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!