Port Townsend Wooden Boat Festival 2026

Whether it’s sailors griping about lack of wind, or powerboaters fearing steep and dangerous seas - the conditions in the Pacific Northwest present special challenges, due to the complexity of the many weather systems that interact in this region.  Captain Phyllis Woolwine owns Shearwater University - Maritime Education.  Speaking from 50 years of experience on the Salish Sea & Inside Passage, and 11 years providing custom training for hundreds of boaters of all types in these waters, she will provide a highly practical, science based, and interactive seminar on Pacific Northwest Marine Weather.  This topic is presented in a conceptual, non-technical manner that all boaters can understand and apply.
- What makes PNW marine weather so complex - and how can we make sense of it?
- Strategies to ensure that sailors get wind, powerboaters avoid dangerous seas, and all boaters use knowledge & strategies to stay safe, advantaging our crazy conditions.
  - Best sources & apps for marine weather - and the best ways to use them

The program will illustrate Viking culture and traditional ship construction, from harvesting trees to launch. Aspøya Boats in Anacortes, Washington drew a community of volunteers and shipwrights to accomplish a nearly insurmountable challenge. Valkyrie was launched in the spring of 2024 and now sails the Salish Sea in Washington State.

The sea doesn't care what gender you are. But other people do — or did. Grand yacht clubs banned female members, the Royal Navy rejected the WW2 Wrens, and even when leisure sailing was opening to a wider public, women's social and economic inequality made participation harder. My presentation will focus on some of the inspiring women, throughout the c20th, who  went to sea anyway. They were the pioneers whose spirit of independence led the way for others. Some names you will have heard of but too many were invisible or forgotten.  We can change that.

Solianna and her father Bruce spent six years —from  the time Solianna was age 13 to 19 — building a sailing dingy from scratch. They will recount the project from the design process to the harvesting of wood from the forests and beaches of Orcas Island to the construction of the standing lug sail.

Pacifica
The story behind the classic 1947 Sparkman & Stephens Yawl

In 1947, Avard Fuller, of the Fuller Brush family, had the 49-foot Sparkman and Stephens designed Eroica built in the Henry B. Nevins Boatyard, New York—she would later be renamed, Pacifica. Fuller and Stephens utilized what's considered one of the first extruded aluminum mast for a sailboat. This was just one in a series of breakthrough innovations found in Sparkman & Stephens yawls of the period that would change the course of yacht design.

The short film from nautical photographer Mark Albertazzi, relives the history behind Pacifica, her times on the East Coast, Mediterranean, and eventual move to the West Coast and its current home in Port Townsend, Washington. You’ll hear stories from those who have taken on the role of caretakers and their passion and perseverance to preserve one of the remaining classic yawls from the drawing boards of Olin and Rod Stephens.

Pacifica, is the third installment in a series of oral maritime history films by Albertazzi, with support from the Ancient Mariners Educational Fund, Ancient Mariners Sailing Society, and Maritime Museum of San Diego.