One of the major small boat events of the year is the annual Pocket Yacht Palooza. Photo courtesy Marty Loken

Many a seafaring man and woman first got their taste of boating at an early age during family outings, often establishing fond memories that later translated to owning larger boats. But an informal group of like-minded seafarers have decided to buck the notion that bigger is better, choosing instead to downsize and return to simpler days and smaller boats. 

Marty Loken has been building and restoring boats both big and small since he was a kid, growing up on Marrowstone Island. While Loken has owned larger boats, he said a push in recent years has been made to think smaller when getting out on the water. 

“About 10 years ago, a bunch of mutual friends who had small boats spontaneously got together over a beer and decided to start holding a few events on the water,” Loken said.

Originally called small boat “mess-abouts” the excursions, which originally started with three or four boats, quickly began to grow. Loken credited Josh Colvin of Small Craft Advisor magazine with coining the term “Pocket Yachters.”

A few years after the Pocket Yachters began messing about, Loken orchestrated the inaugural Pocket Yacht Palooza at the Northwest Maritime Center.

“It quickly became the largest gathering of small boats that we could identify anywhere in the country,” he said. “It was mostly a static, on-land display of eccentric small boats.”

The 2021 Palooza was on track to bring out the droves of small boat enthusiasts once again, but unfortunately, a pandemic blew a gale into those plans and organizers had to make the tough call to cancel the 2020 Pocket Yacht Palooza.   

Loken said there’s no pretense with the group, which bills itself as an informal collection of like-minded small boat lovers, rather than any sort of formal yacht club.

“The key for the Pocket Yachters is it’s free, we don’t have officers, we don’t have bylaws, we don’t have rules, we don’t have prices,” Loken explained. “We just have fun on the water.”

While many of the pocket yachts are indeed made of wood, Loken was careful to note that the group doesn’t discriminate against the constituent materials of the compact cruisers.

“We’re not a wooden boat group,” Loken said. “It’s a very democratic philosophy of appreciating all kinds of small boat designs and not being prejudiced against fiberglass. If it’s a great design, it’s a great design. What a lot of people really appreciate about the pocket yachters, is that we’ve celebrated any small boat design that was beautiful and functional.”

Especially, Loken added, the designs that lend themselves nicely to camp-cruising.

Last year, the Pocket Yachters organized the Salish 100, a week-long 100-nautical-mile cruise from Olympia to Port Townsend that makes overnight stops in Hope Island, Gig Harbor, Blake Island, Kingston, and Mats Mats Bay.   

“You’ll see everything and anything ranging from homebuilt kayaks and rowboats to vintage fiberglass pocket cruising sailboats and everything in between,” Loken said, just as long as they adhere to the one semi-unwritten rule of the group.    

While the group was set to hold another Salish 100 this year with 135 registered participants, the event was ultimately canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Loken is hopeful that the 2021 Salish 100 will see plenty of cruisers.

While the Pocket Yachters are open to all manner of small boats, one of the few guidelines for participants is that boats remain “trailerable.”

“Everybody asks ‘What is a small boat?’ for the Pocket Yachters, the main defining term is trailerability, or something you can put on a roof rack.”

Pocket yachts, Loken says, should be able to be kept at home, in a driveway or a garage, always at the ready to launch somewhere new and enjoy the connection to the water. 

“If you only have a weekend, you can be cruising on the lower Columbia River or you can go to Lake Roosevelt or up the B.C. Coast. You can do that without having to take two weeks off to do it in a big slow boat,” Loken said. “That’s one of the things I’ve loved, being able to explore some of the most interesting boating destinations, saltwater and freshwater, just by driving there in a few hours.”       

Speaking to the comparatively exponential simplicity found in smaller boats over their heftier counterparts, Loken said the main appeal for Pocket Yachters went well beyond the markedly lower - and in many cases non-existent - costs of ownership, maintenance, moorage, insurance and annual haul-outs.

“A lot of us grew up as kids in small boats, that’s how we got into boating, by fishing, waterskiing, whatever,” he explained. “Naturally we all migrated into bigger and bigger boats, and discovered quite often later in life, that the most fun we ever had on the water was when we were kids in a small boat.”

“Kits go together with such precision these days, because of CNC-cut parts, everything fits perfectly,” Loken said. “It’s impossible to get a hull that isn’t symmetrical. The finished project can be a gorgeous boat.”

Loken also pointed to Port Townsend’s active marine tradespeople, boat school, history and culture as being key element in fostering an environment that allows for groups like the Pocket Yachters.   

“We are so lucky to be where we are here. Port Townsend has really become one of the centers for small boat building, design and enjoyment,” Loken said. “We’re absolutely in the right spot, because of the waters we have for small boat cruising and the culture we have here.”