‘Why do you own a wooden boat?’

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On Saturday, Sept. 9, in the middle of the Wooden Boat Festival, The Leader went to Point Hudson and asked boaters: “Why do you own a wooden boat?”

Vancouver, British Columbia, native Simon Fawkes only just acquired the 1903 anchor seine Providence this year, but he’s worked aboard the 80-foot-long, Danish-built vessel for 25 years, under former owner Peter-Thor Watson, who himself acquired it in 1978.

“It’s the oldest working boat in British Columbia. I’ve had other boats, and I’ve loved them all, but she’s a piece of history, with such amazing capabilities.”

The Providence was chartered by the Royal Danish Navy for much of the 1940s and 1950s, with the German Navy briefly commandeering the vessel in 1943, before it was transferred to the Danish Naval Home Guard in 1958.

Although Fawkes knows the boat well, gradually gaining legal ownership of it over the past three years, he didn’t have a homeport big enough for it, until the Britannia Shipyard National Historic Site in Richmond, B.C., offered to house it in exchange for making it the shipyard’s flagship.

Seattle’s Stuart Weibel is happy to fly the banner of the Northwest School of Wooden Boatbuilding, whose students built his 30-foot-long Atkins tops’l cutter Ripple in 1994.

Weibel purchased the boat in 2009, after two years of searching for a boat and concluding that all the other models he found interesting were well out of his financial reach.

“I wasn’t interested in wooden boats at first,” Weibel said. “I wasn’t a wood enthusiast. But now I understand. As soon as I sat in her, I fell in love with her, and I’ve never been sorry since.”

Weibel theorizes that William Atkins, who designed the vessel in 1949, had an appealing sense of proportion, which allows his boat to be low to the water without feeling confined.

“It all adds up to an indefinable aesthetic,” Weibel said. “This is my first and only wooden boat, and it comes with a community.”

Sequim’s Gary Rainwater acquired the 84-foot-long former fishing boat Ladyhawk in 1977.

“My wife wanted a smaller boat,” said Rainwater, a man of few words, about his reasons for buying the boat, which was built in Denmark in 1934, and still sports a 100-horsepower, 2-cylinder, semi-diesel “sail-helping” motor.

“It’s just primitive,” he added, when asked if that type of engine has any advantages. “We have to keep these old things alive.”

Rainwater’s passion for such vessels was born when he saw “a Baltic trader up on the waves,” sailing into a fishing harbor in the 1960s.

The Ladyhawk was part of the North Sea fishing fleet for 43 years, sailing between England and Denmark until it was brought out of the fleet in 1977, just before Rainwater bought it.

Although Rainwater acknowledged that the Ladyhawk has continued to incur hefty costs, including $8,000 per year just to dock it, he can’t imagine doing anything else.

“It’s a lifestyle,” Rainwater said. “It’s not like I’m going to play golf.”

The Wallace family of Bellingham is well accustomed to life on board ship.

Wife and mom Chris Wallace explained that she, her husband, Jeffery, and their 19-year-old daughter, Juliet, traded down from a 3,600-square-foot house on land to the 128-foot-long Zodiac, to their current home since 2010, the 63-foot-long BC Forester, a Canadian forestry vessel.

“It’s meant to accommodate a crew of 13 comfortably, so it’s been more than enough for a family of three, especially since our daughter went off to college last year,” Wallace said. “I couldn’t live on land again, not with views so close to Mother Nature.”

Living on board has made her family so aware of their environmental impact that they turn off the water in the middle of washing their hands, even as guests on land.

“Being conscious of water usage is necessary for survival at sea,” Wallace said.

“It also helps you appreciate how to live simply. I see all these million-dollar homes on the coast, and I think, we’re the view they’re looking at, and we’re not even paying a mortgage.”

Neither Darren Lindley nor Nick Luchterhand had ever owned or built a boat before December 2016, but when armed with a series of training videos and a supply of gorgeous wood, the duo from Beaverton, Oregon, managed to assemble a 26-foot-long Caledonia yawl, following the designs of Iain Oughtred, by June of this year.

“Right now, we usually find an island, go ashore and pitch a tent to camp out, but we’d like to build a base for a mattress in the boat, so we can turn the boat into a tent,” Lindley said.

Building a boat was a childhood dream for both men, but when a 17-year-old Lindley tried to emulate his uncle by building his own boat, “all I got was firewood.”

Even when they followed a video series devoted to explaining how to build a boat, the duo was left to their own devices when the videos omitted instructions on how to shape curved planks.

“Every stick of wood had been a reward,” Lindley said. “Even in 35-mph winds, she sails like a dream.”

Stu Keck used to crew on the 1932 Swiftsure classic yacht Circe in the 1960s, before he bought it from Jack Seaborn, the twin brother of Ben Seaborn, the man who designed it as a 16-year-old.

Ray Cooke, the Seaborns’ stepfather, won the first Swiftsure International Yacht Race in 1930, and with the 67-foot-long Circe, he won it again in 1934.

“I offered Jack to buy half-ownership of the boat in 1968, and by 1972, I bought the final half,” said Keck, an Annapolis graduate who served in both the Navy and the Air Force.

“I did all my training in Vermont, which is a long way from the water,” Keck said. “I know how valuable that opportunity is, so I wanted to give it to the young kids coming up.”

When Keck moved to California after a house fire in 1984, he was at a loss for a place to moor his boat, until he made a deal with the Seattle Yacht Club in 1990, where University of Washington midshipmen have trained on his vessel ever since.