2019 Wooden Boat Festival Follow-Up

I recently got back from the Wooden Boat Festival in Port Townsend, Washington, and it was a very long drive, so I’ve been spending some time recovering and not blogging. It was a great experience though, with a very supportive event staff and many, many appreciative visitors. The event took place over three days in September by the Northwest Maritime Center, and has apparently been going on every year since 1977.

I made the long drive up from home, staying overnight at my sister’s home in Shelton, Washington. From the San Francisco Bay Area, it was a 14-hour drive in my car loaded with models of Japanese traditional boats, plus tools and supplies to demonstrate model construction. Luckily, everything arrived safely.

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Port Townsend Wooden Boat Festival, Sept 6-8, 2019

The Port Townsend Wooden Boat festival is coming up this weekend, and I’m headed up to Washington state tomorrow for a long, long drive, to display a number of models of Japanese traditional boats the whole weekend inside the boat shop.

I’ll also be demoing construction of 1/20 and 1/10 scale models of a rice field boat from the area of Himi, a small town in western Toyama prefecture on the Japan Sea coast. I’ll be working on some other models too, since I’ll be there for three days.

Here’s a link to some of the info on the Himi rice field boat that boatbuilder Douglas Brooks built for the Himi museum: http://www.douglasbrooksboatbuilding.com/zutta-tenma.html

Mr. Brooks held a workshop in Port Towsend last week in which students spent several days learning to build a Japanese-style river boat using traditional tools and techniques. That boat will be on display at the festival, and there will be a small shinto ceremony followed by a boat launching ceremony on Sunday, preceded by a taiko drum performance by Seatle-based group, School of Taiko.

At the boat launching, your’s truly has been roped into leading a lively mast-raising song (yes, not a sail raising song – we’re talking Japanese here) called Hobashira Okoshi Ondo with some call and answer audience participation. Hopefully, I won’t screw it up, but you never know… 🤨

For details on the festival, check out the following link: https://woodenboat.org

If you’re in the area and have a chance to visit the festival, please stop by and say hello! Ω