PAX has new main cabin cushions thanks to Port Townsend interior designer, Gwendolyn Tracy with Fine Yacht Interiors.

Gwendolyn has been sewing since she was in her teens, and it shows. Her custom canvas shop above the Blue Moose Cafe in Port Townsend's "big boat" shipyard is organized with that mix of artistic verve and production room stations neatly sequenced from her decades of experience. Fabric rolls, cushion materials, sample and swatch books are snuggly tucked into functional spaces around the center piece, the giant cutting table. Sewing machines are at one end, where she can see the road the 300 ton haulout takes as it brings her often very large clients to and from their work sites with one of a variety of boatbuilder or repair businessses.  Townsend Bay Marine is next door, as is Haven Boatworks.  Gwendolyn designs cushions, interiors, covers, you name it.  She has done huge projects like the latest mega yacht from TBM to major historic boat restorations done by a variety of shipwright shops in Puget Sound.  In between the big boat and big budget projects, she manages to squeeze in smaller projects like PAX. 

We needed custom settee cushions, forpeak bedding, and some creative seat pillows for the bulkhead transition.  The transition pieces will expand comfortable seating options in the main cabin when we're doing tours aboard the boat, seminars and charters. For a look at the first phase of the project, the Port settee seats, take a look at the photo galley.  Gwendolyn can be reached at 360-379-0661.

MadMariner.com is a fantastic online magazine for boaters from circumnavigators to local building and racing scenes. This past week, the editor interviewed me for their Women in Sailing podcast series. As you'll see from the interview, I see the industry's focus on women, elevating the still too invisible role women have in boat ownership and decisions as being one of the greatest opportunities to grow the industry. While the economy may make it more urgent, the reality makes it the best long term investment as well. Here's hoping more women will express their opinions, their leadership, their own-her-ship in boating around the world!

Experience PAX (latin for peace) on Port Townsend Bay!  Join Kaci Cronkhite, circumnavigator, sailor, writer, Wooden Boat Festival Director and owner of the classic wooden boat - PAX - for a 2 hour afternoon sail on Port Townsend Bay.  Sail starts in Point Hudson at center dock and depending on winds, will include waterfront tour, lower Hadlock, Marrowstone Island and Point Wilson cruise.  Aboard, it's your choice of inspiration: quietly sit back, enjoying the sail and soaking up the sounds of wood on water, the scenery, the motion of the boat... and/or stories of world sailing adventure, tales of the writing life, history and details of the boat or our wooden boat community. 

Cost: $100 per person (3 people max depending on experience)

Available May-October, weather dependent. 

To schedule a charter, contact kaci@womanofthewind.com.

To see other charter options in Port Townsend, contact Rob Sanderson, Waterfront Programs manager at Northwest Maritime Center.

Helga Leal was there in the beginning.  First introduced to me by email as "Peaze's wife", Helga interjected herself into a sequence of correspondence I was having with her husband (Luis Peaze' wooden boat builder, community culture advocate and author) regarding his ambitious and at first, highly impossible idea to build a wooden boat, have it transported to USA and then, himself come to Port Townsend and participate in the Wooden Boat Festival.  Like many women behind the scenes of boat ownership, sailing and building, Helga's first comments were to thank me and other people helping make her husband's dream come true.  She was gracious, warm, as committed to his happiness as he was to the boat and travel dream. Daring the cultural divide between myself as an American and her as a Brazilian, I wrote back and asked to know more about her involvement.  Here is our exchange:

KC: "Tell me what you like most about wooden boats."

Helga Leal:  "The wooden boats send me farway into the past. They bring me a sense of conection with nature, a sense of pertaining to a harmonic environment -- a rescue of an oral art tradition from our ancestors in the nowadays world that seems to spin too fast. Beyond that regardless of their designs, colors, lines and perfomance, it feels so good to just admire a wooden boat."

KC: "How did you become involved building wooden boats?"

HL: "It happened when Peazê invited me to share with him his dream of building a wooden yacht. Coincidentally my father used to nourish the same dream but unfortunately he didn´t have time to accomplish it. Standing by Peazê I could live through a special moment while helping him in the building of the boat, then living aboard and sailing in a world until then wholly unknown to me, but in a real world, a world where nature is the main actor and where we are simply supporting players."

KC: I look forward to meeting you in person someday, either here or there!

As Director of the Wooden Boat Festival in Port Townsend since 2002, eight festivals and counting, I am but one in a long line of women who've held the role. Anne Greer (whose husband Jay Greer is a well known writer on WoodenBoat Forum), was WBF Coordinator from 1995-2000. Other festival coordinators included Mary Dietz McCurdy, Ellen Falconer, Kerri Bourke (from Australia), Marybelle Kern, Marsha Rasmussen, Libby Palmer and Kathleen Rousch. In all, 26 festivals were coordinated by women, 8 by men. While leadership of this highly successful cultural event has a clear imprint of female leadership, the non-profit organization that sponsors it does not.  Executive Directors of the Wooden Boat Foundation are more often men: 22 years to 12.  Does it matter?  Were women the executives in certain phases of development?  Is there a pattern in organizations that is similar to the WBF?  Are the culture, the success, the vision and operations different under male leadership? This isn't a question about who is "better", rather, a look at differences of approach and the results. Take a look at the months or years where Paula Calderon (1980), Kathleen Rousch (1982 & 83), Mary Dietz McCurdy (1984, 85 & 86), Aletia Alvarez (1995, 96, 97, 98 & 99), me (six months of 2004) served as Executive Director.  Like many inquiries into the study of leaders and leadership, especially in organizational development, gender is one lense with which to analyze leaders in hindsite and to progressively define the values an organization hiring leaders for the innovative approaches necessary in our current economy.  Food for thought.