Each month KPTZ’s Chris Bricker joins co-hosts Port of Port Townsend’s Director Eron Berg and Port Commissioner Pam Petranek to bring you news, updates and stories surrounding our vibrant maritime community. Chris joins Eron for his monthly update, and then Pam and Chris take a tour among the boats on our working waterfront with six delightful goal-oriented and curious members of the Port Townsend Maritime Academy.  The Academy is a free half-day program that provides high school juniors and seniors from eleven surrounding districts the opportunity to gain maritime experience, skills, and certifications while exploring different careers in the maritime industry.

Each month, KPTZ’s Chris Bricker and his co-hosts, Port of Port Townsend’s Director Eron Berg and Port Commissioner Pam Petranek cover the waterfront—its boats, its people and their stories. In this month’s edition, Chris, Eron and Pam, along with Commissioners Carol Hasse and Pete Hanke (today’s Captain) board the Puget Sound Express with 120 visiting Harbormasters and staffers as they wrapped up the three-day Spring Pacific Coast Congress of Harbormasters and Port Managers. The event culminated in a special journey via the harbor, for exclusive tours of the Bay & Waterfront, the Northwest School of Wooden Boat Building, and our internationally acclaimed Boatyard. Our Working Waterfront tagged along!

Each month KPTZ’s Chris Bricker joins his co-hosts Eron Berg, Port of Port Townsend’s Director, and Port Commissioner Pam Petranek to bring you news, updates, and stories surrounding our vibrant maritime community. Spike Africa (pictured above) is the last coasting schooner, with a proud history of carrying America’s goods across the world’s oceans. Her every detail combines beauty and grace with sturdy seaworthiness. Built by poet and designer Robert Sloan, Spike Africa was named after the legendary sailor of the same name, who was lovingly and humorously monikered “President of the Pacific Ocean.” This iconic Schooner is in our boatyard on the hard and getting thorough attention from a flock of fine shipwrights. We speak with Spike’s current owner Wade Hall, with Doug Jones who’s creating the new foremast, and with Ian Weedman, owner of Brian Toss Yacht Riggers. 

The Port of Port Townsend marked its 100th year in 2024. It was formed by Jefferson County voters in 1924. To commemorate the anniversary, our Port hired former PT Leader publisher Scott Wilson to research and write a book of that history, Working Port: 100 Years of the Port of Port Townsend was published in honor of the Port’s Centennial Year. Scott tells the story of how the Port came into existence, and how it has evolved for over a century to its current reputation as a place brimming with exceptional marine trades skills. Peninsula College recently hosted Scott for a presentation at its Fort Worden Campus’s Studium Generale.  This is PART  ONE of Walker’s entertaining and fascinating talk….

…and here is part two:

Each month, KPTZ’s Chris Bricker joins Co-hosts Eron Berg, Port of Port Townsend’s Director, and Port Commissioner Pam Petranek, to bring you news and stories surrounding our vibrant maritime community. Around our working waterfront, you may have heard the phrase, “A man and his boat,” or “A woman and her boat.” How about “One man and two boats”?  That’s not necessarily unusual either, but the tenacious owner of two old sailing vessels adds his own unique twist to that phrase. After Eron gives us this month’s Port update, we then turn to owner CJ Burleson as he recounts the comprehensive history and fascinating story of one of those vessels – the Elsita.

Each month KPTZ’s Chris Bricker joins co-hosts Port Director Eron Berg and Port Commissioner Pam Petranek to bring you news, updates and stories surrounding our Port and our vibrant maritime community. Our 300-ton yard is absolutely full this month! Eron gives us a season’s update for the Port, and then we’ll explore the fate of the abandoned tugboat Elmore (pictured above) with shipwright Clint Thomas, who spent a decade maintaining and repairing the Elmore during just one part of this storied vessel’s recent life. Now the Elmore sits on the hard amid historic schooners and working fishing vessels – all of them surrounding her as if they were perched as guardians of its 135 years of history.  The Elmore faces an uncertain future.

Our friends from the Coastal and Ocean Studies Program of Williams College and Mystic Seaport Museum were back in town to visit our shipwrights and the fishing fleet, now back in our boatyard for maintenance and repairs. We’ll visit Blaise Holly and his shop at Haven Boatworks, Ozzie Anderson, Captain and owner of fishing tenders Sunnyvale, McClure Bay, and fv Pegasus. Then over to Shipwrights Co-op owner Brad Seamans, who’s lead project director for the hauled-out halibut schooners Vansee (1913), Seymore (1914), and Grant (1926) of the historic working longliner fleet.

In this special edition of Our Working Waterfront we visit the Second Annual Boatyard BBQ, to celebrate the return of our Fishing Fleet and the 100th anniversary of the Port of Port Townsend. There was a delicious salmon dinner along with music and dancing. Captains and their crews, shipwrights and apprentices, the old and the young, longtime residents and new folks in town, all mingled beneath early-evening rainbows, a Salish wind, and the colored lights from the Travel Lift Stage well on into the night. We bring you sounds, music and stories from this magical time that brought out the true spirit of our Port Townsend community.

In 1935 William Fife III, aged 78, designed one of the sailing world’s most admired ocean racing yachts, Latifa. She was one of his all-time favorites. Today, we’re standing next to this legendary 70 foot yawl. launched in 1936, and in the loving care of past and current owners ever since. Now she’s in the boat yard at Pete Stein’s Co-op for maintenance. Unlike many large yachts of her era, she’s been in commission since her launching. Port Director and xo-host Eron Berg gives his monthly report, and then KPTZ’s Chris Bricker and Port Commissioner Pam Petranek meet up with shipwright Robert D’Arcy, the project’s lead, along with Jasper, the yacht’s young Captain for a conversation about this storied vessel.

In this episode of Our Working Waterfront, Port Director and co-host Eron Berg gives us his monthly update, and then KPTZ’s Chris Bricker and co-host Port Commissioner Pam Petranek visit with Tucker Piontek.  He’s an instructor at the Northwest School of Wooden Boat Building. Tucker’s relationship with boats began with childhood and young adult adventures on rivers, lakes, and coastal waters. As many young sailors have done over the years, he sailed into our town, fell. In love with it, and discovered the Boat School.  He’ll tell us about how his unique career journey led him later on to becoming an instructor there, his thoughts on craftsmanship and mentor relationships, and how he and three classes of students built the Nordic Folk Boat Fern, which rests on the hard for final touches before she’s shipped out to the lovely man who had commissioned her. Fern is destined to live on the Great Lakes as the Boat School’s “Ambassador.”