Early History of the Guillemot

The Guillemot was built in 1939 here in Seattle at the Edison Technical School. The Edison School had a shipbuilding program for young men who had finished high school and were looking for further training in the trade. The Edison School still exists as part of the South Seattle Community College.

In 1936, the school hired James Chambers to be their Instructor. He was a Scottish boatwright who had come to Seattle around 1910, and who had worked at a number of boatyards in the area.

Every year, the Edison school built one or more Project Boats. The Guillemot was the 1939 project. She was built for James Chambers, the younger, who was the son of James Chambers the Instructor. At the time, the younger James was in his 20s, and he lived on board the boat from 1939 until 1945 with his wife. His nickname for her was "Duchess", and so the boat was launced as the Duchess - a name she kept until 1990.

Since the boat was being built for his son, the family often worked on the boat themselves on weekends (after school ws out). We recently made contact with Scott Chambers, son of James, grandson of James, who loaned us a number of incredible photos of the Dutchess under construction. Scott makes incredible half-hull models of sailing vessels (http://www.halfhull.com/. Thanks for sharing these family photos with us, Scott.

Here she is with most of her planking on, before the cabin has been added.



In this picture, you can see the cabin as well as the round porthole in the forward cabin





In this photo, you can see James Jr on the right, his wife on the left, and James Sr in the center.


Here's a shot of her transom just before she was launched. Considering that she is flying a flag and has clearly been varnished, I'm guessing that this was on Lauch Day.

More on her history later

Mea culpa. mea culpa. I have not posted anything on the Guillemot blog since October. Perhaps I have been lying in a hospital bed after a tragic accident? No. Perhaps I joined a religious Order whose precepts frowned upon the internet (Thou Shalt Not Blog)? No. Maybe the Gullemot sat forlorn and forgotten throughout the entire winter? No again. We have been boating most of the winter. Sad to say, it all comes down to the fact that I am a lazy slob. Several of you have pointed my deficiences out to me, with varying degrees of tact. My beloved has mentioned it to me more than once, and her elbows are sharper (or at least nearer) than the rest of my friends. I will try to rectify this and catch everyone up on the adventures of Guillemot

Poulsbo Rendezvous

The last weekend in September, we went to our first Classic Yacht Association (CYA) event – the annual Rendezvous in Poulsbo. The CYA is a group of old boat owners (Nancy pointed out to me that although many of the boat owners might indeed be old, she is the owner of an old boat!) – in order to be a full member your boat has to be built before 1941, so it is a group of beautiful, mostly wooden boats, some built as early as 1910, and ranging in length from 26 to over 100 feet. The burgee has a C in a circle, that looks a lot like the symbol for the Chicago Cubs, so we get a lot of folks on the water letting us know that they are Cubs fans too!

Poulsbo is a small town across the Sound from Seattle. Every year the town of Poulsbo invites the CYA to hold their rendezvous there – and gives us all free moorage for the weekend. We in return open our boats and allow people to come on board and tour our boats. In addition we have a pot-luck dinner on Saturday night and a breakfast on Sunday morning. It was a great opportunity to show off the Guillemot and get to see some of the other old boats.

We had joined the CYA earlier in the summer. To be more exact, we had sent in our application and money. We were told at the time that it sometime took months to approve an application (hey, it’s a volunteer organization). We were confident that we would be accepted, since the boat had been a member under the previous owner, so we have been flying the burgee all summer. At Poulsbo, the current Commodore told us that he had just approved our application. We still haven’t heard anything official, but are assuming that we have been officially approved, and are behaving like full members.

We left for the Rendezvous on Friday afternoon. As we got in line for the Locks, we saw another wooden boat – Peaceful, A Richardson which is moored almost across from us at Stimson’s Marina. We got to talking while we were waiting for the locks and found out that they were on their way to the Rendezvous as well. Here’s a shot of Peaceful on the way to the Rendezvous (The images are courtesy of Rick Etsel, another CYA member who keeps a website of photos of the fleet).

After we got through the locks, we crossed the Sound together. It was a gorgeous warm fall day and the crossing took a little over 2 hours. We got to the marina in Poulsbo and radioed for our assigned spot. We were put next to our friend Martine Roudier on the Zella C, who did not arrive until Saturday, and she was moored next to her husband Ken Meyer on his boat the Patamar.

After we got the Guillemot docked (with lots of help from fellow CYA members on the dock) and tied down the sun had set, so we went up into Poulsbo and had dinner with Ken and his daughter, who had joined him for the weekend.

Saturday was spent on the boat, showing a few folks through, and visiting as many of the other 32 classics as we could. It was great, since this was the first time we had met most of the members, even though we had seen many of the boats on the water during the Summer. We also realized that almost half of the boats were from Stimson’s Marina – a veritable love-fest of old wooden boats! For example, we met the owners of the Hi’Ilani which is moored right behind us on D Dock at Stimson’s. They said they had been watching us practice backing into our slip all summer, and they were glad that we were practicing, since it meant we weren’t likely to hit them!

Saturday night was the Potluck Dinner, which has apparently become somewhat of a competition over the years as to who can bring the most exotic/best food. We contributed a salad of heirloom tomatoes and fresh mozzarella, which appeared to be hit – it all vanished fairly quickly.

Sunday was a Potluck Breakfast, with myriad variations on Omelets, followed by more open house tours until Noon. By then the wind was picking up, so we left just after Noon.

After an uneventful crossing, we got back to the Locks along with at least 10 other CYA boats.

Here is a picture that Rick Etsel took of us as we were headed back to Seattle:

Rhinoceros Auklet

Here's a shot of a Rhinoceros Auklet that Nan got on our Labor Day Cruise off of Vashon Island.

Duirng breeding season, these guys have a large vertical horn on the top of their beak (thus the name). By now the horn has (mostly) gone for the year.

Labor Day Cruise

Last weekend, we went out Saturday through Monday.

We wanted to leave early Saturday, but by the time we got all the food and things we needed it was 10 am before we got to the wall (The wall is where you tie up to wait your turn to go through the Locks out to the Puget Sound). On nice Summer weekends, the wait can be several hours. This was not a nice weekend weatherwise - it rained most of the time, so we got through fairly quickly.

After we got out of the locks we cruised across the Sound to Bainbridge Island, and then along the coast of Bainbridge to Blake Island. Blake Island is a State Park in the Sound. We can see it from our house. We decided to tie up to one of the mooring buoys that the Park provides - we wanted to improve our mooring skills and use the dinghy. We picked a buoy on the sound side and then we rowed into the Park marina. It was a long row. We went ashore and had lunch and a nice hike. Blake Island is great - there are deer and lots of birds, and not a lot of people. The Argosy Cruise boat comes out twice a day to deliver tourists for a salmon dinner and Native American show and folks camp in the park, but otherwise it is quiet.

While we were hiking, we saw that quite a few boats were moored on the west side of the island, but only we were moored on the North side. That night when we went to bed, we discovered why - we spent the night rocking and rolling from a combination of wind, waves and wakes. We were on the side of the open Sound, and got a lot more movement then the other folks who were in a narrower passage.

It rained most of the night. The sound of the rain on the boat was great, but the constant rocking and rolling was not. It wasn't the most restful night, so we got up early, emptied the rainwater out of the dinghy, and headed down to Gig Harbor, a small port town on the Olympic Peninsula across from Tacoma.

It was pouring when we got there. We found a spot on the community dock, put on our foul weather gear and sloshed to the Tides Tavern for breakfast. It rained on and off for most of the day. When we got home the next day, we learned there had been a tornado on the mainland!Late in the afternoon, several boats came in and docked just in front of us (one rafted to the other). They played guitar (admittedly very well) and carried on into the night. It made us pine for the secluded rocking and rolling on the buoy!

The next morning we got up, and motored back to Seattle. We had a strong current behind us, so we made the entire trip in just under 3 hours. We spent an hour or so waiting at the locks, and got home around 5:00 pm.

It was a blast.

One More Docking Story

This weekend (Labor Day) we went first to Blake Island and then down to Gig Harbor. Lots of rain, but the seas were mostly calm and we had a blast.

When we came home, it was my turn to dock the boat. I had to abort my first pass, but came in perfectly on the second, backed her right up into the slip, gave her a little burst of forward to bring her to exactly the right spot and hopped off the boat to grab a line.

And realized I had left the boat in forward, and she was leaving the dock!

Fortunately, I was able to jump back on the boat and put her in neutral.

Meanwhile, Nan had been in the stern of the boat, preparing to put one of the stern dock lines on when suddenly she found herself trying to stop the motion of a 9 ton vessel. Guess who won. She gave it a valiant effort. One of her arms is now significantly longer than the other.

Another picture perfect ending ruined by stupidity.

Nan asked me, "Are you going to put this story on the blog?" Here it is: warts and all

Terror on the High Seas - part 2

I never thought I would say this, but we hired a Personal Trainer. And although we are not noticeably more buff, nor are we likely to grace the cover of People, we have become better boaters.

Bob Meng runs a service called On Water Training. He is an ex- airline pilot and licensed ship captain. He comes and spends 2 days on your boat and takes you through docking, systems management, maintenance and emergencies. It was incredibly worth it.

We started off with docking (See Terror on the High Seas, Part 1 for an introduction to our docking experiences). We learned to do things we didn't think possible with a single screw. First we pivoted the boat in the marina. Then we moved on to docking - and the first thing he did was have us aim directly at the dock and swing at the last minute, using alternating forward and reverse to swing the stern into the dock. This is wildly different that anything we had done before (coming in at an angle), so we were both fairly certain he was crazed, but damn - it worked perfectly. After we had practiced docking for a few hours, we had both broken out in sweats and our adrenals were the size of grapefruits, so we moved on to boat systems - we went over the boat from bow to stern. We learned an incredible amount about how things worked, and what to look for, etc. Bob tends to be a bit dogmatic (This is my way to do things, and I don't care what else you may have read, my way is the right way), but for the most part, his advice has been right on.

On our second day, we started with more docking, and then went out on Lake Washington. After going through the radar system with us, he suddenly put a pair of goggles over my face that had the top part opaqued, so that you could only look through the very bottom - enough to see your instruments and nothing else. It was very cool. We were in the middle of the lake in full sunlight, but we were effectively running in a thick fog. We really learned to use the radar, so that we knew where we were, and more importantly where the other boats were, and who was headed in our direction.

At the end of the day, we came back to the slip, and did the unthinkable - Nancy backed the Guillemot into her slip under power. It was beautiful, and she didn't hit anything!