What was once an artifact from the voyage of a woman who made maritime history has become a means to empower other women in their own journeys.

The Felicity Ann was launched at Point Hudson Marina May 1, marking the first time it’s been in the water in more than 50 years, Wayne Chimenti, organizer of the Community Boat Project.

The Felicity Ann was designed in 1936, built in England in 1939 with the name Peter Piper and launched for the first time in 1949 as the Felicity Ann.

But the Felicity Ann gained its greatest fame when Englishwoman Ann Davison, then 39 years old, used the boat to become the first woman to sail solo across the Atlantic, 1952-1953.

“It was considered as historic an achievement as the first summiting of Mount Everest, all the more so because Ann Davison was not a sailor,” Chimenti said.

Jefferson County boatbuilders have seen the craft as their vehicle for recruiting more women into the maritime industry ever since 2003, when the staff and students of the Northwest School of Wooden Boatbuilding first became the vessel’s stewards.

Last August marked the official handoff of the Felicity Ann from the boatbuilding school to the Community Boat Project, whose members took over the task of completing the 23-foot sloop’s restoration with an eye toward using the craft as part of the project’s maritime education programs.

“It’s been nine months of effort since then,” Chimenti said. “It’s like birthing a baby.”

Chimenti praised the multiple classes of the boatbuilding school whose students had a literal hand in restoring the vessel. Among them is Penelope Partridge, a Class of 2014 alum of the school who became the program coordinator for the Felicity Ann boat project in 2012.

The program got underway with roughly half a dozen volunteer instructors and nearly a dozen Port Townsend High School students – all women – learning wooden boatbuilding skills in the process of restoring the Felicity Ann to its original 1939 condition.

“Women are amazing,” said Partridge, who asked all those in attendance at the May 1 boat launching to take the time that day to “listen to a woman, any woman, tell a story about her life, without being distracted by your cell phone or your food, and believe her.”

Nahja Chimenti, Wayne Chimenti’s daughter, is stepping up as the Felicity Ann’s captain. She joined Partridge and Carey Seefeld, who worked on the boat’s sails and hull, in crewing the vessel as it was lowered into the water via crane on May 1.

Nahja still plans to take the Felicity Ann out on a “victory lap” around Puget Sound this summer, as she promised last August, but she admitted to not yet knowing the exact shape of the education programs that will be run from her decks.

“I want to empower women, but also people in general,” said Nahja, a self-described “inclusive” feminist who hopes the boat can afford maritime experience to those who have “never done anything on board a boat before.”

Scottish-born Simon de Voil led the attendees of the launching in laying their hands on the Felicity Ann to perform a community blessing, “because it’s the community’s boat.”

De Voil, who felt a calling 10 years ago to become “a boatbuilding minister,” noted that the title of Davison’s autobiography, “My Ship Is So Small,” is taken from a Breton prayer.

“This ship will have a crew that won’t necessarily know what it’s doing, so they need this blessing,” de Voil joked, alluding to the student crews that Nahja Chimenti expects to take on board.

De Voil now passes on his boatbuilding skills to Quilcene students, but he recalled the Scottish seaside village of his youth, where “women were not allowed on board the boats, because they were considered bad luck. There was incredible inequality.”

As a transgender person, de Voil sees the Felicity Ann as one way to help foster equality on a number of vectors, just as he described Davison as using the vessel to travel “from the old world to the new.”