What a round about way to talk about old times in Port Townsend Wash. It started out with finishing 2 years of boat building school at Seattle Community College back in the late '60's. When it came to looking for a job time it suddenly dawned on me that the wooden boats I liked so much were not going to have many job openings. Anything I could find was in a plastic boat factory.
I heard about a wooden boat workshop/coop in Pt Townsend so I had to go check it out. It was housed in a very large old boat house but sadly a little cliquish with the few projects they had. You could pay to work there kinda like a school but not really. They were on a shoe string.
So I got a few dirty jobs in the haul-out yard at the main harbor. Hull cleaning, caulking, painting and a little bit of finish work. At least it was mostly wood. Then a girlfriend moved up from Seattle and we shared a place and met a lot of people.
Now we get to the chef part .....
Not counting watching Chef Gordon Ramsay and Jamie Oliver cooking shows
Hanging out at two beach bars we fell in with this crowd that would be invited once a week to come to the then best restaurant in town after closing the bar and he would feed anywhere from 10 to 20 people in absolutely gourmet fashion. Mostly we would all chip in to pay for materials but if you didn't have it, it was no problem. I'll never forget his magic and it was all healthy food.
White front is a chain restaurant but good
Red brick to the right was his long narrow restaurant without a deck then
Couldn't find older pictures but seems the Coop is almost a museum
Don't know if they even work there any more it's so clean
Now called the Wooden Boat Foundation
Refurbished BC Forestry boat from the 1920's
Met a couple who bought and traveled around Puget Sound in what they said was an old US Postal Service Alaska mail boat. It was 50-60 feet long and narrow and could really move with the huge diesel. Long and narrow makes it roll with any type of weather. Looked very much like the Canadian boat but a little more worn. We put it up on blocks in the haul out yard to work on bottom planks ... and there it sat when I last visited PT
The Ex-Western Flyer
The Ex-Western Flyer (from Steinbeck's Sea of Cortez expedition) sits in the Port Townsend haul out yard totally covered in barnacles while a couple of organizations around Monterrey Bay argue where it will end up. Where it sank I have no idea but interesting boats do end up in Port Townsend,
Where did I go from here ...... who knows?
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