’ve always done it that way; the last time, I counted 80 tents, lashed to each other to keep them from blowing away in the slipstream.
There is a decent restaurant, a bar and a coffee shop on board. But no casino, no dancing girls. Entertainment is provided by the scenery, a good book, or the Alaskan in the next tent.
   Then there is the BC ferry, another small cruise ship that runs between Port Hardy at the northern tip of Vancouver Island, and Prince Rupert, near the Alaska border. This route takes in some of the most spectacular stretches of the Inside Passage, with the added advantage of being able to transfer to other boats for travel into the BC fjords.
  The boat leaves Port Hardy at 7:30 am every other day and arrives Prince Rupert at close to midnight, so travelers need to book accommodations at both ends in advance. The one-way fare is $125, and kids sail for half fare. The drive to Port Hardy takes a very long day, or there are fast buses that run from Victoria.
   For Port Townsend folks, there may be yet another alternative. My most memorable cruise north was on an aging steel-hulled purse seiner run by a crusty Yugoslavian who agreed to let me tag along. Like most fishermen, he cruised straight through, day and night, without stopping, taking four days to reach Ketchikan. The skipper was short-handed; a couple of crew planned to catch up with him in Ketchikan. So, by the second day, the skipper had me standing a regular watch at the helm, steering this big, throaty seineboat through the night, guided by radar and the stars. 
   Each summer, a small fleet of commercial boats leaves Port Townsend and returns to the Alaska fishing grounds. Often they travel with few crew, or none at all. I’ve often wondered why they don’t sell berths to adventure-seeking passengers, who would rather see the Passage from the bridge of a purse seiner than from the windows of a floating casino.

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                From the picture windows along Port Townsend’s North Shore, the Saturday morning seascape must have resembled the Normandy Invasion… or, perhaps, the beaches of Dunkirk.

                It started at first light, with a dozen or so small boats scattered across the horizon about a mile offshore between Protection Island and Admiralty Inlet.  By 9 am, the fleet had grown to well over 75 and counting – flecks of white fiberglass set against a deep blue Strait of Juan de Fuca, with a hazy silhouette of Mount Baker as a backdrop.

                It was a motley fleet.  There were big white cabin cruisers and sleek speedboats and 18-foot aluminum skiffs and a couple of inflatable dingies.    Each carried at least a couple of Jefferson County souls – from grampas in overalls to 20-something Bubbas in Eddie Bauer parkas.  And then there was Cape George fisherman extraordinaire Jack Scherting, assisted by your waterfront correspondent. 

                We were all out there early on a Saturday morning for the same reason – the continuing quest for the ever-elusive, Giant Cross-eyed Flatfish.

                In case you missed it, halibut season is back again.  That’s the annual rite during which hundreds of us landlubbers set aside whatever else they’re doing and put to sea with an armful of fishing gear and a thermos of black coffee in hopes of snagging that  prized 150-pound slab of whitefish.

                This occurs in many places, but one of the favorites is off Port Townsend’s north shore, where  halibut are reputed to feed on a long, wide “halibut hump”, about 150 feet below the surface roughly parallel to the shoreline. 

                There is something a bit odd about the halibut mystique.    One can understand the appeal of Northwest salmon.  They’re sleek and silvery and quite pleasant on the eyes as well as the tastebuds. 

                But the halibut is ridiculously asymmetrical and, to put it bluntly, butt ugly   It is mottled brown on one side, white on the other, with a sideways mouth frozen into a permanent frown, and two beady eyes crammed onto one side that sort of stare at each other in disbelief.  Its lifestyle is even less romantic; it lives on the ocean bottom, blending with the detritus, waiting for something edible to swim past. 

                For years, halibut were caught almost exclusively by Norwegian fishermen in prosaic wooden boats, and sold for pennies per pound, mostly to other Norwegians.

                No more.    Today those ugly bottom-feeders have risen to the top of the Northwest seafood ladder.    Something called Individual Fishing Quotas have made a few commercial halibut fishermen very wealthy.  And your local fishmonger sells halibut filets for upwards of $15 a pound – more than salmon or ahi tuna or, for that matter, the gourmet steak at the other end of the supermarket case.  

                Last year, some 65 million pounds of halibut were caught on the Northwest Coast , mostly by commercial boats using miles of longline gear.   Most of that was in Alaskan waters, but local fishermen reported about 2,500 halibut, averaging about 25 pounds each. 

                How halibut get ugly is an interesting tale.   Hatched in the depths of the Pacific, they begin life like any other fish.  But at some point, as they approach maturity, a very strange thing happens.  The halibut turns on its side and spends the rest of its life hugging the sea bottom.  Since the lower eye is now useless, it undertakes an anatomical journey, migrating across the snout to the other side of the head, where it takes up residence alongside the upper eye. The result ain’t pretty.

                Fishermen have grown to like them because, while the typical halibut comes in at about 25 to 30 pounds, there are stories of halibut weighing 150 pounds or more.   My friend Jack caught one of those just off North Beach a couple of years ago.  I once watched a couple of fishermen land a 250-pounder in Prince William Sound, Alaska.

           And, of course, when it comes to fishing, size matters a great deal.

                The fish is solid muscle and a fierce fighter.  There are legends of commercial fishermen being battered to death by oversized halibut that kept fighting long after being pulled on deck.

                But something else was at work on the Strait the other day.  It’s been a long winter, marked by ugly, wind-whipped seas and no fishing.    Eavesdropping on the marine radio channels, one sensed a throbbing  pent-up demand, an urgent need to satisfy the needs of the fishing gene.  This is the gene that drives otherwise-rational people to spend great sums of money and time on boats and gear in order to drag themselves out of bed at 4 a.m. and spend more time and more money on the water trying to hook a fish that could be purchased for a fraction of that investment at the local QFC.

                My friend, Jack, carries this gene.  When the state and the seas are favorable, he is out fishing for salmon or halibut or crab.  When he’s not fishing, he’s dragging his bride out to the ocean beaches to go clamming.  When he takes a vacation, it is to the Baja, where he fishes for tuna and swordfish and brings it home to the freezer – except when he heads north to Alaska or British Columbia to fish for king salmon, or halibut.

                I do not carry this gene.   Each year, I faithfully buy my fishing license, which I consider a charitable contribution to the governor.  Now and then, I venture out with Jack.  But the fish know me, and laugh at me.  Mostly I take notes, trying to figure out the nature of a subculture I still don’t fully understand.

                But most of the people floating on the straits for the season opener were carriers.    You could tell by listening to the radio.  “God, it’s great to be out here….. Not a bite yet, just a couple of dogfish, but it’s worth it just to be out here….   Nothing biting here either, but that’s okay….”  And so forth.

                So went the day.   The fishing gene consumed hundreds of gallons of fuel, approximately 100 jugs of black coffee, 200 frozen herring, and countless sea stories of dubious credibility.   All this for half a dozen Middlin’-Sized, Cross-eyed Flatfish, none of which landed on our boat.

                I don’t get it.  I called Jack to ask what it was all about.  But he was gone fishing.

 

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     An unusual phenomenon appeared on the surface of Discovery Bay the other day -- Boats.   Not just one or two, but a veritable fleet of a dozen or so sailboats, their sails framed by the forested shores and snowy Olympic peaks.
   They weren’t exactly racing yachts, but a rather motley assemblage of local sailors who turned out for the first-ever Cape George Regatta. But that was still more sails at one time than anybody has seen on Discovery Bay in a very long time. This happened weeks ago, and people here still talk about it.
   Fact is, not much happens out here on Disco Bay.  There are homes and barns scattered along 16 miles of shoreline, from Cape George down to old Port Discovery and back to Diamond Point.  Highway 101 skirts its southern shores.  And there’s that fellow at the south end who likes to blow things up now and then.
   But most of the time, the closest thing to excitement out here are the seagulls and pigeon guillemots who show up each spring to nest on Protection Island. Compared to big cities like Port Townsend, Discovery Bay is something of a backwater. It’s a deep, glacial fjord between forested walls, extending eight miles to the foothills of the Olympic Mountains, its entrance guarded by Protection Island.
   Every year, thousands of boaters cruise through Admiralty Inlet, just five miles to the east. But few venture into the bay. We’re just a bit out of the way and, when boats do pass nearby, they’re usually in a hurry to get somewhere else before the weather turns.
   This wasn’t always so. Once upon a time, Discovery Bay was more or less the Center of the Puget Sound Universe. This is because, in the spring of 1792,  George Vancouver and his sea-weary crew sailed off the Pacific into the Strait of Juan de Fuca, making their way along the starboard shore until, on May 2, they anchored in a deep, broad harbor that he named Port Discovery, for his trusty ship.
    “A picture so pleasing could not fail to call to our remembrance certain delightful and beloved situations in Old England,” he wrote in his journal. “A variety of stately forest trees pleasingly clothed its eminences and chequered the valleys, presenting extensive spaces that wore the appearance of having been cleared by art.”
    He was particularly impressed by the strategic placement of the island. “Had this insular production of nature been designed by the most able engineer, it could not have been placed more happily.”
    For nearly three weeks the ship remained at anchor near Carr Point, halfway down the bay. While much of the crew worked at repairing sails and spars, the skipper and others set out in small boats, exploring Port Townsend, Hood Canal and beyond. Still others set up camp at the mouth of a stream, taking celestial sightings and brewing “spruce beer,” a concoction of fir needles, water, molasses and yeast.
    Eventually, of course, they sailed on. But Vancouver’s published journals and maps placed the world’s spotlight on what became Discovery Bay, which offered safe anchorage and ample timber and steep shores that enabled giant logs to be moved down to the water. By the 1850s, there was a major mill at Port Discovery, with scores of workers, saloons and more. In one year, that mill produced some 18 million board feet of fir and cedar, most of it bound for the Bay Area, where old San Francisco was framed with our timber.
    In time, however, the trees were gone and the loggers moved on.   In the 1890s, the government built a quarantine station at Diamond Point, which was the subject of recurring rumors of escaped lepers orbubonic plague. That station continued to inspect arriving ships well into the 1920s.
Then things got very quiet.
   For those of us who live here, that’s fine. Even at the height of boating season, this “picture so pleasing” is all ours. But, for the record, boaters are welcome. There is decent holding ground in about 30 feet of water along the western shores, next to a small and under-used boat ramp at Gardiner; or on the eastern shore in the lee of Beckett Point. These are fair-weather anchorages, because either spot is prone to stiff southerlies. There is good beachcombing at low tide, especially at extreme low tides, when folks make their way out to “Glass Beach,” the old city dump near McCurdy Point.
     While here, you’ll want to circumnavigate Protection Island. It’s strictly off-limits to visitors, but the adjacent waters are rich with whimsical puffins and rhinoceros auklets, harbor seals and the occasional elephant seal. Keep an eye out for the rustic cabin perched atop the southwest bluff, where Marty Bluewater holds out as the last resident of an island otherwise restored to Mother Nature. But be aware: There is virtually no public shoreline here. The tiny Cape George Marina is strictly private, and its entrance is dangerously shallow at low tides. There is no fuel, no restaurant, no pub to be found.
     So why come at all? Because it’s here, and nobody else is. And because, with the aid of Vancouver’s journals, a voyage into Discovery Bay is a journey in time. Vancouver and company anchored here longer than any other spot on Puget Sound, and the journals offer detailed descriptions of the land and seascape as it looked for untold thousands of years before we started to change it.
    Archibald Menzies, the Scottish naturalist who sailed with Vancouver, explored the shoreline and forest floor, and offered the first descriptions of the Douglas fir, madrona, Olympic oyster and scores more plants and animals. His descriptions, and those of Vancouver, offer a sort of biological baseline by which to assess the impacts of two centuries of development that have profoundly changed most of Puget Sound….
     But not Discovery Bay.

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 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.

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            In the seventh year of the third millennium, war and famine and pestilence plagued the world. But there was contentment in the Land of Jefferson. 

            The people lived quietly beside the Waters of Puget, paddling their kayaks, hiking in the woods, soaking in hot tubs, and sustaining themselves with organic soy milk and leavened breads of whole wheat grains. And to pay for these things, the people rented rooms or sold pizzas and T-shirts to travelers from distant lands who arrived at their shores aboard the Ark of Quinault or the Ark of Klickitat.

            And the people and their visitors were soothed by the harmonious chords of David the Minstrel, who plucked his Celtic harp and peddled his CDs in the upper chambers of the Ark of Klickitat, there to serenade the people and the orcas.

            Now it came to pass that Queen Christine, who ruled the northwest provinces, no longer favored the music of David, for the Minstrel and his CDs were not officially sanctioned. And thus the minstrel was banished from the upper chambers of the Ark of Klickitat.

       At hearing of this, the people were sorrowful. But, yea, the travelers continued to come to shores of the Land of Jefferson, renting the rooms and buying the pizzas and T-shirts. And, lo, the people were happy.

       But in the eighth year of the reign of George the Second, a dark, ominous cloud moved across the Waters of Puget, and settled over the Land of Jefferson.   And a great deluge soaked the lands of the southern provinces.  And snow inundated the mountains, blocking the roads. And a fierce, cold wind arose, whipping the Waters of Puget, and buffeting the homes of the people, and rocking the Ark of Klickitat and the Ark of Quinault. 

            And it came to pass that Queen Christine was greatly troubled, for her advisors reported verily that the Ark of Quinault and the Ark of Klickitat were growing old. And the advisors said unto her: “Beware, O’ Queen, for the ancient arks  were built in the Time of Moses, and they are in great danger of breaking up and sinking into the Waters of Puget.”

            And it came to pass that, on the Eve of the Feast of Thanksgiving, Queen Christine said unto the people: “Behold, the ancient arks shall be banished from the Waters of Puget. No more shall they carry tourists to the shores of the Land of Jefferson.”

            Thus it was spoken. And thus it was done.

            Hearing this, the people were contented no more. For the great storm had laid waste to the roads and bridges.  And the ancient arks were banished, thus deterring the tourists from travelling to the Land of Jefferson. And thus the merchants and moneychangers were unable to rent their rooms or to sell their pizzas and T-shirts.

            And the people descended into the streets and made a great noise, falling to the ground and rending their garments and calling aloud: “Woe unto us! What hath Christine Wrought? For the arks of Klickitat and Quinault shall sail no more!”

     Now, hearing this, Queen Christine was troubled. And she said unto the people: “Lo, my people, I feel thy pain, and I will address thy plight!” 

     And, behold, the Queen offered to build new and larger arks, carrying more travelers and more cars, with great piers and parking lots.

     But the people said unto her: “No, Great Queen! The great arks shall bring too many cars and parking lots. And this will disrupt the tranquility of the Land of Jefferson. Thou must bring back the Ark of Klickitat!”

      And so the Queen offered unto them another vessel, the Ark of Snohomish, with two great hulls and turbine engines that guzzled fuel and drove the vessel at very high speed.

      But the people said unto her: “No, Great Queen. Because the Ark of Snohomish carryeth not cars.   And, hath they not cars, the travelers will not come to our shores.”

     And, verily, when the Ark of Snohomish came, it carried not visitors from distant lands, but rather carried the people of Jefferson to the Great City to the South, where the people visited the dens of iniquity.  So the people of the Land of Jefferson were even more greatly distressed, saying unto the Queen: “The Ark of Snohomish hath only worsened our plight!”

      So Queen Christine said unto the people: “Fear not. For I shall give you a smaller vessel, the Ark of Steilacoom, and surely this shall bring happiness to the Land of Jefferson.”

     So it was that the Ark of Steilacoom sailed upon the Waters of Puget and moored at the shores of the Land of Jefferson.

      But again the people cried aloud, and fell upon the ground and rended their garments, saying: “Behold, the Ark of Steilacoom is too small, and it carryeth too few people and there shall not be enough travelers to buy our pizzas and T-shirts.”

     Now there arose from the north another dark cloud, which descended upon the Land of Jefferson, bringing even greater winds and fearsome seas.   And a great, rogue wave smote the Ark of Snohomish, breaking its doors and windows.   And another great wave smote the Ark of Steilacoom so that the car deck was awash with the green Waters of Puget.   And yet another great wave smote the very large Ark of Yakima, cracking its hull so that it sailed no more.

     Now the people were sorely afraid. And Queen Christine was even more greatly troubled, so that she cried upon the heavens, saying: “Woe upon us all! What hath we done to bring such troubles upon us all? What must we do to atone?”

     And, lo, the Waters of Puget were quieted. And winds were calmed.  And the rains subsided. And the dark clouds parted, and a very deep voice from on high said unto the Land of Jefferson:

    “Thou shalt bring back the Minstrel David. And only then shall peace return to the Waters of Puget.”

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    Strolling through the Port Townsend Boat Haven feels like a tour of other people's maritime fantasies, the shells of aging vessels that were supposed to rescue somebody from a complicated life and carry them off to Shangri-La. How many of those voyages end prematurely on a tattered blue plastic tarp tacked to this graveled graveyard? 
    But for every dream abandoned there is another realized, like that of Steve and Judy Dundas. Perched on a corner among the hauled-out fishing boats is their "Fiddler's Dream," an eye-catching, 48-foot schooner with a shapely, wineglass hull of deep blue steel, varnished fir spars, a deck and house crafted from hand-picked hardwoods, and a story to be told even before she's afloat.  
   Sometime this month, Fiddlers‚ Dream will be hoisted and lowered into Townsend Bay for her first sweet taste of seawater, thus completing the first leg of a strange saga that began four years ago on a mountaintop near Missoula, Montana. Along the way, she had to be skidded through the lodgepole pines, down a dirt road at the brink of a 300-foot cliff. But more on that later. 
    Fiddlers' Dream is the personal vision of Steve Dundas, a tall, quiet former Californian who describes himself as a iconoclastic loner. Some 35 years ago, he was drafted to play pro football, but instead found himself patrolling Vietnam's jungle rivers with the Navy Seals. After the Navy, he wandered the country, learned to sail with a friend in Maine, met his bride-to-be in Vermont, tried farming in Idaho and later in rural South Dakota, and finally took up woodworking in Missoula.

    He and Judy loved Montana, especially their 40-acre homesite 1,000 feet above the town, bordered on three sides by the Rattlesnake Wilderness. But eventually they grew tired of the hard winters and began conjuring up a vision of a stout, sturdy sailing ship.

   He studied scores of plans before deciding on a 75-year-old design by John Alden ˆ a beamy, gaff-rigged schooner with a classic sweeping sheer line. The choice had mostly to do with aesthetics. "The schooner rig may not be the most practical, but it is the prettiest on the planet," he argues.

    Dundas had never built a boat. But he has spent much of his life as a farmer, doing what needs to be done. Judy, an experienced nurse, worked fulltime to support his habit. 

   While the hull was designed for wood, Dundas opted for steel. "It's cheap, durable, and I could build it myself," he says. He made the necessary conversions, lofted the design at full-scale onto plywood, ordered a truckload of 3/16-inch steel in 400-pound sheets, and went to work  alongside the house, at the top of that mountain.

   It took 20 months, 150 individually-cut sheets of steel and a full mile of welds, but eventually the deep-draft hull took shape. "It's not perfect," Dundas said. "Fitting and bending steel into a traditional hull is tough. If you look closely, you'll see my mistakes, some hard angles and edges. But most of that will be beneath the waterline."

   Over time, Dundas became a familiar face at the local recycling center and tire shops, scavenging scraps of lead to be melted down for the 18,000-pound keel.  The salon, galley, bunks and cabinetry took another two years. The result is sheer art, a rustic masterpiece constructed of Virginia oak, purple heartwood, black locust, cherry and more, much of it salvaged by friends or set aside by a nearby sawmill.

   This year, as he applied finishing touches, the couple sold their Missoula place and bought an 11-acre homesite on Stuart Island in the San Juans. Which forced the issue. It was time to move that boat ˆ all 45,000 pounds of her ˆ off that mountain.

    Dundas had tried to anticipate this challenge. He'd built the boat on a steel cradle set on skids, ssentially a custom-built steel sled. So, when the time came, he contracted with a well-known boat transporter who brought in a trailer and equipment. "They took one look at the road and turned white," he laughs. "Another outfit came in, moved it 20 feet, lifted it onto the trailer, and the trailer collapsed. They gave up."

   Eventually, they found a local mover who reverted to Dundas' original idea ˆ to move it down the mountain on the sled. So off it went, one bulldozer pulling, another pushing along that narrow, dirt road, a mile and a half down the mountain. "It was a bit surreal," Dundas says, "watching this schooner move through the pine trees."

   Finally, the bizarre contraption arrived at the valley floor, where it was loaded onto a trailer and trucked off to Port Townsend. 
    A month later, Steve and Judy Dundas are living in the boatyard, stepping masts, fitting sails from Carol Haase's loft at Point Hudson and applying finishing touches to the good ship Fiddlers Dream. If all goes right, she'll be sailing by late August.
   It's been an amazing journey, Dundas says, but perhaps not so unusual in this salty corner of Puget Sound. "Port Townsend seems to attract real characters, people who aren‚t fazed by challenges," he says. "You walk through this boatyard, and I have to guess we see more interesting boats than any yard in the West." 

   Dundas could have saved a little time and money by shipping his schooner to another port. But Fiddlers Dream would not have fit well in those Seattle marinas jammed rail-to-rail with big, white luxury yachts that rarely leave their slips. Down at the Boat Haven, she's just another maritime fantasy waiting to be sailed and lived.

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Tall Ship U: Higher education at sea 
 
   When Jesse Maupin stepped off the tall ship Lady Washington this month, he was the same tall, handsome, blue-eyed youth who climbed aboard nine months earlier.
     But, then again, he wasn’t. He was a year older and a lifetime wiser. Jesse had graduated from time-honored Tall Ship U, the ancient institute of the high seas.  At age 19, he’s learned things many people won’t learn in a lifetime – not just the physics of wind and waves and sails, but the greater lessons of personal integrity and humility, of leadership and organizational behavior.
    A couple of years ago, he confesses he didn’t have a clue. As a Port Townsend High School student, he was something of a misfit. A poor student, he took to wearing gothic black, made poor choices and was suspended twice.
    "The social atmosphere didn’t work for me," he says. "We were punks. We did things for shock value. I wasn’t coping."
    Eventually, he transferred to the school’s Mar Vista alternative program, which focuses on individual learning. Each Thursday, class convened at Point Hudson, where students climbed into the Bear, one of the heavy, traditional longboats operated by the Wooden Boat Foundation at the Northwest Maritime Center. Each of the kids gripped an oar, and rowed the open boat out into the bay. When the wind blew, they raised the sails.
    For Jesse, things began to click. His parents are both avid sailors, and Jesse had learned to sail small boats at his grandparents’ summer home on the shores of Lake Ontario in upstate New York. This was something Jesse knew and loved, something he was good at.
    "I liked the freedom of being in control of your environment," he says. Then he stops to think. "And also being out of control, at the mercy of the wind and the sea. It helps me clear my mind. Just me and the elements."
    Last summer, he graduated to the volunteer crew of the Lady Washington. A frequent summer visitor to the Port Townsend waterfront, the "Lady" is home-ported in Aberdeen, where she was launched in 1989 to help celebrate the bicentennial of Capt. Robert Gray’s exploration of these waters in 1792. At 112 feet, but just 68 feet on deck, she sails as a non-profit educational enterprise, relying largely on volunteer crew.
     She’s also something of a Hollywood personality, having served as Johnny Depp’s command in Disney’s film "Pirates of the Caribbean."
     Jesse’s joined the crew in September, at the end of the Wooden Boat Festival.
He was astounded by the intricate spider’s web of lines and spars that control 11 sails atop the stout wooden hull.
     As the rookie, he drew menial duties – swabbing decks, cleaning toilets, polishing brass, raising and lowering flags.
     "That was Ok with me. My job was to learn the boat, and the only way to do that is to watch and listen and try things one at a time. It may look easy, but when you’re actually under sail, you have to know what you’re doing, which line is which, and what it does. That takes time."
     Jesse’s personal voyage renews an ancient tradition. For centuries, young people have climbed aboard tall ships to see the world, and to find themselves. Those journeys inspired leaders from Columbus to Kennedy, writers from Melville to Conrad.
     Capt. James Cook, perhaps the most famous sailor of all time, first went to sea as a teenager. On his historic third voyage around the world, when he explored these Northwest shores, he did so with a raw, young crewman by the name of George Vancouver. A generation later, Vancouver returned as the captain of his own voyage of discovery, placing Port Townsend and Puget Sound on the world map. His longboats, in turn, inspired the Wooden Boat Foundation to build a replica – the longboat Bear.
    So Jesse’s personal odyssey merely continues the cycle. His first volunteer stint on the Lady was just two weeks. He came home, and promptly decided he wanted to go back. He rejoined the crew at Sausalito, where it stopped on its annual fall voyage to Southern California.
     A month later, he was promoted to storekeeper. A few months later, he rose again, this time to bosun’s mate – managing the sails at the staggering executive salary of $500 a month. He loved the vessel, loved his fellow crew members. He loved climbing aloft in a 25-knot wind. He loved sailing through the night, steering by the stars. And he was learning to like himself.
    "I get seasick every time we’re out in heavy seas," he says. "But it doesn’t matter. I get over it. And we work together out there. We’re a family, moving from one port to another port. We’re never in one place for very long."
     By this spring, Jesse had been on the boat longer than any his crewmates. The student had become the teacher. The rookie had become the seasoned sailor.
     And what had he learned? Jesse peers across Port Townsend Bay as he thinks about it.
"I’ve learned that I’m far more adaptable than I ever knew. I can endure exhaustion, seasickness, cramped living quarters. I’ve learned that privacy is greatly over-rated."
    The Lady Washington may be an elegant sight, but the living conditions are rugged. Most of the 12-person crew sleeps in one small room, which they share with the galley table, cook stove and three heads. Crew are climbing in and out of their bunks around the clock. If somebody snores, you learn to ignore it. If you need privacy, you climb into the rigging, or you go home..
    "But maybe the most important thing I’ve learned is humility," Jesse adds. "It doesn’t matter how much you know about that ship. Nobody can sail it alone. It takes a crew. You have to work with people. There has to be one skipper, and you have to do what you’re told."
    Sometimes, getting along with people requires extraordinary measures. Jesse recalls cruising in heavy seas and a 25-knot wind when the topsail came loose and began flapping in the gale. He and a mate climbed aloft to secure it.
    He was already feeling seasick. But, 60 feet up the main mast, the ship’s roll is amplified. And so is the motion sickness.
    "We lashed the sail, and I could feel my stomach turn. I knew I was going to lose my breakfast, but I had to time it so that we were heeled over."
    The seasoned sailor made his deposit over the Pacific Ocean, not the deck of his own ship. Jesse earned an "A" in maritime sociology.
     Back on shore, Jesse has been looking to the future. He wants to visit his crewmate and new girlfriend in Southern California. He’s thinking about more schooling, or finding another ship.
   But there was one more job to do. The Lady Washington was sailing back up the coast, and needed a bosun’s mate. He’s back on board for a few weeks, doing graduate work at Tall Ship U.

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JAWS, PUGET SOUND STYLE. SIXGILL SHARK
 
 
   Light and color wane rapidly in the depths of Puget Sound. At 30 feet beneath the surface, the reds and yellows disappear, followed by the greens and blues. At 90 feet, roughly the width of Water Street, the world dims to murky shades of gray and black.
   This is where one enters the realm of the sixgill shark.
   Don Zahn, a nuclear operator from Richland, has been diving for many years, so he knew what to expect last fall when he and a friend stepped off a charter dive boat in Hood Canal, near Brinnon, and descended slowly down a steep, submarine ridge. They planned a deep, "technical dive," using a special mix of compressed air, waterproof cameras and lights.
   At 70 feet, they were looking for octopus, wolf eel and giant lingcod that prefer those depths. At 90 feet, they spotted a dark figure moving slowly through the murk. An enormous lingcod?
   The fish turned, and Zahn switched on his camera lights, transforming the grayness into a mini football stadium. And he nearly swallowed his regulator. He was face-to-face, or jaw-to-Jaws, with a seven-foot shark.
    He acknowledges he was shocked. But he had the presence of mind to keep his camera running -- even when the creature swam between the two divers.
  "He never did anything threatening," Zahn says. "He was moving pretty slowly, almost casual. I think he was oblivious to us."
    "I’d heard they were around," he adds. "But I never expected to see one."
   Nobody does. The waters around here are notoriously cold, but they’re supposed to be home to familiar, even romantic critters -- silvery salmon and crowd-pleasing orcas. The only sharks we see are those pesky dogfish, the miniature great whites that show up on hooks intended for prized kings and cohos.
   But in recent years, divers and scientists have been probing deeper into the sound. And they’re learning that Puget Sound is also home to hundreds and probably thousands of sixgill sharks, a 200-million-year-old species that resembles its more notorious cousins.
   Based on the experience of Zahn and other divers, sixgills have no appetite for people. But they certainly have the equipment to do some damage -- big spooky eyes, gaping jaws with jagged teeth and a streamlined torso reputed to reach the lengths of automobiles.
   Don Coleman, who runs a dive charter boat out of Pleasant Harbor, near Brinnon, counted at least eight different sixgill sightings by divers from his boat last year. Local dive shop operator Mark Peil and a buddy encountered one on a night dive in Discovery Bay. Yet another seven-footer washed up on a Port Townsend beach and was turned over to the Seattle Aquarium, which still keeps the carcass in its freezer.
   Sixgills are rarely seen because they are deepwater sharks accustomed to darkness. Divers find them -- or are found -- in deep water such as Hood Canal and Discovery Bay, or in shallower depths on night dives, when the sharks come up to feed.
F   or years, sixgill sharks were the stuff of local legends -- Puget Sound’s answer to the Loch Ness Monster. A generation ago, an eccentric Seattle reporter named John O’Ryan talked the Post-Intelligencer into sending him out to catch one. For days, he floated around the sound in a small boat equipped with fishing gear, sending back reports on his quest. But nary a nibble.
   In the summer of 2000, however, an amateur fisherman hooked a big sixgill while night-fishing from a West Seattle pier. A few days later, he caught another one.
   Biologists were alarmed. Shark populations around the world have been depleted by over-fishing, and nobody wanted to see it happen here. So the state acted quickly to prohibit fishing for them. And that ban continues.
   But some biologists reasoned that, if two sixgills were hooked in the same place within a week, there could be a heck of a lot of them out there.
   So the Seattle Aquarium teamed up with state and federal agencies to find out. Using rebar and cable, scientists assembled a crude, four-by- two-foot shark-feeding station on the seabottom beneath the aquarium, and hooked up a time-lapse video system.   For bait, they used frozen clumps of fresh and decayed salmon, dogfish and bits of octopus. Then they waited.
   But not for long. The station was an immediate success, with nightly visits from sixgill sharks. They kept coming even when researchers went down to greet them.
   "Mostly we see six and seven-footers," says aquarium biologist Jeff Christiansen. "But we see the occasional big guy -- 10 to 12 feet."
   Meanwhile, researchers chartered a fishing boat and began catching sharks on longline gear -- miles of line with baited hooks strewn along the bottom of the sound. One by one, they caught more than 200 sixgills, keeping a few for analysis, while the others were measured, equipped with numbered tags attached to their dorsal fins, and released back to the sea.
   Gradually, the research is adding to our limited knowledge of an amazingly resilient creature which has been swimming the world’s oceans for some 200 million years.
   Shawn Larson, a curator at the Seattle aquarium, describes the bluntnose sixgill shark, Hexanchus griseus, as a slow-growing, long-lived species which is found in both warm and temperate oceans around the globe. They’re big -- up to 16 feet, with undocumented reports of specimens well over 20 feet. Males mature at about nine feet and females at about 13 feet.
   But most of the sharks encountered here are somewhat smaller, about seven to 11 feet, and there are few mature males. This, Larson says, suggests that Puget Sound may be a nursery area for young sixgills, which migrate out to the ocean as they mature.
So it’s safe to assume that we have some mighty big critters swimming past Port Townsend beaches on their way to who-knows-where.
   While they seem to be more docile than great whites, they actually have bigger jaws, Larson reports. Appetite-wise, they appear to be "opportunists," eating fish, octopus, dead or injured seals, whatever is available. "Just about everything has been found in their stomachs," she adds.
  Except people, that is. "They certainly could attack a human, but we’re probably outside their prey range," Larson says.
   They also have a different feeding strategy. While great whites "strike fast," sixgills use more stealth, biting and sawing their prey with serrated teeth.
   Based on analysis of tissue samples, scientists believe the sharks in Puget Sound are related -- an extended family estimated at about 8,000 adult sharks. That could be the adult population for Puget Sound, or for a larger area. It is also a very tentative estimate, and probably a conservative one, she adds.
   So the research continues. But we can be assured of one thing: Every time we leave the docks of our fair port, we are passing within a few feet of some king-sized toothy critters who are far less impressed with us than we are with them.

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Archibald Menzies: The Northwest's First Master Gardener

         At the top of our garden in Cape George stands a young Douglas fir which carries some rare and well-traveled genes. It’s only about 18 inches tall, but this tree is world class, a direct descendant of one of the tallest trees in Britain. Its grandparents, which I believe grew here on the shores of Discovery Bay, must have been giants.

          The story of our tree goes back some 215 years, when a mild-mannered Scottish botanist and naval surgeon named Archibald Menzies climbed out of a longboat and onto the shore of Discovery Bay.

          Menzies, who pronounced his name “MIN-gez,” was the official naturalist to the expedition of Capt. George Vancouver, the stuffy Englishman who first explored and mapped these Northwest waters. By the spring of 1792, when they dropped anchor in what Vancouver decided to call Port Discovery, they had already sailed halfway around the world, and they’d hardly begun.

          For some two weeks, while most of the crew worked on ship repairs and provisions, Menzies set out on his own mission, becoming the first scientist to study the shores of Port Townsend and Puget Sound.

          Judging by his journal, Menzies was overwhelmed by what he found. “The shores here are sandy and pebbly,” he wrote. “The point we came to (Port Townsend) was low and flat with some marshy ground behind it, and a pond of water surrounded with willows and tall bulrushes. Behind this a green bank stretched to the southward a little distance from the shore, which was marked with the beaten paths of deer and other animals... I ascended this bank and strolled over an extensive lawn, where solitude, rich pasture and rural prospects prevailed.”

          Obviously, while he sailed for the British Navy, Menzies had the soul of a master gardener.   Born and raised in the shadow of the Menzies family castle in Perthshire, at the edge of the Scottish Highlands, he grew up tending to the gardens of the estate. Later he studied botany and medicine at Edinburgh University. In 1786, at the age of 32, he sailed with Capt. James Colnett to the Northwest Coast, collecting a few specimens around Nootka, on Vancouver Island.

          In 1791, he made his return trip, this time with Vancouver. When they returned to England four years later, he brought home his vast collection of seeds and specimens.

          Nobody knows precisely what became of those specimens. We do know that, by the late 1700s, Great Britain was using wood for everything – fuel, construction and spars for the Navy, and that the native forests had been logged out. The British were replanting their forests, but were looking for trees that grew faster than the native evergreens.

          Three decades later, in 1825, another Scottish naturalist, David Douglas, sailed to the Pacific Northwest and brought back more specimens. Somehow, the common name of our regional fir became Douglas, but the scientific name remained Menzies – pseudotsuga menziesii. And over time, most of Scotland and much of England was planted in Pacific Northwest trees – generally Sitka spruce on the damper west side of the island, douglas fir on the east side. 

          Mary and I learned about this a few years ago, when we were staying in the Scottish village of Dunkeld, with its medieval cathedral, and took a day hike up the River Tay. Passing through a grove of big evergreens, we followed a sign up a side trail to what was billed as the “Tallest Tree in Great Britain.”

          It was a douglas fir, more than 200 feet tall, standing in a grove of douglas firs. Olde Dunkeld, whose human history dates back well over 1,000 years, sits in a Pacific Northwest forest.           Mary scooped up a few cones at the foot of the giant and stuffed them in her purse. Later, she planted them in our Seattle garden. And last year, the young sapling moved with us – back to shores of Discovery Bay.

          We call it the Menzies Tree.   The Menzies castle is only five miles from Dunkeld, near the town of Aberfeldy, Scotland.   We know that the naturalist had ties to the local of Duke of Atholl, and that the duke directed the replanting of his forests two centuries ago. Those trees must have come from Menzies’ seeds.

          And since he spent more time around the Quimper Peninsula than just about anywhere else, it seems likely that Menzies collected many of his specimens right here.

          Besides, the pioneer naturalist deserves credit for something. The fellow braved ocean voyages lasting up to four years, identified scores of previously-unknown species, carefully recorded his observations, brought back specimens and almost certainly contributed to the reforestation of Scotland and much of England.

          Yet most folks hereabouts, and back thereabouts, have never heard of him. There is no published biography, and his journals have been out of print since the 1920s. Even his skipper managed to dis him; Vancouver grumbled about the potted plants on the decks of his ships and, while he named our landmarks after his crew and other obscure British naval officers, he never found so much as a rock to name for his trusty botanist.

          But gradually, a few latterday Menzies fans are trying to rekindle some respect for the old Scot. A few years ago, the historical society published his journal entries from local waters. Jim Norris, Port Townsend’s fisherman-biologist, attached Menzies’ name to his boat and to his research organization – the Menzies Project.   And my little Monk cruiser, which lives a mile or two up the bay from Vancouver’s 1792 anchorage, has been rechristened the good ship Archie Menzies.

          And some day, long after I and my boat have puttered off to our proper punishment, I hope that little doug fir on Quinault Loop grows into a suitable memorial to Port Townsend’s original Master Gardener.

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Those funky ferries: Run ‘em til they sink!

          Eighty years ago, when my dad was a teenager in California, he routinely crisscrossed San Francisco Bay, frequently riding the ferries Stockton and Redwood Empire – two of the snazzy new boats called “Steel Electrics.”

          The year was 1927, the same year Lindbergh flew the Atlantic and Babe Ruth hit 60 homers.   Calvin Coolidge was in the White House, Henry Ford was rolling the first Model A’s off his Detroit assembly line, and an obscure Austrian corporal named Hitler organized the first Nazi meeting in Berlin. 

          How time flies. All those guys have been dead for decades. My dad outlasted them all; he died four years ago at the tender age of 92.

          But those boats kept right on steaming.  They plied the bay for 10 years, until the completion of a couple of big bridges which rendered them obsolete. So the Steel Electrics moved north to Puget Sound, where the Stockton became the Klickitat the Redwood Empire became the Quinault. And they kept on working like Energizer octogenarians, 16 hours a day, 365 days a year, on Puget Sound routes – including our hometown route across Admiralty Inlet to Whidbey Island...

          Until this month, when state Transportation Secretary Paula Hammond put her foot down.   Enough, she said, is enough. And, oh yeh, have a nice Thanksgiving.

          Hey! How can she do that? The Quinault and Klickitat are as much part of the Port Townsend landscape as the Point Wilson Lighthouse, or the courthouse tower. We love the oak and brass trim, the ever-so-nautical portholes, the long, steep staircases. A lot of us even liked the Celtic harp player who entertained upstairs.

          The PT-to-Whidbey route is the most scenic on the sound. And, at $2.60 a pop for passengers, it has to be one of the one of the world’s best buys in boat rides.

          Or so it was, until Nervous Nellie shut ‘er down. 

          We’ve all heard the explanations. Inspections reveal “cracks” and “leaks” in those 80-year-old steel plates. A consultant reported 184 fractures in the four vessels, including the Klickitat and Quinault.

          It’s enough to make state and Coast Guard officials very, very nervous. Who wants to be in charge when one of those boats breaks up in 60-knot winds and eight-foot waves, and goes to the bottom?   Imagine the finger-pointing.

          But are those funky old boats at risk of sinking?  Not to worry, says Port Townsend’s Carl Allen. And he ought to know. He’s a retired engineer who spent 30 years working the bowels of Washington ferries, the last three of them as chief engineer aboard the 80-year-old Quinault.          “Listen,” he says. “The crews know those boats. And trust me, if it’s even close to being unsafe, they’re not going to be out there working.”

          Allen made thousands of crossings, and never worried about going down with his ship.

          But what about all those cracks and leaks?  Allen sighs. It’s a bit misleading, he says, to say the Steel Electrics are 80 years old. They have been rebuilt, repowered, refitted and renewed. The power systems, he says are essentially the same as the modern Mark II jumbo ferries, which have been amazingly reliable, he says.

          “They’ve been inspected and updated repeatedly. The power systems are solid. The controls are solid. The steering is solid. The upper cabins are solid....”

          And the hulls?

          “Yes, there are pinhole leaks scattered through the older parts of the hull,” he says. “It’s not age so much as defects in the steel. Steel boats corrode from the inside out, and it shows up as these pinholes. They’re structurally sound, but mention those pinholes and everybody freaks out.”

          But Allen acknowledges that boats have lifetimes, and that the Steel Electrics are reaching the end of theirs. Each trip, each landing, each winter storm adds new stresses to an aging hull.

          The Port Townsend-Whidbey crossing is the roughest in the state ferry system. It traverses fierce tidal currents that frequently run against equally fierce winds and seas. The ferries constantly find themselves crossing paths with enormous tankers and freighters.   Just docking the boats, especially at the Keystone terminal, requires a skilled boat handler.

          What worries him most is the risk of a collision – a freighter or tanker that swerves off course or loses power in Admiralty Inlet. “All the technology can work against you,” he says. “You make things work too smooth and comfortable, and people can get complacent.”

          He’s suspicious of last week’s timing. State officials want to replace the boats, and a holiday shutdown could help get the attention of lawmakers.

          Ferry officials are stuck. When they proposed to replace the Steel Electrics with larger boats, and to build new terminals to accommodate them, Port Townsend threw something of a civic fit. We like those old boats just the way they are.

          “There’s no reason you can’t build new ferries just like the Steel Electrics,” Allen says. “But they want the big boats, interchangeable with the rest of the fleet.”

          Allen, for one, predicts the shutdown won’t last very long. The state will inspect those old Steel Electrics, patch the wholes and mend the cracks, and return them to service once they’re sure that lawmakers got the message, he says.

          Meanwhile, we need somebody to blame for cutting our floating lifeline to the rest of the world. We can blame state officials for taking the old boats out of service before they had built new boats that meet our civic and aesthetic standards. We can blame the Coast Guard for being overly cautious.

          We can blame Tim Eyman and the Tax Revolt for all those state initiatives that cut the taxes that were designated to buy new boats. And we can blame a few million of our neighbors who voted those initiatives into law.

          Or we can just stay on our side of the pond, sit back and enjoy it. Does anybody have a good reason to venture over there?  

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30 years celebrating the craft and culture of wooden boats 

My first view of the Port Townsend waterfront came in 1977, when I sailed my 21-foot double-ender up from Seattle for the first Wooden Boat Festival. That’s when I knew I wanted to live here.

Thirty years later, the festival has become an institution, an annual celebration of the arts and crafts of wooden boats, and an exchange of information and good will among the people who continue to keep it alive. This event is the equivalent of an annual convention for people in the maritime trades who are such a vibrant part of the regional culture and economy.
Sustaining an institution for 30 years requires the passions and hard work of countless individuals. There had to be people with a vision and the will to see it through, people to recruit volunteers and take tickets and clean up afterwards, people to volunteer their boats and skills and advice, people to take over the festival helm when others became exhausted, people to refine and update the original vision to keep it all going...
This summer, we talked to a just a few of those people. Here, edited and somewhat distilled for space, is what they had to say:

Carol Hasse

For more than three decades, Carol has advocated Port Townsend as a regional center for traditional maritime trades, and she was an early organizer of the festival. From her sail loft at Port Hudson, she and her friends have created one of the nation’s pre-eminent sailmaking shops. 

 
It’s been a wonderful 30-year run. There’s something truly amazing about this festival. The Port Townsend population doubles or triples, the hotels and restaurants fill up, and it’s all about these beautiful old wooden boats!
Every year we open the doors to the sail loft and people wander through to see how we do what we do. And we’ve never had a bad experience, never had anything stolen. It’s like a dream.
I grew up in Camas, on the Columbia River, and learned to sail with the family doctor and his wife and eight kids. I started college, but then spent a year cruising in the Pacific, and I realized that’s what want to do – sail, hike, play my guitar. So I came back and joined friends in a communal building of a 47-foot ketch. And that’s how I got my job at Schattauer Sails in Seattle and started to learn sailmaking.
In 1975, we were working on that boat, and Sam Connor called to say there was work in Port Townsend. We hoped to make some money to do a circumnavigation. We all were blown away by the beauty of this town, and started dreaming of Port Townsend as a place where people could learn traditional maritime skills from each other, a west coast center for stewardship of the crafts – rigging, boatbuilding, sailmaking. And we started thinking about turning this old, rundown harbor into a campus for some kind of festival..
Sam was living in the pilot house and Tim Snider was working with him. We were all working for the same things, looking for credibility. I was working in this same loft with Ron Harrow. That went on for two years. In ‘78, Ron left and went to the Carribean. And Nora Petrich and I started this business right here. We realized that sailmaking is both a link to the past and something of relevance today. Sailing is as magical as ever, still beautiful and functional.
It’s the same with wooden boats. Those of us afflicted with this dementia believe that wooden boats have souls. They deliver a sheer joy that is not the same with glass or steel boats. There is this whole set of crafts that go into building and maintaining them. And I knew a long time ago that I wanted to be part of that.
Of course, the festival has changed over the years, just as the town has changed. But the essence is still there. I’m drawn to this town as portrayed in the marine trades. It’s a set of values that we share, the desire for beauty and functionality and simplicity. We are an island of people who want to grow our own food, mend our own sails and build our own boats. And that has not changed.
But the town is changing in other ways. Every year, somebody comes along who wants to
put condos and yuppie restaurants on this little harbor. Each time, people here rally to the cause of these beautiful old buildings and this historic little harbor.
I know the town and the festival will continue to grow. I hope to see the Wooden Boat
Foundation and the Maritime Center grow together, using their sailing programs to connect people with the sea. That’s what we all have been working for these 30 years.

Tim Snider
Tim was coordinator of the festival, founding director of the WBF, and an early writer and editor at Wooden Boat Magazine. I found him in overalls and a baseball cap, perched on the porch of his small, energy-efficient home in Port Townsend.
The positive response to Wooden Boat Magazine nurtured the idea of a festival. We felt there was a need for a forum where amateur and professional boatbuilders could come together. And that’s what we wanted to do.
I grew up in Connecticut, where my father and I built a boat when I was a kid. He was a cabinetmaker, and I became a teacher, developing woodworking curriculums and how-to books. Everybody’s boats were wood, unless they were rich. About 1974, I ran into my boating friend Jon Wilson on the docks in Stony Creek (CT). He had a box full of photos and manuscripts, the raw material for this new magazine – Wooden Boat. We put the magazine together and started taking it to boat shows, soliciting subscriptions. We found an incredible thirst for knowledge, and our mission was to find the best answers to people’s questions.
So, in 1976, I came out here to the Pacific Northwest, and I was impressed by the intensity of the wooden boat culture here. I came back in the spring of 1977, driving a van full of magazines, looking for boatbuilders and bookstores to help sell our magazine. And I decided we needed the festival here. I was looking seriously at Anacortes, but I met Sam Connor who invited me to come over and look at Port Townsend. He had a shop at Port Hudson, and the harbor was perfect.
There had been groups of boatbuilders gathering all over the nation, but they tended to have a few beers and then go back to work, making a living. After being a part of other events I knew we could do better. Sam and I opened an office with a phone and a typewriter next to the sail loft at Port Hudson and worked all summer. We put together a program of seminars and how-to sessions with professional faculty from around the nation that encompassed the scope of the wooden boat culture and profession. It was a coming-together of people who had years of experience – Spike Africa and Lance Lee and Earl Wakefield . The trick was to get the older people to talk to the younger people, and it worked.
And people came. We expected 800, maybe 1,000. We got 3,000 people from all over the nation. It became the Woodstock of Wooden Boats.
So we needed to do it again. And we needed an organization. So we came up with the Wooden Boat Foundation, and that winter we started having boatbuilding classes. The next year
we brought in Nat Wilson from the tall ship Eagle, and the next year we got John Gardner from Mystic Seaport.
Initially, the city fathers didn’t know if they supported our Hippie event -- until the first festival sold out the hotels and restaurants. Then they realized that we were a serious organization running a serious festival.
Wooden boats have made a comeback because wood is still the natural material for building boats. A properly-constructed wooden boat can take enormous punishment. And, if something fails, it an be repaired anywhere. That’s why people come here – this tremendous interest in handmade vessels and the persistence and skills that go into building them.

Alex Spear
Alex is a professional woodworker who showed up for the 1979 Wooden Boat Festival – two weeks late. Since then he has made his home here, serving on the WBF Board and opening his 1933 wooden double-ender to visitors each September since 1980.

For me, wooden boats are primarily about beauty. We live in a world where aesthetics get discounted. Most people want bigger and bigger boats with maximum power and maximum living space and maximum speed. There’s an inherent beauty to wooden boats. They represent something older and more important about the human endeavor.
I sailed into Port Townsend from Sitka and Hawaii in the fall of 1979, and missed the festival. I spent the winter on my boat at Port Hudson, met my wife here, and stayed. It was wonderful to come to a place that appreciates wooden boats as I do. And working with the festival, the foundation, and now the Maritime Center was all a natural progression for me.
To me, there is something very special about seeing all the fiberglass boats leave and replaced by these beautiful, amazing wooden boats. It’s a precious few days, an amazing gathering of people who value the same things I value, and people who are willing to share their ideas and skills and experiences. We don’t get many opportunities to do that, and it’s been really important to me.
And there’s always a bit of a letdown when the festival ends, and the wooden boats leave, and the other boats come back. But that’s life.

Mary Dietz McCurdy
Mary served as festival director in the mid-1980s. She now lives on Bainbridge Island, returning frequently to Port Townsend.
The festival attracts people for different reasons. There are people who come to look at the boats, people who come to learn how to build and maintain boats, and people who just come to have fun on a nice day.
But whatever the reasons, somebody still has to pay the bills. When I took over in 1984, the festival was in poor financial shape and some people thought it had strayed from its original purpose. Tim Snider was gone, and some of the city fathers thought we were a bunch of ne’r-do-well hippies – even though we filled the motels and restaurants. The city still doesn’t appreciate the benefits that festival brings to Port Townsend.
There were also lots of people who wanted to help, but they were trying to keep their businesses going, and there was no capacity for philanthropy.
Some new people stepped forward. We sat down and asked ourselves: What’s our vision? How do we rejuvenate this event? We had our dreams, but we had to raise enough money to start actually paying some people rather than relying completely on volunteers. I worked for three or four months without pay, just hoping the festival would raise enough to eventually pay myself.
And we did. I had worked at South Street Seaport in New York, and I’d learned that non-profits have to learn to do retail. So we designed and ordered up T-shirts, and we sold $50,000 worth. We looked for corporate sponsors, and got LaBatts to sponsor the first beer garden. The poster became a best seller. And all that helped bring in the revenue we needed.
Some of the purists don’t like the T-shirts and the beer garden. But we learned that marketing is important. There is a magic to wooden boats. They make people feel good. And that’s what the festival is about. But it’s also about raising some money to keep things going.
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Anne Greer
Anne Greer, who divides her life between homes in Port Townsend and Newport Beach, CA, directed the festival from 1996 to 2000. She spoke by telephone from her southern port.
I believe wooden boats are about much more than history. They are about a wonderful set of skills and crafts that were in danger of being lost, and the Wooden Boat Foundation and Festival are helping to keep those skills alive.
I come from generations of sailors and wooden boats. My parents sailed, my husband sails and builds boats, and our home is filled with boats and spars and sails. We came to Port Townsend first in the late ‘70s, when I was a teacher and a writer working for a boating magazine and my editor suggested I do something with this wild wooden boat festival. I was hooked.
In 1986, we came up for the tenth festival and stayed in our VW camper at Port Hudson. It was a gorgeous three days, and the next year we came back – except this time we bought a nice old Victorian and built a boat shop alongside.
Ten years later, the festival was well-established and the foundation was looking for a festival coordinator. My family also had many years of marketing experience, and I was working in advertising. So I combined by experience in teaching and sailing and promotion. I had learned so much from so many people, and this was my way of trying to give something back.
Some people wanted to keep the festival very local, and others wanted to take it to another level without destroying what we had – to make Port Townsend the “wooden boat mecca” of the nation. I was sympathetic to both arguments. So we took what was already here and tried to tell the rest of world about it. We didn’t have a big budget, but we had a great event to market, and we were able to do that.
Our other charge was to make a clear distinction between the Wooden Boat Foundation and the Festival. The Foundation stages the festival, but it also has an even more important mission to introduce people to the sea and to traditional boats.
I think the merger of the WBF and the Maritime Center is a very positive move. Together, I think they will develop Port Hudson into an even more important center for the maritime trades. I know it hasn’t been easy, but I think it will be a very good thing.

Ernie Baird
Ernie is a Port Townsend shipwright who has served on the boards of the Wooden Boat Foundation and the Northwest Maritime Center.
I arrived here in March of 1977 for reasons that had nothing to do with boats. I attended the Wooden Boat Festival in September, and I was profoundly impressed, and I think disturbed by what I saw. The boats were so compellingly beautiful. It’s hard to articulate, because it’s so much a matter of the heart. But I wanted so much to be part of it.
That thought festered until I was hired by Mark Burn at Port Townsend Boatworks, which spawned so many of the boatyard enterprises of that day. A number of young people had gone fishing in Alaska, made some money, came back and spent that money on repairing and maintaining their boats, which sparked the renaissance of wooden boats in this town. I don’t know that people here appreciate how important that was.
In 1980, I decided I had to build my own bo