I have more raw footage to play with but these are the latest from this summer. Click on the titles for the story and video,
A bit of ‘white water’ in the PT 11
Sky rowing in the PT 11
or watch all our videos on PTW You Tube !
Here is something that has just about all of our boating friends talking, scheming, dreaming, and even a few actually preparing for… After watching this video, which I find to be the perfect play on the multi-million (and ‘tough-sailor-dude’) sailing event videos, even I have fantasized about doing this…. well…maybe in another life… if I come back as a ‘tough-sailor-chick’ 😉 … Check it out HERE.
Donate on Kickstarter if you can, to help get this first race off the ground!
One of the sponsors, Pocket Yachters, holds a ‘mini’ boat show every year here in Port Townsend. They have a great website with really nice photos and if you want to be inspired or like to gather and play in small boats with others, see their website HERE
PTW Ashlyn Brown
September 5-7th were the days of the 38th Annual Port Townsend Wooden Boat Festival.
This year was unique for us due to having a relative fleet of PT 11s on hand; 8 or 9 PT 11 dinghies could be seen over the weekend of marvelous sunshine and sailing breezes, tethered behind their “motherships” in the harbor or out in the bay among so many beautiful boats!
Joining them was our own PT 11 captained by Cooper Parish.
Cooper (who currently works for Scaled Composites) has built a PT 11 at the NW School of Wooden Boat Building. Many of our friends and customers share our deep appreciation for innovative aircraft as well as boats. We love the following picture Cooper sent to us earlier this summer, (wearing a Port Townsend Watercraft hat!) and we love having his help at the festival!
As usual, I did not get out and about to take more pictures. The reason, I am pleased to say, is that our display maintained a virtual flood of visitors and our team (including my wonderful sister, Dana) was happily kept busy showing off 2 PT Elevens (one on the stand and one for rowing demos), and a PT Spear, (generously loaned by Mr. Swantner).
Our tent hosts, the smart folks from WEST SYSTEM EPOXY, were on hand with expert epoxy advice, interesting props and informative booklets. This year’s festival was also special and memorable due to having our dear friends, Kathy Massimini & Steve Callahan here. Steve was a guest speaker for the festival. If you have not read his book Adrift or don’t know about Steve, you’ve missed out. See his website HERE.
You might already know about Off Center Harbor, and all of the really well done, interesting videos they offer on a wide range of boating topics. We were honored (and pretty camera shy) to receive an interview request from the OCH team. Filming took place right after the festival and the video will be available sometime in the future. Thank you Steve Stone and Off Center Harbor!
The fine weather inspired more boats to be out sailing for the entire three days than I have ever witnessed in my 5 years of attending. The final ‘Sail-By’ was quite spectacular. If you missed it this year, mark your calendar for the first weekend of September 2015 and keep an eye on the NW Maritime Center website for events over the year.
Please enjoy a small album of pictures I took during the Festival.
Some videos of this years’ festival are on You Tube. This is a particularly artistic slide show. HERE
PTW AB 😉
Many of you already know about EPOXY WORKS magazine, a FREE publication from Gougeon Brothers Inc, that is sent out twice a year. Issue #39 for this Fall of 2014 reviewed Russell’s EPOXY BASICS on the back cover!
This is a huge bonus for us and many of you have proven that! We had such a run on books within days of the magazine landing in mailboxes, that I have been kept busy sending them out. I want to thank those of you who had to wait with faith and patience for your back ordered copies. THANK YOU!
So why did Gougeon Brothers do such a nice thing? All I can say is that we are thrilled. Our relationship with Gougeon Brothers/WEST SYSTEM, is based on our long history and trust of their products, through which a lasting friendship has emerged. Russell’s nearly constant work with epoxies over the last 40 years has given him many opportunities to try various brands. His livelihood has depended on very refined composite workmanship and building lightweight, tightly engineered parts and craft. Many experiments, challenges, and successful projects have lead him to trust in one epoxy in particular; WEST SYSTEM.
The Gougeon brothers have an fascinating history and the company maintains an expert team unafraid to ask questions of themselves and the products they represent. In the spirit of doing what is right, ( yes, they do carefully consider environmental impact), full time scientists continually test every imaginable epoxy related scenario and tweak their products to best serve their customers of many industries. Their loyal customer base depends not only on having the best physical properties and workability in their epoxy, but also on knowledgeable customer support. The full time tech support staff at WEST SYSTEM are, in that down-to-Earth, humble, mid-western way, generous with their knowledge. If they don’t have an answer for you right away, they will find out, and get back to you, even if it takes lab testing. All this greatly benefits the casual epoxy user as well.
Calling the company during business hours (phone #1-866-937-8797) will not reach an automated phone system…. Nope, a real person will answer and politely direct your call… I know… hard to imagine these days.. Can you tell we like these folks? I hope so. We have the highest respect for the people in the company and the principles on which they base the production of excellent products; integrity being far more important to them than fancy marketing. Working with the folks at Gougeon Brothers/WEST SYSTEM, is always a pleasure. Such person to person relationships, with friends, customers, and business associates, rank high on my list of things that make life meaningful. For a well written article about the Gougeon brothers, see: GOUGEON. G-O-U-G-E-O-N GOUGEON by Dan Spurr in Professional Boatbuilder Magazine Issue #125, beginning on page 36. You can buy the issue HERE: Also, coming soon in WOODEN BOAT MAGAZINE ; an article by Jim Brown called, “Catching Up With Meade Gougeon”.
PTW AB 😉
Enjoy Pictures recently received of boats launched this summer or boats in use. I love the new colors added to PT 11’s; now sporting blue, green, sunny yellow, mellow yellow, cream, red, white…have I missed any? Beautiful!! Keep those pictures coming! What do you think about a photo contest???? Let me know and I will work on prizes to offer. 😉
On June 30th, Cassandra McDermott and 10 year old Milo arrived to pick up their PT 11 kit. ‘Cassie’ is a young woman who delivers boats, does a lot of sailing, boat finishing, refinishing, and polishing. I suspect she is very good at it, too.
Meeting Cassie and Milo (who also loves to sail) was a real pleasure. It was particularly exciting to have a pre-teen totally into building a PT 11 and that a woman was to be the primary builder. It often feels like building boats is perceived as ‘such a guy thing’ and I like to encourage more female involvement with the kits.
Besides the distinction for Cassie & Milo as the first ‘mom & pre-teen’ team so far to build one of our kits, they did it in record time.
On August 3rd, barely a month after picking up the kit, we received an email, and I quote, “Well we launched last week! I will send you some pictures soon….We are having a blast. She is a great boat!” Then she sent this great photo of Milo in the boat, with it’s shiny blue hull, (in honor of the SEA HAWKS)… Russell and I were very impressed!! 😉
Cassie totally dedicated herself to the project, including setting her alarm clock for 3AM to make a fill coat. They really familiarized themselves with the manual so that while waiting for one thing to cure, they knew what they could begin to prepare and have ready for steps later on. Warm summer weather helped while they had several simultaneously curing parts. This consolidated a lot of the ‘waiting-for-cure’ time inherent in wood/epoxy boat building.”The build went really well. We made a few mistakes-nothing structural and nothing we couldn’t fix,” she told me.
They also had a strong motivation. Milo was going back to school at the end of the Summer and Cassie wanted to be sure he had plenty of time to sail in his new boat before then. Milo wrote us a letter that deserves a frame in our shop. 
Photos & captions following, (compliments of Cassie and Milo), tell much of the story best.
See some recent feedback from our builder’s about our kits:
Robert in MA: It is a fantastic kit, and I thoroughly enjoyed the building project. Honestly, I felt a little intellectually lazy doing the build. Usually there are multiple details that have to be thought through, improvised, fleshed out, etc. Not with the PT11. You did all the thinking for me and didn’t leave out anything. I didn’t mind being lazy for a change. 🙂 I can’t think of a single thing to improve in the kit or manual. I can’t wait to start rowing and sailing. August 2014
Simon in New Zealand: I didn’t really realize how much of a delight to build she’s been until the bumper had been stuck on and I was a little disappointed that there wasn’t anything left to do except go sailing.
On a recent camp cruising excursion to BC, we towed our PT 11 along behind the Water Bug. We did not take the sailing rig but we really enjoyed after dinner rows around the different anchorages. The evening light is so beautiful and on calm, clear summer days, the reflections in the water make you feel like you are looking into another world or floating along on the sky. It was mesmerizing. I put together some clips of these evening rows. I look at my wind swept and bedraggled state with some embarrassment but I had a great time out in the vast wilderness of Desolation Sound. Here is a short video: SKY ROWING 
I admit it..I am a bit of a chicken when it comes to some things. I am not a skier, will not go near a roller coaster, and have never been white water rafting. Russell on the other hand… well let’s just say, in reference to THIS VIDEO, a standing wave, big or small, is as good an excuse as any for a little fun.
In any case, I do love a good adventure. Exploring the Toba Inlet in early July brought us to the mouth of the Brem River. At low tide, the river hit the inlet with some gusto to the delight of several seals, and, Russell. Had I not been holding our one, good, and yet very water sensitive camera, I would have been a lot less concerned. We could have played at this spot a lot longer than we did, although the big and biting black flies were a bit of a menace.
Russell insisted that I keep the sound on the first clip (you probably understand why, much to my chagrin) and I did my ‘darndest’ to be quiet on subsequent takes. Being in the boat was a bit ‘knarly‘ AND really fun. The video hardly does it justice. The PT 11 clearly liked it. So I hope this puts a big smile on your face. The PT11 in the Rapids. Cheers, Ashlyn PTW 
I have to sit down and really try to make account of this summer’s first camp cruise. For now, I can offer a couple of videos and notes that can give you the idea. Today’s video is a compilation of clips on the Water Bug.
Since the proa is in the yard, we took our experimental catamaran motor boat up into Canada. It could be compared to a road trip in a Carmanghia convertible … except we probably burned less fuel. 😉 We took camping gear and towed the PT 11 for the better part of more than 400 miles. Our boat of many names.. (Kermit, Grasshopper, Pie in the Sky, Skeeter, Water Bug…) has an old 15 HP Honda outboard and with that, as loaded up as we were, we averaged 2/3 GPH at 11 knots. Under normal load and not towing, Water Bug can cruise at 11 knots at 1/2 GPH, with a cruising speed of 15 knots. We took advantage of waves to surf and shallow waters to explore since this boat is good at both. We discovered that finding spots to both safely moor the boat and camp ashore is not so easy. There are lots of places for kayakers to pull their boats up and camp, or for small boats to anchor and sleep aboard. That did not help us much and we learned a lot for next time.
Happy camping from a happy camper. Ashlyn 😉 PTW
