Solo ocean rower has boat built in Port Townsend

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Port Townsend has always attracted adventurous seafarers, and a prime example is Sonya Baumstein, 29, who is undertaking an epic voyage for the sake of the Pacific Ocean.

A boat has been built here that she plans to row the 6,000 miles from Japan to California. Baumstein has no support boat, no engine and no sails. She expects the solo rowing adventure to take as long as 180 days.

Is she scared?

“There’s a lot of anticipation,” she said. She has set a tentative, weather-dependent departure date of April 15.

Not only is Baumstein an experienced expedition athlete, she’s also an expert networker; she has a master’s degree in nonprofit management, and has found numerous sponsors for her endeavors.

She has been working toward this rowing project, dubbed “Expedition Pacific,” for three years. She and a crew of three began building the fiberglass boat at Port Townsend’s Northwest Maritime Center (NWMC) in November 2014, pulling several all-nighters there, before the project was shifted to a private shop in the Glen Cove area.

Baumstein gives a presentation about her journey at 6 p.m., Friday, Jan. 16 at the Northwest Maritime Center. The event is also a fundraiser; she still needs $30,000 to help pay for electronics and travel expenses. Donations are accepted through her website, expeditionpacific.com. At the Jan. 16 event, the boat is to be fully equipped and displayed side by side with the boat she helped to row across the Atlantic in 2011, and “people can play with it.” A $10 suggested donation benefits the expedition; all are welcome.

She expects the new boat to weigh around 350 kilograms (771 pounds), including electronics. It has just enough room for her to lie down in the cabin, where she’ll be strapped in while sleeping to keep from bouncing around too much. The cockpit allows enough space for her to sit and row. She’ll carry a life raft; 600 pounds of Backpacker’s Pantry meals; an electric water maker that produces 30 liters of water per hour, powered by a solar and lithium-battery-powered electrical system; a GPS; three sets of Sawyer oars; an emergency position-indicating radio beacon; and solar panels to charge batteries for running scientific data-collecting electronics.

RAISING AWARENESS

Baumstein is driven by a desire to raise awareness about the ocean.

“Citizen science is important to me,” she said.

The boat is to be equipped with about 150 pounds of gadgets that monitor currents, water salinity and surface temperature, valuable oceanographic research data that, she said, “may help us unlock why our environment is changing so rapidly. My team and I aim to educate and to collect as much information as possible throughout this expedition.”

Baumstein will ship the boat to her departure point in Choshi, Japan, take a flight there herself on April 10, then prepare the boat and wait for a window of three days of offshore wind to boost her into the northeasterly Kuroshio current headed to San Francisco.

For energy to row at least 12 hours each day, she’ll have “four meals a day of Backpacker’s Pantry,” plus jerky, water supplements and a weight-gain powder that’s “not protein but more fat and carbs.”

THE BOAT

This is not the first boat to be built in Port Townsend for the purpose of a solo rowing adventure. In 1996, a 28-foot craft was built here for Mick Bird, who used it to row from California to Hawai‘i, and then, in three legs over two years, to Australia.

Baumstein’s boat was designed by Paul Bieker and Eric Jolley of Bieker Boats in Seattle.

Baumstein has worked long hours in local boat shops, alongside Alex Lockwood, Simon Miles and Michael “Barto” Barton.

She met Miles through a friend of a friend in the Bay Area; he had been working for a company in Alameda, building autonomous submersibles for the military. He recently moved to Port Townsend and opened his own shop, 206 Composites.

Construction of Baumstein’s boat began in November 2014 at the Northwest Maritime Center (NWMC) downtown, which had the heated space the project needed.

“It was very difficult to find a heated shop,” Baumstein said. They used an epoxy that had to be above 60 degrees. Several people suggested NWMC, and when she stopped by, “Scott [Jones, NWMC’s boat shop manager] was like, ‘Yeah, you can move in right now.’ … I think I just had perfect timing … the [Port Townsend] community has been super awesome,” said the ebullient Baumstein.

By mid-December, the two sections of the boat were done and moved to Miles’ shop to be finished.

“I’m super, super excited,” Baumstein said. “This is how I always envisioned it happening: building my boat day by day in a beautiful place surrounded by good people. I never wanted to buy a boat from someone and row it. I wanted this to feel like a family project, and like this boat was an extension of me. I feel lucky every day to have just that. The exact way that I’m building [the boat] now is how I always wanted it done.”

Years of careful planning are paying off.

SHORE SUPPORT

Baumstein’s persistence also helps her attract and maintain sponsors. People trust her to finish what she sets out to do, she said. “I was able to secure sponsors because they believe I’m going to follow through.”

Diligent networking also helps.

“I follow every single lead.” Once, a seatmate on an airplane gave her several phone numbers of people sponsoring expeditions (e.g., Mount Everest climbs). She followed those leads, and secured her first sponsor in the form of a medical kit and remote medical services from Andrew Cull, a Seattle paramedic who is serving as medical adviser for Expedition Pacific.

Gold Star Marine has let her store molds for the fiberglass boat in its facility at the Port Townsend Boat Haven, and Green Pod and Morgan Hill Vacations have given her a place to stay. “Admiral Ship Supply and Pacific Fiberglass have given me great pricing, and the Northwest Maritime Center has been incredibly supportive of the project. Betsy Davis at the [Northwest School of Wooden Boatbuilding in Port Hadlock] has been awesome,” Baumstein noted.

The biggest single expense is the labor, which is sponsored by SpinDrift Ocean Rowing, builder of ocean rowboats.

Cull, co-owner of SpinDrift, is a close friend and a key part of Baumstein’s shore support team. “He’s my Everyman … he’s really, really important to the project,” said Baumstein.

Also on her team is Simon Chalk, an experienced ocean rower who would coordinate a full-on rescue if needed.

Chalk will also monitor weather and currents, and help her figure out what course to row each day. She’ll have a small computer and satellite phone, and should be able to download GRIB files: charts showing the path and strength of wind overlaid with arrows showing the direction of the currents. Her weather router is Lee Chesneau of Seattle.

Her team includes a director of science, Gary Lagerloef, and a director of education, Jamie Walker, who will help bring Baumstein’s experience, via webinars, to students at participating schools.

Three schools have signed up. In exchange for 6,000 environmental service hours per school (to match her miles), the schools receive a series of webinars to supplement their science and geography curricula.

Every four hours, data will be uploaded from her boat’s observation equipment, which will be processed to make a chart of the ocean currents. It’ll be useful for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) as well as for the students, and would be open source, available on expeditionpacific.com.

OCEAN EXPERIENCE

It makes a difference that this 2015 effort is not Baumstein’s first ocean crossing.

“Ninety percent of people who [attempt to row across oceans] have no ocean experience,” she said.

She doesn’t read memoirs of ocean rowers. “I’ll talk to them,” she said, and she has done so, but “those stories are very individual and include emotions that aren’t necessarily relevant to the knowledge I’ll need. In other words, I insulate myself from anxiety as much as possible. ... People read those to get that sense of adventure. ... I don’t need the fear and terror built into those [books].”

Baumstein lives it.

She grew up in Orlando, Florida, and has always loved water sports, including sailing, whitewater paddling and surfing. She was recruited for the University of Wisconsin rowing team, but her collegiate athletic career was cut short in 2004, when she was hit by a car in Florida while walking across a road with some friends. Years of surgeries and physical therapy did not keep her down.

In December 2011, she rowed across the Atlantic as part of a four-person team. It took them 56 days, 9 hours and 20 minutes to row from the Canary Islands to Bermuda.

“I would never expect to do the Pacific if I hadn’t done the Atlantic,” she said.

Just six weeks later, she bicycled the Pacific Coast Highway from Mexico to Seattle.

“When I was [bicycling] through Oregon, I started thinking about [rowing] the Pacific,” she said. Of her expeditions, she said, “I have to speak them into existence.”

Next, she kayaked the Inside Passage from Seattle to Juneau, Alaska.

In July 2013, she became the first person to traverse the Bering Strait on a stand-up paddleboard, after waiting for a weather window for several weeks in the tiny town of Wales, Alaska, where she recalls a local telling her, “‘You did this right. You have to have to respect for the ocean and the land, then it will allow you across. Too many people come expecting to cross at their will and do not respect the importance of time.’ I feel good about that.”

Anything having to do with the ocean “feels like a gift,” she said.