If you visited the Wooden Boat Festival this fall, you may have seen some beautiful bouquets decorating the multitude of boats there, and if your boat was in the festival, you may have met some of the high school sailing team members selling bouquets there to fundraise. 

This year, as COVID began to wane, and the Wooden Boat Festival returned, we decided to rekindle the sailing team’s tradition of fundraising by selling bouquets to participants in the festival. 

After the festival, we realized that we wanted to continue to fundraise for multiple reasons. 

The first, and most glaring, is that our boats need repairs — and a lot of them. Last spring, our team gained six c420s, which are dinghies with spinnakers and trapezes, but they did not come in the condition we expected, and we are hoping to do general repairs, as well as some improvements. 

Secondly, as our team has grown our desire to sail better, learn more, and compete at higher levels has also grown. Two members of our team went to the Gorge last summer to participate in the Wind Clinic/Regatta, multiple people attended Youth Circuit regattas in 420s and lasers in the summer, and four girls went to the Junior Women’s c420 clinic in Bellingham. 

This year we’re hoping that we’ll have the resources for anyone who wants to attend any of the clinics mentioned above can go, and for the team to be able to participate more in Youth Circuit regattas, and because of that we are continuing to fundraise. 

If you would like to help teach the next generation of sailors, you can find us at @pthssailingteam on Instagram.

Panya Cao
PORT TOWNSEND