A Day at Woodboat School

Day 13:  July 11, 2015

We began our morning with a hardy breakfast of bacon and pancakes along with our coffee.  Our goal for the day is to enjoy this lovely spot.  

I worked on the blog and, as usual, I preview it before I send it out.  The blog site provides a link that shows what the final product looks like.  And, over the past few days, my computer has had a new habit of producing pop-up ads in any time you go on line.  The machine had been plagued with malware and viruses since I purchased it back in January.  When I did the preview this morning, I realized that the disease had infected my blog.  I send this out to over 100 folks and I absolutely didn’t want to be responsible for passing on this infection so I did not publish yesterday.

The Alera under sail          photo by Richard Leighton

I worked for probably an hour or two trying to locate the problem but to no avail.  So, just before noon, Janine and I took Damn Dink Too over to the Woodenboat School dock and there was moored a beautiful 45 foot or so wooden yacht.  This boat was meticulously maintained.  Also standing on the dock was a gentleman who introduced himself as Richard Leighton.  He had a long lens camera and was taking pictures of the yacht.  In our conversation he pointed out a particularly beautiful old sloop rig.  He explained that

Alera on a mooring ball

the old estate that house the school and publishing company.  All of the classes except for one had been completed for this session but there were a couple of students who were enrolled in a two week Pond Yacht Building class were hanging around the shop.  I struck up a conversation with one fellow and he took me around and showed me his project.  These beautiful model boats are about 3 feet long and really neat. They finished the hull in the first week of the class and will put on the interior, deck and rigging during the final week.  Evidently there are a lot of the boats

A completed pond yacht without rigging

around the US where folks actually race them.

From there, we went to bookstore that is a boater’s paradise.  This place had hundreds of different books, along with all sorts of neat yachting paraphernalia and wooden boat building tools.  Luckily, I didn’t have my wallet or I probably would have been trouble.  

We then walked up to the beautiful old estate mansion that now houses the

A completed student hull

Woodenboat Magazine publishing company.  As we were walking about, it was decided that we needed to head back to the boat to get some cash so that we could make some purchases.

 

The Woodenboat school classroom and shop

Back at the boat we had our typical PBJ/taco lunch and while eating, I received a rescue call from my very good friend, Dwight, who is a computer expert and for the next 2 ½ hours we dug through the bowels of my computer until we rooted out the culprits that were causing the problem.  I added new virus protection to my machine and after running a scan, it has been certified clean.

Back to the bookstore—kid in a candy store!

We prepared bratwursts and mashed potatoes for dinner after starting out with some good Tillamook cheese.  And, to top off this wonderful day, we headed to their showers for a much needed and much appreciated total wash-down. We do sponge baths on the boat but an occasional shower is really a treat. 

The deadly book store

On the way back, I noticed a strange gaff rigged sail on what appeared to be a very large boat anchored in another cove about a mile away.  I motored out to where one of the large schooners that plies these waters had stopped for the night.  I snapped a few pictures before heading back.  The name of the boat is the Angelique. On the way back, I realized that there was another schooner under sail heading into the cove where we were anchored.  I will

Woodboat magazine headquarters

Angelique at anchor

try to get some pictures of her tomorrow.

Time for bed!