Shipwrights News & Stories

Lacey: First Miles on the Great Loop, Down the Mississippi

Thu, 08 Oct 2026 19:13:06 GMT

Lacey is underway on the Mississippi

Lacey is officially on the Great Loop! After a ride across the country on a flatbed, she went back in the water on October 2nd near St. Louis, where Demian is starting and finishing the Loop. Since then he has reassembled her and put her first 18 river miles behind them. Here's how the first week of the roughly 6,000-mile trip went.

Off the truck and into the river

On Friday, October 2, the Drift Co. Boat Hauling truck pulled into Saint Charles, Missouri, with Lacey strapped to the trailer. She had shared the ride with another boat and a truck, and she came through it without trouble. That same day she went back in the water.

Putting her back together in Grafton

A boat that's been on a truck doesn't come off it ready to go. Demian spent the first days rearranging gear and starting the reassembly. On Saturday afternoon, October 3, he made a short 4-mile run to Grafton, Illinois, the small river town where the Illinois River meets the Mississippi.

He stayed in Grafton through Tuesday morning and kept working on her. The harbor turned out to be a good place to do it, with the town climbing the hill behind the docks and sunsets like the one below.

Downriver to Alton

Around midday on Tuesday, October 6, Lacey left Grafton and ran 14 miles down the Mississippi to Alton, Illinois. That stretch of river runs along the white limestone bluffs of the Great River Road.

Alton comes into view with its riverfront bluffs and the Clark Bridge, a cable-stayed bridge that carries US-67 across the Mississippi. After that, Lacey tied up in Alton.

How it feels to be underway

We asked Demian how it feels now that the trip has really started. His answer was short: "Feeling good. Boat did great on the truck and also so far on the river."

Next, Lacey continues down the Mississippi. Then she'll head up the Ohio River and onto the Tennessee River and the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway. Demian plans to reach the Gulf Coast around December, after hurricane season. We'll keep sharing his photos and updates here on Shipwrights News & Stories and on our social channels.

New to Lacey's story? Follow the adventure from the beginning.

Start with Lacey: Designed to Work, Bound for the Great Loop for her history and Demian's route plan.

Rebuilding George Pocock's Workshop, One Rib at a Time

Wed, 07 Oct 2026 16:23:21 GMT

Rebuilding George Pocock's Workshop

There's an old photograph from 1923. It shows a long, narrow loft above the University of Washington shell house, and in it, a rowing shell half-built on a strongback. That loft was George Pocock's workshop. The boats he built there carried UW crews to fame, including the 1936 Olympic gold medal crew made famous by the book and movie The Boys in the Boat .

Now the shell house is being restored, and Pocock's shop is coming back to life. Port Townsend boatbuilder Steve Chapin has been hired to recreate the boat in that photo. To get the shape right, he's turning to a tool George Pocock never could have imagined: a 3D scanner.

A seaplane hangar turned boat shop

The ASUW Shell House started life as a World War I seaplane hangar. The war ended before it was ever used, so it was handed to the University of Washington and became home to the rowing team.

Upstairs, a mezzanine loft about 70 feet long and 20 feet wide became George Pocock's shop. He built boats there for 27 years. The only way in was a small man door, a regular walk-in door in a building made for seaplanes. So how did a finished 62-foot eight get out? The crew took the window apart and handed the boat out and down. Nobody wrote down exactly how they managed it.

The building is now being restored to code with seismic upgrades. It will tell the story of its many uses over the years, and the Pocock shells are a big part of that. Visitors will be able to climb up to George's workshop and see what he was working on in 1923.

Part of an oral tradition

The Pocock way of building boats goes back generations on England's Thames River. George and his brother Dick learned from their father, who was taught by their mother's father, and so on back. When the brothers came to the United States about 115 years ago, they brought that tradition with them. The University of Washington recruited them to build its boats.

Pocock never had line drawings, manuals, or instructions. Nothing was ever written down. In 1947 George hired a builder named Bob Brunswick, and Steve learned from Bob how to build a Pocock single.

"I'm part of that oral tradition," Steve says.

The forms for the Pocock single nearly disappeared. About ten years after George's son, Stan Pocock, sold the family company, the new owners decided to stop building the wooden single. The usual practice was to destroy the forms so no one could use them to build fake Pococks.

Stan had been watching Steve and Jim Buckley fix up old Pocock shells in Port Townsend. He worried that the long tradition of building in wood would be lost as rowing moved to composite boats. So instead of letting the forms be destroyed, Stan persuaded the new owners to give them to Steve and Jim. Steve jumped at the chance and began building singles in collaboration with the Northwest Maritime Center.

Once Stan saw Steve's first single, he knew they were serious. He donated his remaining stash of red cedar to the Maritime Center. A few years later, when the Maritime Center stepped back from the project, it passed the rest of that cedar to Steve so he could keep building. The partnership worked both ways: the Maritime Center's boathouse was designed to hold Pocock shells, and Steve's passion for preserving them helped draw donors. Steve has carried that work forward ever since.

A boat with no plans

The boat in the 1923 photo is an eight, about 62 feet long. For the display, Steve is building a shorter version: a 40-foot four. And he's building just the frame on the strongback.

The shell house will show 8 to 10 finished historic boats, but you can't see inside a finished boat. "What's really amazing about these boats is that they're so spare," Steve says. A bare frame lets visitors see the structure that's usually covered.

There was one big problem. Steve has the forms for the singles, but the forms for the larger boats were thrown out long ago. Pocock was secretive about his work. He didn't let just anybody into the shop, and he never wanted lines taken off his boats.

With no drawings and no molds, Steve needed another way to get the shape. So he found a stand-in: Buckley , a Pocock four built about 40 years after the photo was taken.

Scanning Buckley

Steve first planned to take the lines off Buckley the old-school way, measuring the hull's shape by hand. But there was a twist. Peek inside Buckley's cockpit and you'll notice something surprising for a 1960s wooden racing shell: there are no ribs at all. Traditional wooden boats rely on a skeleton of ribs running from the gunwales down to the keel to hold their shape. George and Stan Pocock left them out of Buckley entirely. Instead, they relied on a continuous internal structure and the natural arch of the curved cedar hull, creating a ribless shell that shed weight while staying stiff on the water.

Without ribs to measure from, Steve is studying the old photos alongside Buckley's deck frames to work out where they would have been. That gave him 37 pairs of rib positions, port and starboard, where he needs the exact shape of the hull, plus 25 spots where he needs depth and beam measurements for the strongback's stocks, which hold the keel and gunwales. He'd already started notes for a table of offsets, a grid of measurements that turns a boat's curved, three-dimensional hull into a precise list of numbers. "Doing that by hand is pretty tedious," he says.

Then Steve ran into some of the Port Townsend Shipwrights crew at the annual Boatyard Barbecue. Griz, a partner of the Shipwrights, asked what Steve was up to. Steve told him about the project, and Griz said the shop had a 3D scanner that could do the job.

The shop has had the scanner for about a year. Griz coordinated the meetup, and Grayson, another partner of the Shipwrights, ran the scanner for Steve. In the Shipwrights shop, Grayson has used it on a range of projects. He scans boat interiors to plan layouts and cut patterns, designs fuel tanks that fit the available space exactly, and recently scanned a fishing boat so a local designer could add a bulbous bow.

Grayson explains that hand lofting from a designer's drawing is very accurate, because someone already designed the boat. But reverse engineering an existing hull is different, and that's where the scanner shines. Without it, he says, you'd spend days pulling measurements.

"The scanner doesn't replace a naval architect drawing a boat's lines, but for this kind of job it's ideal," Grayson explains.

The scan gives Steve a table of offsets, the classic way of recording a hull's shape. And it leaves behind something new: a complete record of a Pocock four, the kind of record Pocock himself never had.

Nothing extra

A Pocock shell is built very lean, with just enough strength to do its job. Each side of the hull is a single steam-bent cedar plank, about 3/16 of an inch thick on a four like Buckley , and just 3/32 of an inch on a single. The two planks are sawn side by side from the same piece of wood, so the grain on port and starboard is book-matched.

The decks are heat-shrunk, varnished Dacron, borrowed from aircraft building. It's light, waterproof, and adds a little strength because it's pulled tight. Inside, the frame carries the load from the riggers, which hold the oarlocks the rowers lever against.

"Everything in the boat serves a purpose," Steve says. "There's nothing extra in there."

These are flat-water racing shells. They're stored indoors, carried out to row, washed down after, and put away. Noah Seixas, who recently served as president of Rat Island Rowing, jokes that next to a modern carbon boat, a wooden Pocock is "a tank." But with eight rowers aboard, the people weigh far more than the boat, and the old wooden shells still race in amateur regattas.

Keeping wooden shells on the water

Buckley belongs to Rat Island Rowing and Sculling Club in Port Townsend, and the club has its own story. About 30 years ago, someone gave them one boat, Quinault , a late-1940s Pocock eight that once carried a UW freshman crew to a national title in 1951. There was almost no rowing in town then. As they fixed it up, people came out of the woodwork to help and to row. About ten years later, the club was officially born.

The club's boats have made some history of their own. At the 2014 Wooden Boat Festival, The Boys in the Boat author Daniel James Brown climbed into Quinault , the club's very first boat, rowing alongside Judy Rantz Willman, daughter of Joe Rantz, one of the 1936 gold medal crew. The club has since donated Quinault to Bainbridge Island Rowing, and is now displayed at the Bainbridge Island boathouse.

Today the club takes in wooden shells that other clubs no longer want. Most rowers prefer composite boats, and boathouse space is tight, so old woodies get cleared out. Rat Island fixes them up and rows them. Steve has had a hand in restoring or building every wooden boat in their fleet, and in teaching members to do the work.

Buckley came to the club with a story, too. George Pocock and his son Stan built her in the early 1960s for a college in California, where she was called the John Lusk . Today she's named for Jim Buckley, a Rat Island rower who has led the effort to bring in most of the club's wooden shells. The club restored Buckley in 2023 in a member's empty barn, with Noah among the volunteers on the crew. They went over every square inch, inside and out, fixing the structure and refinishing every surface.

"There are a lot more of these old boats than there are places interested in using them," Noah explains. The club has three wooden quads and an eight, and people keep offering more. The club wants to keep rowing them, but it can't take them all. Storage and upkeep are the limits.

The Boys in the Boat author Daniel James Brown and Judy Rantz Willman row Quinault at the 2014 Wooden Boat Festival. Photos courtesy of Jim Costello.

What's next

Steve has the strongback built in his shop. It's basically a 40-foot sawhorse that has to be perfectly straight, flat, and level. He made it in two pieces, joined in the middle with a wedged timber scarf joint, so it can be moved to the shell house with the frame when it is finished. Next, he'll use the measurements from Port Townsend Shipwrights' scan of Buckley to set up the stocks and shape the frame, which he hopes will help speed up the work.

The shell house crew is passing an eight and a couple of fours through that same old window this fall, but with the boat frame not built yet, Steve has missed that window. His frame will have to come off the strongback and be brought up through the small man door.

When it's done, the shell house will tie it all together. There will be displays about The Boys in the Boat and even a 1936 radio playing a broadcast of the Berlin race.

As for Steve, stopping at the frame may be the hardest part of the job. Once the ribs are up and the shape is right there in front of him, he admits it will be hard to put down his tools. "I just want to keep going and build the whole boat," Steve says. We'll be following along as the frame takes shape!

Shop photos courtesy of Steve Chapin. Historic photo: MOHAI, PEMCO Webster & Stevens Collection, 1983.10.2608.3.

Want to be a part of bringing George Pocock's workshop back to life? Take a Virtual Tour or Support the ASUW Shell House Restoration .

Lacey: Designed to Work, Bound for the Great Loop

Fri, 25 Sep 2026 21:50:09 GMT

From Forest Service Scaler's Boat to the Great Loop

Lacey was designed to work.

Her design dates back to 1953, when Seattle naval architect H.C. Hanson created a 25-foot Forest Service scaler’s boat for the U.S. Forest Service. Scalers determine the amount of lumber in each log cut by a timber crew, and boats like these were used by the Forest Service in the western United States. Three vessels were built commercially to Hanson’s design in the mid-1950s.

More than half a century later, the design found a new life in Port Townsend.

Lacey’s hull construction began in 2013 at the Northwest School of Wooden Boatbuilding, with Tim Lee overseeing the project as instructor. For this build, Lee redrew the design to 28 feet to get the engine out of the cabin. Today, Lee is a partner at Port Townsend Shipwrights. After the hull was completed, the boat spent 11 months on the hard.

In 2019, Demian Detweiler purchased Lacey and brought her to the marina, where he finished the cabin, interior, systems, and mechanical work himself. He completed the boat in 2020.

Now, more than a decade after her build began, Lacey is preparing for a very different kind of working life: a journey around the Great Loop.

From the Northwest School of Wooden Boatbuilding to the Shipwrights

Lacey’s story is closely connected to Demian’s own path into boatbuilding.

Demian graduated from the Northwest School of Wooden Boatbuilding, completing both the Systems program and the Wooden Boat program. Not long after graduating, he joined Port Townsend Shipwrights, where he has now worked for more than six years.

He wears a lot of hats at the Shipwrights, but his primary focus is systems and electrical work. The job has given him the opportunity to expand well beyond what he learned in school.

“I took the systems course as a starting point, but I've learned a lot more about what I was taught in school while working for the Shipwrights,” Demian said. “In the systems and wooden boat program I learned a lot, but while working here that grew and extended to learning machining and metal work.”

That range of skills has become particularly useful at the Shipwrights. As Demian puts it, “Sometimes a systems project will need a woodworker, and sometimes a woodworking project needs some understanding of systems. Instead of having multiple people on that project, it’s just me!”

A Trip That Was Always Somewhere on the Horizon

Demian first heard about the Great Loop seven years ago. It was one of those ideas that stayed with him. “I found out about the trip when I got the boat. It was something I was gonna do someday. Well, today is someday. ”

The Great Loop is an approximately 6,000-mile waterway journey around the eastern part of North America. The route connects the inland waterways of the Great Lakes with rivers and coastal waterways throughout the eastern United States and Canada, creating one large loop. There is no single prescribed route, and boaters can choose where to begin and how to navigate the journey. The trip also requires careful planning around a boat’s size, draft, height, and ability to navigate different canals, rivers, bridges, and locks.

For Demian, Lacey’s size makes her a good fit for the journey. At 28 feet, she is small enough to move easily and capable of navigating the shallower waters and low bridges that make up portions of the route. The lowest fixed bridge has 19 feet of clearance, while many other bridges along the route will open to allow boats to pass.

Because the Loop can be started from almost anywhere, Demian has chosen St. Louis as his starting point. His planned route will take Lacey down the Mississippi River and up the Ohio River before continuing through the Tennessee River and Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway and onto the Intracoastal Waterway. From there, he plans to travel around the Florida Keys and north along the Atlantic coast before heading into the Hudson River, Erie Canal, Lake Ontario, and the Trent-Severn Waterway.

The journey will continue through Georgian Bay and into Lake Michigan, eventually reaching the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal before returning to St. Louis.

Demian estimates the trip will take just under a year.

Planning Around the Seasons

The timing of the journey is just as important as the route itself.

“It’s pretty protected being Intracoastal Waterway. But it is seasonal, and I don’t want to be around Florida, Alabama, Georgia areas during hurricane season, so I’m planning on being around there in December,” Demian said. “And obviously, I can’t be in the Great Lakes during winter because they can get frozen over. So I should be there around June, July, or August.”

For Demian, the appeal isn't simply reaching the finish line. The journey itself is an opportunity to experience a completely different kind of boating.

Now, Lacey will become another classroom. “I’m excited to see a different boating experience than what I’m used to. I’m going to learn so much along the way.”

“Done Enough”

Demian plans to leave on Monday, September 28, 2026.

As the departure gets closer, there is still work to do. A boat preparing for a journey of this scale will always have another project, another adjustment, another thing that could be improved. But eventually, you have to go.

“Am I ready? No, I’m not ready, but you can’t plan for everything,” Demian said. “Nothing is completely done, but it’s done enough.”

For Lacey , “done enough” means ready to leave Port Townsend and begin a journey that will take her through rivers, canals, lakes, coastal waterways, locks, and bridges before eventually bringing her back to St. Louis.

And Demian won't be making the journey entirely on his own.

Taking Port Townsend Along

Demian’s connection to Port Townsend Shipwrights will continue long after he leaves the yard.

As part of his send-off, the sailmakers at Port Townsend Sails (PT Sails), part of the Port Townsend Shipwrights family, offered to build sails for Lacey’s journey. Port Townsend Shipwrights is sponsoring the project, covering the cost of materials and the sailmakers’ work to build them.

Demian will also be carrying two reminders of home along the way: a Port Townsend Shipwrights burgee and a PT Sails burgee, flying from Lacey as he makes his way around the Loop.

The Shipwrights will be following along, too. Throughout the journey, Demian will share updates through social media and blog posts, documenting places he visits, boating challenges he encounters, and what he learns along the way. Port Townsend Shipwrights will support him through paid content work, providing a small part of the financial support needed for the trip while giving the Shipwrights—and everyone following along at home—a way to experience the journey with him.

It is a fitting continuation of Demian’s time at Port Townsend Shipwrights: learning, working across disciplines, and sharing what he discovers along the way.

Lacey is ready for another chapter. On Monday, September 28, Demian and Lacey will leave Port Townsend and begin the Great Loop, carrying two Port Townsend burgees with them—and a connection to the people and place that helped get them there.

Update, Oct 9th 2026: Demian and Lacey are officially on the Great Loop!

Lacey is back in the water and headed down the Mississippi. Follow the next step of her journey, Lacey: First Miles on the Great Loop, Down the Mississippi

Isswat: Restoring a Boat Built to Work

Mon, 21 Sep 2026 17:25:48 GMT

Restoring a Boat Built to Work

Built around 1948 in Whiskey Cove on Pennock Island near Ketchikan, Isswat was built to work. The 32-foot wooden boat spent her early years as a salmon troller and gillnetter, and she also worked at a logging camp. After coming south to Washington around 1970, she continued working on the water, trolling off the coast and serving as a tug during the off-season.

Her working life eventually took her to Oregon, where she was reportedly used as a crabber, before she returned to Washington in the 1990s. At one point, Isswat was nearly sold for scrap. Her fishing gear was removed, and the boat that had spent decades earning her keep on the water became, for a time, a pleasure boat.

Over the years, she passed through the hands of several owners in the Pacific Northwest, including several with Port Townsend connections. Eventually, in 2018, she came to Jeff—the wooden boat he had always told himself he would own someday.

“I had always told myself I would do one wooden boat. At 32 feet, Isswat felt like a manageable size, but her history is really what drew me in.”

Boats like Isswat were once common along the Northwest coast. Today, relatively few remain. Jeff wanted to see what he could do with one.

A Boat That Needed Almost Everything

Jeff hauled Isswat out for the first time in 2018. He already knew he was taking on a major project. In fact, he admits he did the one thing you’re generally not supposed to do when buying a wooden boat: he bought her without a survey.

“I knew it was going to be a lot of work, and that I’d probably be working on everything.”

During that first haulout, Jeff replaced all of the sister frames, using offcuts from the Western Flyer, and replaced a number of planks around the waterline. He also rebuilt the foredeck. Isswat returned to the water in 2019.

A couple of years later, she came out again. This time, Jeff installed new stern lifts and new fuel tanks, made modifications to the rudder, and replaced the aft deck and aft break beam. After that project, Isswat returned to the water and made an appearance at the Wooden Boat Festival.

But the biggest project was still ahead.

Nearly Everything, Rebuilt

In 2023, Jeff hauled Isswat once again. What was expected to be a substantial project turned into roughly a year and three months out of the water. During that time, Jeff replaced the wheelhouse deck and all of the framing beneath it. He rebuilt the bulwarks, replaced the engine, redid the electrical system, and rebuilt the interior, including the interior structure and bulkheads. “Basically, I worked on nearly everything,” Jeff says.

Most of the work was done by Jeff himself. He had plenty of conversations along the way—with his business partners and others he trusted—about how to approach different parts of the project. But the actual wiring, welding, and woodwork were largely his. “When it’s your own boat, you’re responsible for all the decisions. With a customer’s boat, a shipwright can explain the options, provide information, and help the owner make an informed choice. But with your own boat, there’s no one else to make the final call. It’s on you.”

But, as Jeff points out, there is at least one advantage to working on your own boat: “At least I don’t have to worry about billing myself when the project goes over budget.”

Getting the Mast Right

In 2026 Jeff built and installed a new mast and boom and replaced six planks in the stern.

Jeff says that the biggest challenge of the recent haul out was building Isswat’s new mast. Structurally, of course, it had to be right. But Jeff was equally concerned with something less measurable: proportion.

As you approach Isswat , it is one of the first things you notice. If it were too short, at the wrong angle, or simply looked out of proportion with the boat, Jeff knew it would bother him every time he saw it.

The mast is one of the most prominent features of the boat. Getting it right mattered.

When an Engine Turns the Wrong Way

Wooden boat restoration rarely goes exactly according to plan, even when you think you know what you’re doing.

One of Jeff’s memorable surprises came during an earlier project involving an engine he had acquired and rebuilt for Isswat . Typically, an engine of that vintage has an “X” in its serial number if it is counter-rotating. He went through the entire process of putting the engine back together.

Then he started it.

The transmission wouldn’t engage.

The engine was turning the wrong way.

After all that work, Jeff had to find another engine and start the process again. It was, understandably, disappointing. Still, despite the setbacks, Jeff says the restoration has been an enormous amount of work—but overall, it has been pretty fun.

“ Isswat has felt like a master class in boat repair."

Back in the Water

After years of haulouts, rebuilding, late nights, and countless hours of labor, Isswat is back in the water.

For Jeff, that’s more than a milestone. It’s a huge relief. Toward the end of the most recent project, he was working at Port Townsend Shipwrights until about 10:30 nearly every night. Having the boat in the yard made the work more efficient: the tools were there, the materials were there, and everything he needed was close at hand.

Now, Isswat is floating again, and Jeff can start thinking about what comes next. His goal isn’t simply to preserve Isswat as an example of a Northwest working boat. He wants to see her working again.

Jeff hopes to take her north to Southeast Alaska for the summer and return her to hand trolling—using the boat for the kind of fishing she was originally built to do. The hope is to catch enough fish to help pay for food and fuel along the way. “We’ll see how well that works.”

Keeping the History Alive

For Jeff, bringing Isswat back has never been only about fixing an old boat. “I’m proud of preserving her history and keeping her alive.”

Looking at photographs from when he first acquired her, he’s struck by how much she has changed. He is proud of how far she has come, but he’s equally proud of what the restoration represents: preserving the history of a type of boat that was once a familiar part of life along the Northwest coast. “Hopefully, she’ll have another 80 years ahead of her.”

After nearly eight decades, Isswat has already had several working lives. Now, back in the water and ready for whatever comes next, she has another chapter on her horizon.

Tawaki: The Second Truant, 300 Hours, Back on the Water

Thu, 17 Sep 2026 18:50:17 GMT

The Second Truant, 300 Hours, and Back on the Water

When Brad first encountered Tawaki, he wasn't looking at a boat that simply needed a fresh coat of paint. A small bubble in the paint at the stem led to a much bigger discovery: the stem was rotten. So were the forefoot, knee, and keel. In fact, nearly the entire centerline of the boat was compromised.

That was the beginning of a project that took about two years. Nearly two decades after Brad bought the boat, another major haulout put roughly 300 hours of work into getting Tawaki ready to sail again.

Tawaki is a Truant, a 25-foot 6-inch sloop designed by Ed Louchard and built at the Northwest School of Wooden Boatbuilding in Port Townsend in the 1990s. Seven boats were built to the design. The Truant was conceived as a classic weekender and daysailer, designed specifically for the chop and tide rips at the mouth of Port Townsend Bay. With a full keel, lead ballast, generous cockpit, and traditional gaff rig, she was built to be both capable and sociable.

Tawaki, launched in 1999, was long thought to be the last Truant built at the school. As Brad recently discovered, her story had one more surprise in it.

Rebuilding the Centerline

When Brad discovered the extent of the rot, he took on the work himself. Over the course of about two years, he removed the damaged material, dropped the lead ballast, rolled the boat, and rebuilt the centerline in purpleheart. The stem, forefoot, knee, and keel were replaced, and three or four planks on each side were also replaced.

"The whole middle of the boat is new," Brad says.

It was substantial work, but Tawaki eventually returned to the water. Brad and his family sailed her to the San Juan Islands when his daughter was just 18 months old. The boat has been part of the family ever since. His daughter is now 17.

300 Hours of Work

This year's haulout was another opportunity to give Tawaki the attention she needed. Over two and a half months, Brad put in approximately 300 hours of work—averaging about four hours a day after work, with longer days on weekends and sometimes 12-hour stretches.

As much as possible, Brad handled the work himself. He sanded and painted the boat, including the deck and bench seats. He removed and refinished the sole, stripped the varnished surfaces completely, and brought the brightwork back with fresh coats of varnish. The mast, gaff, and boom each received 11 coats of varnish.

Brad also replaced hoses in the engine's raw-water system and replaced the propeller, which had been damaged after years in the water without enough zinc protection. He rebuilt the boat's 14 wooden blocks, a job that turned out to be one of the more challenging parts of the project.

A Little Help Along the Way

Brad says he's grateful to have so many craftspeople nearby who are willing to share their skills and knowledge.

The Truant's traditional rig uses three-strand Dacron running rigging reeved through rope-stropped wooden blocks. Brad replaced the rope-stropped grommets on the blocks, learning a skill he hadn't previously had much experience with. Fortunately, he didn't have to figure it all out alone.

Leah Kafkin of Best Coast Canvas offered to show Brad how to make the grommets and seizings. She came over to the shop and, over lunch, walked him through the process. One of the tricks she shared involved dipping the grommets in Elmer's glue before working with the three-strand line to help each strand hold its shape.

"Little tips like that make such a huge difference," Brad says.

The engine presented another challenge. After years in the water, the engine Brad had been running needed significant work, and some of the parts were becoming difficult to find. Then, by chance, a customer mentioned that he had the exact same engine sitting in his garage. Brad was able to purchase it for $500. Adam and Wyatt, crew from Port Townsend Shipwrights, helped strip it down, paint it, replace gaskets, and get it serviced before it went into Tawaki.

The sails were in good shape and needed only some attention to the jib. The sailmakers at Port Townsend Sails added traditional hanks and leatherwork. As part of the Port Townsend Shipwrights family, the sail loft brings specialized sailmaking and repair skills to the same community of boat owners and craftspeople working throughout the Port Townsend waterfront.

Why Tawaki?

The boat's name has a story of its own.

When Brad's children were young, he took his family on a trip to New Zealand for two and a half months. They traveled around and stayed in a tent, and along the way they saw Fiordland penguins.

Tawaki is the Māori name for the Fiordland penguin. The connection seemed fitting. The boat's blue, yellow, and gray coloring echoes the distinctive coloring of the penguin, giving the name a personal connection to both the boat and Brad's family.

A Truant with a Few Differences

Although the Truants share a common design, Tawaki has some features that distinguish her from Louchard's original boat. Those differences were part of the reason Brad—and even Louchard himself—had long believed Tawaki was the last boat built in the class.

The original Truant, built by Louchard himself, was sail-only, without an engine or cabin. Tawaki has a removable cabin top that was built specifically for her, bolting around the coaming, giving the forward part of the boat additional protection during the winter.

Tawaki also carries a Cornish lug topsail—a sail that extends above the mast, adding sail area in light air. It's a fun sail, Brad says, but not one he puts up often. The long spar is cumbersome to carry aboard and needs to be brought from the garage when conditions are right. It is best suited to light air, when the additional sail area can be useful.

Back on the Water

After all the sanding, varnishing, rebuilding, replacing, and problem-solving, Tawaki is back in the water!

For now, Brad is keeping her in Boat Haven so he can take advantage of being able to go sailing after work. He normally keeps the boat at Cape George Marina where, as Brad put it, low tides can make things interesting.

Discovery Bay has its own rewards. Brad recalls sailing there with no other boats around, a gray whale nearby, and the Olympic Mountains in the background. But there's something appealing about having Tawaki close at hand.

Brad is looking forward to simply sailing her more. He's never spent a night anchored aboard Tawaki, so that's on the list. And looking further ahead, he'd like to take her north to Victoria for the Wooden Boat Festival next year, potentially joining the informal circuit of wooden boats that travel between gatherings around the Salish Sea.

A New Chapter in the Truant Story

For years, Brad had believed Tawaki was the last Truant built. Even Louchard had thought that was likely, based on the many differences between Tawaki and the original boat. Then, just recently, Brad went back to the original build plans at the Northwest School of Wooden Boatbuilding and found the answer: Tawaki was actually the second boat built , immediately after Louchard's original.

At this year's Port Townsend Wooden Boat Festival, Tawaki had a particularly special reunion. She was alongside the original Truant built by Ed Louchard—the first and second boats of the class together again.

After nearly two decades with Tawaki, Brad is still finding new pieces of her story.

And after 300 hours of recent work, she's ready for the next chapter.

Defender: A 1939 Navy Whaleboat Returns to the Water

Fri, 04 Sep 2026 21:41:39 GMT

A 1939 Navy Whaleboat Returns to the Water

After nearly 40 years out of the water, Defender is floating again. Built in 1939, Defender is a 26-foot Navy whaleboat that has been part of Scott Wenger’s life since he bought her from a ferry captain on Lummi Island in 1987. Scott believes she may have served aboard a minesweeper during World War II, adding another layer of history to a boat that has accumulated many stories of her own.

When Scott first bought Defender, she quickly became part of family life. He took her crabbing and spent time on the water with his young family. After several years, he pulled her from the water and began working on her himself, approaching the restoration carefully and learning as he went.

Eventually, Defender came to Port Townsend Shipwrights Co-Op. What began as a restoration project would become a long-term undertaking—and, for Scott, an education in traditional boatbuilding.

Learning Traditional Boatbuilding Techniques

Scott describes Defender as his “boat school.” At the Co-Op, he had the opportunity to participate in the restoration and learn traditional boatbuilding techniques alongside Pete Rust and other shipwrights.

One of the biggest impressions for him at Port Townsend Shipwrights was simply seeing how quickly they could accomplish work that had once taken him weeks. At home, Scott might manage to complete two bent-oak frames over a weekend. At the Co-Op, he found himself putting in a dozen or more frames in a day. There was plenty to learn in the process.

Scott and his son worked together at the bandsaw, shaping planks and learning how to create the tapering bevels needed for a precise fit. The lumber was expensive, so there was little room for error. Scott remembers cutting a plank, putting it in place, and seeing just enough light through the joint to know it wasn't right—about the width of half a credit card. “Pull it out. Do it over.”

Getting it right became one of the most satisfying accomplishments of the entire restoration. When asked what piece of the restoration he was most proud of, Scott didn’t hesitate. “The planks. Getting planks to fit perfectly. That’s the story I tell people.”

Preserving the Shape of an Old Boat

For Pete, one of the greatest challenges of Defender's restoration was not simply replacing damaged wood. It was figuring out how to take apart a boat with so much deterioration while preserving the shape of the original vessel.

“There’s very little original boat there,” Pete said. That made the sequence of the work critical. When a stem is deteriorated and needs to be replaced, for example, other structural and planking repairs have to be carefully coordinated to preserve the boat’s shape. “With so much of the original structure gone, there is a real risk of changing the shape of the boat in the process of rebuilding it. You have to start putting stuff in, but you have to maintain that original shape,” Pete explained. “Without just accidentally distorting the original bow shape when there’s not a lot of structure left.”

For Scott, watching that process was an education in itself. He was struck by the way shipwrights used measurements, scaling, templates, and other techniques to recreate pieces that no longer existed. As a civil and electrical engineer, he found himself thinking about how those methods could apply to other kinds of construction. There was also the realization that restoration often means creating something that is not available off the shelf. A new stem, for example, was sculpted from purpleheart after the original oak stem had deteriorated and separated over time. Custom bronze fasteners were also made in the shop when necessary.

For Scott, those details revealed the depth of the craft involved. “You get an idea of the kind of depth of the skill that you’re working with—all the skilled trades.”

A Family Project

Defender also became a family project. Scott's son joined him in the restoration, even though, as Scott tells it, he initially came to the project with a strong dislike of woodworking. That changed once he became involved. He learned to plank and took on increasingly complicated work as his skills developed. For Scott, having his son participate was one of the particularly meaningful parts of the restoration.

The project also connected Scott with another generation of the Co-Op. Pete's father was involved in making the pattern for Defender's rudder shoe, giving Scott the opportunity to see traditional patternmaking firsthand before the piece went to the foundry. It was a reminder that restoring an old boat can involve a remarkable chain of specialized skills: shipwrights, mechanics, patternmakers, foundry workers, and others, each contributing something to the finished vessel.

A Project Measured in Years

Defender's restoration has not been a straight line. After the initial period of intensive work at the Co-Op, there was a roughly 12-year break while Scott and his family saved money and made plans to return to the project. They now live on Cape Cod, but Defender has become one of the reasons they continue to return to Port Townsend.

Over the years, the project also became a friendship. Scott and Pete have known each other for more than a decade. Their families have evolved alongside the restoration, and returning to the Co-Op has become something like coming home. Scott joked that the strange part now is seeing photographs of the people who started the project and realizing how much time has passed by how young everyone was in the photos.

Back in the Water

Getting Defender back into the water was only possible after years of work and countless smaller steps.

The original three-cylinder Fairbanks-Morse engine that Scott brought with the boat was no longer practical to maintain because parts were unavailable. With plans to actually use Defender—including the possibility of one day circumnavigating Vancouver Island—the decision was made to repower her.

The replacement is a Norwegian Sabb, a single-cylinder, 10-horsepower engine. It may be a novelty in its own right, but parts are still available, making it a more practical choice for the boat's next chapter. And that next chapter is already beginning.

For Scott, Defender is more than a restored boat. She has become an anchor—a reason to keep coming back to Port Townsend, to visit friends and family, and to continue working toward whatever comes next. After nearly four decades ashore, Defender finally returned to the water. For everyone who helped bring her there, it was a long-awaited moment.

Defender’s return to the water is another chapter in a relationship that began for Scott in 1987 and has stretched across decades of family memories, learning, friendships, and restoration.

And, fittingly, the journey isn't over.

Welcome back, Defender.