Behind Jeff Hammond’s laid back demeanor and Wisconsin drawl is a Master Boat Builder and seasoned instructor who is the Real McCoy. He’s been instructing at the Northwest School of Wooden Boat Building since 1985 and retired a few years back.

As a youth in Wisconsin, Jeff built model boats and canoed with his family on local lakes. After school he entered the construction trade, building houses and cabinets and messing with a few boat building projects here and there. It was a tough time for the construction business, so in 1984 Jeff visited a schoolmate in the Seattle area to look for improved work opportunities. When he told her of his interest in boat building, she suggested they visit Port Townsend and the 4 year old Northwest School of Wooden Boat Building.

Jeff got a tour of the school one fateful day in December 1984 and knew the minute he left, that he would return as a student. Four months later he was enrolled in a 6 month course at the school with 8 classmates. At the end of the term, he enrolled for another 6 months and was asked to work for the school, which he did as instructor, shop person, and student helper.

Five weeks after finishing his second term, Jeff was asked by founder Bob Prothero to return to the school as a regular instructor to replace a retiring instructor. Jeff couldn’t have been more excited for this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to work with beautiful woods on hand crafted boats. He taught at the school for more than 30 years!

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You can contact me at [email protected] to share you comments, feedback, stories, and wooden boat adventures.

Keep the bright side up and the barnacled side down - Wooden Boat Dan over and out :D

PS  Please note this podcast was recorded several years ago - some of the links, email addresses, phone numbers, and promos mentioned are outdated and no longer valid.

Wendy grew up the daughter of a Navy dentist, who made frequent military moves. When her dad was given an assignment in Hawaii, Wendy’s parents bought a Cal ’27 sailboat and enrolled the entire family in sailing lessons. At the age of 7, Wendy was getting her sea legs sailing the Hawaiian Islands. Next, Wendy’s family moved to Washington, DC and began sailing the Chesapeake Bay on a Catalina ’30. Soon Wendy was teaching sailing utilizing the advanced skills she had learned as a youth.

Wendy’s husband Garth also grew up in a sailing family. In fact, during his youth, Garth spent 5 years circumnavigating the world with his parents and siblings. Their trip included a shipwreck in Fiji and other extreme adventures and all navigation was celestial (can you spell sextant?).

It’s not surprising that early in their marriage, Garth and Wendy made plans for their own blue water extravaganza. The first order of business was to save money and pay off their home so they could “get away” for several years and live off the modest $1,000 per month their home would rent for. In 1998 they bought a 31ʹ Tom Wylie designed cold molded cutter – Velella – and 2 years later they were off on their 7 year, 34,000 mile adventure around the Pacific. Wendy has chronicled their blue water undertaking in her newly released book – Tightwads On the Loose: A Seven Year Pacific Odyssey. You can also check out Wendy’s website: WendyHinman.com.

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You can contact me at [email protected] to share you comments, feedback, stories, and wooden boat adventures.

Keep the bright side up and the barnacled side down - Wooden Boat Dan over and out :D

PS  Please note this podcast was recorded several years ago - some of the links, email addresses, phone numbers, and promos mentioned are outdated and no longer valid.

Judging by her enthusiasm and passion for her work at the NW School of Wooden Boat Building, you’d think Katie Whalen had been a hard core wooden boat devotee since her childhood. Quite to the contrary, Katie grew up in southern California as a complete land lubber. It wasn’t until she visited Washington state as an adult that she got a on “boat” for the first time – a Washington state passenger ferry.

Katie was first introduced to the Boat School in the early 1990’s, fell in love with it, and immediately began volunteering. She was fascinated by the school’s mission and the dedication of the small staff, including shipwright Jeff Hammond. Katie was working in Port Townsend in 2006 when she heard the School’s business manager position was being vacated. Katie applied and has loved her dream job ever since. In Katie’s own words, the Boat School “is the real deal”!

In 2011 Katie couldn’t pass up the opportunity to purchase her first wooden boat – a 26ʹ William Atkin’s designed gaff rigged cutter – Barakah. She is a traditional plank on frame carvel planked beauty that was built by the School in 1995.

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You can contact me at [email protected] to share you comments, feedback, stories, and wooden boat adventures.

Keep the bright side up and the barnacled side down - Wooden Boat Dan over and out :D

PS  Please note this podcast was recorded several years ago - some of the links, email addresses, phone numbers, and promos mentioned are outdated and no longer valid.

Today’s interview is with Captain Robert d’Arcy. d’Arcy grew up in Rhode Island, the son of a shipwright. In fact he is a 4th generation shipwright – his great grandfather learned the trade in Scotland and the skills were passed down thru the generations. Robert worked in his dad’s boat shop as a kid starting with sweeping, cleaning, stacking, then moving on to building and restoring. After high school he worked beside his dad to restore a 1914 Nova Scotian schooner that was 46ʹ on deck. Next was a 5 year stint at the Mystic Seaport Museum (CT), doing restoration work on vessels such as the 1841 Wooden Whaling Ship Charles W. Morgan, and the 123ʹ fishing schooner L.A. Dunton.

Robert had friends who owned a 1910 Victorian B&B that needed work, so he switched gears and began using his woodworking skills to repair and renovate Victorian and Colonial homes. In 1995 he moved to the Puget Sound area and met mariners from the Schooner Zodiac and the Northwest Schooner Society. The Society was to become the recipient of a 1907 BB Crowninshield designed 84ʹ Schooner – Martha. They asked Captain d’Arcy if he would be willing to set up a sail training foundation, spearhead the restoration of Martha, and become her Captain.

The boat needed significant restoration work so Robert did his homework on her pedigree and history. She was a worthy steed with a rich and documented history, so he took on the project and established the SchoonerMartha.org Foundation. Martha has been fully restored under d’Arcy’s care over a period of several years and she is being used for sail training on the waters of Puget Sound.

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You can contact me at [email protected] to share you comments, feedback, stories, and wooden boat adventures.

Keep the bright side up and the barnacled side down - Wooden Boat Dan over and out :D

PS  Please note this podcast was recorded several years ago - some of the links, email addresses, phone numbers, and promos mentioned are outdated and no longer valid.

Today’s podcast is Part 2 of my interview with John Lockwood, founder and owner of Pygmy Boats in Port Townsend, WA. If you haven’t listened to Part 1 of the interview, I recommend you start there first by listening to Episode 60.

In Part 2 of the interview, John talks about how he excelled as a computer programmer for 12 years (although it drove him crazy to be indoors all that time), and programmed the first commercially available Plate Expansion Software for “developable surfaces”. He also got the bug big-time to blend his passions and skills together to start a business where he was in control. The result was the 1986 birth of Pygmy Kayaks (now Pygmy Boats) – a stitch and glue boat kit business in Port Townsend. Pygmy Boats offers a large selection of kayaks kits to choose from in addition to a canoe and WineGlass Wherry kit.

You can contact me at [email protected] to share you comments, feedback, stories, and wooden boat adventures.

Keep the bright side up and the barnacled side down - Wooden Boat Dan over and out :D

PS  Please note this podcast was recorded several years ago - some of the links, email addresses, phone numbers, and promos mentioned are outdated and no longer valid.

Today’s interview is with John Lockwood, founder and owner of Pygmy Boats in Port Townsend, WA. John is originally from St. Louis, Missouri where he bird hunted, and played and fished on the lakes and rivers with his family in their 20ʹ canoe. During this time, John got HOOKED (no pun intended :)) on exploring, fishing, swimming, camping and enjoying the great outdoors.

After a one year stint at Union College in New York, John launched into a 5 year adventure of traveling and exploring the mountains, rivers, wildernesses, and outdoors of the US and Mexico. The recurring theme was to work and save, then travel and explore until funds needed replenished; then work and save, and repeat. John’s stops included the Palouse in eastern Washington (wheat farm), the Snake River (drillers helper), the Wollowa Mountains in Oregon (horse packing fisherman to high lakes), and Aspen, Colorado (ski area), among others.

In 1968, John broke his hip and was on crutches for 7 1/2 years. This turn of events took John abruptly out of the wilderness and to the halls of Harvard where he studied Anthropology and Computer Science. He was

During his years in Cambridge, he yearned to get back to the wilderness. In spite of his limited mobility on crutches, John knew he could propel himself thru the water in a kayak using his upper body strength. So in

This was just the beginning of John’s many adventures on and off the water designing, building, and using small boats.

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Keep the bright side up and the barnacled side down - Wooden

PS  Please note this podcast was recorded several years ago

Today’s interview is with Sean & Inger Rankins of Port Townsend, WA. The Rankins own and operate Northwest Sail and Canvas Makers.

Inger is originally from Norway, and as a youth was regularly rowing the families wooden clinker workboats to and fro the island her grandparents lived on. Inger learned to sew her own clothes at a young age, and in 1990 began applying those skills to marine canvas work. She has had her own marine canvas business since 1999 and enjoys the creativity of making sail covers, boat covers and other canvas boat parts.

Sean grew up in southern California boating and fishing in his dad’s classic woody boats. After college, Sean began sailing and became a sailmaker apprentice at North Sails in San Diego. Sean crafts custom sails from his loft in Port Hadlock, WA. He enjoys working with his hands, and getting out on the water every chance he gets.

Among other boats, Sean and Inger own a 26ʹ Danish Spidsgatter 38 meter class – Cito, and a 20ʹ Norwegian Spissgatter keelboat - Havhesten.

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Keep the bright side up and the barnacled side down - Wooden

PS  Please note this podcast was recorded several years ago

Today’s interview is with Kaci Cronkhite of Port Townsend. Kaci grew up on a cattle ranch in Oklahoma riding horses and waterskiing behind her family’s Chris Craft runabout. Her ancestors were dutch, and the first family emigrant to the US was a shipbuilder.

When Kaci was in her 30’s, she sailed for the first time and it felt eerily familiar to horseback riding – position, balance, wind in your hair. She was intrigued and hooked at the same time. A few years later she sailed

When Kaci arrived in Port Townsend in 2001, she was asked to become the Wooden Boat Festival Director. She dove in head first and for the next 10 years gave it 110%. In 2007 Kaci purchased her first wooden boat – a 28ʹ Danish Spidsgatter “Pax” built in 1936. Kaci is finishing a restoration on the boat and is writing a book about her history – Finding Pax – to be published shortly.

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Keep the bright side up and the barnacled side down - Wooden

PS  Please note this podcast was recorded several years ago

Today’s interview is with John Harris of CLC Boats. John spent his growing up years in South Carolina – the son of a “sailing obsessed father (and he still is)” who built stuff and was an engineer. He sailed with his dad on inland lakes in a Snipe, Sunfish and other small boats. John grew up thinking it was perfectly normal that if you needed a piece of furniture, you went out to your shop and built it. When he was in his early teens, he wanted a boat, so he built one (a rowing shell)- and got addicted to the process of designing and building boats.

After college, John went to work for a boatshop in Maryland where among other things he cut out boat parts for Chris Kulczycki’s fledgling kit company, Chesapeake Light Craft. In 1994 John joined up with Chris full time.

He loved the fact that he could mess around with wooden boats all day and somehow get paid for it. In late 1999 John purchased CLC Boats from Chris and has grown the company to offer more than 100 different

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You can contact me at [email protected] to share you

Keep the bright side up and the barnacled side down - Wooden

PS  Please note this podcast was recorded several years ago - some of the links, email addresses, phone numbers, and promos mentioned are outdated and no longer valid.

The first interview in today’s podcast is with Steve Stone of Brooklin, Maine. I met Steve at the 2012 Port

Steve grew up sailing, later studied filmmaking, and fell in love with wooden vessels along the way. Steve is

The second interview is with Eric Blake of OffCenterHarbor.com and Brooklin Boatyard of Brooklin, Maine.

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You can contact me at [email protected] to share you

Keep the bright side up and the barnacled side down - Wooden

PS  Please note this podcast was recorded several years ago