Seaside Sauna open at Point Hudson in Port Townsend

Published 1:30 am Friday, May 29, 2026

PORT TOWNSEND — Two wood-fired saunas have been installed at the Port of Port Townsend’s Point Hudson Marina and RV Park.

As of last weekend, Seaside Sauna is open for business.

Owner Karyn Stillwell said regular time spent in saunas can have physical, mental and communal benefits.

“You get this amazing mixture of health benefits as well as this sort of intangible but very real community connection aspect, which is really, really powerful,” Stillwell said. “It was my intention to bring sauna culture — traditional sauna culture — to Port Townsend.”

Stillwell, the founder and organizer of the Port Townsend Cold Plungers group that plunges six times weekly at Fort Worden, also teaches yoga. The plunges have shown Stillwell that people desire third spaces that don’t revolve around food or alcohol, but wellness.

The larger of the two saunas, built by BW Sauna Co. of Duluth, Minn., is a traditional Finnish-style cedar sauna with a large bay window. It was towed from Duluth and arrived on May 15.

Twenty-two people — founders who have supported establishing the business — fit into the bigger sauna last Thursday.

“We had a very special sauna-whisking event,” Stillwell said.

Sauna whisking, a tradition in Finland and Russia, involves boughs of oak and birch, bundled and soaked in water. Participants are gently whisked, tapped and brushed with the botanical brooms to stimulate circulation and provide a massage-like, aromatic experience.

The second sauna was designed by a Minnesota company called Soluna. Stillwell met Soluna’s owner at the West Coast Sauna Summit last December.

“This one is smaller. It is made from heat-safe polycarbonate greenhouse panels,” Stillwell said. “It quite literally looks like a greenhouse.”

Both saunas have Finnish woodfire stoves made by Iki.

Also on the site is a lounge area with Adirondack chairs, potted plants, an arbor, benches and a shower.

Planned to be completed in several weeks, Stillwell is renovating her 1969 Airstream Land Yacht trailer to house a changing area, a small boutique shop and her office.

Along with branded merchandise and assorted local products, Stillwell already has placed orders from two vendors for sauna hats. One of the vendors is local maker Kata Golda, who is designing a line of hats specially for the business.

Stillwell said she’s been thinking quietly about the idea for years.

“I was kind of expecting somebody else to do it, but at the same time, secretly hoping that nobody else would do it,” Stillwell said. “Deep down, I knew that I wanted to be the one.”

After announcing her intention to bring sauna culture to Port Townsend on World Sauna Day last Oct. 25, Stillwell started brainstorming and studying. She visited as many saunas as she could around the Pacific Northwest and traveled to the sauna mecca of the United States, Minneapolis, with a small group of girlfriends in December.

Stillwell and her friends visited probably 10 different saunas in and around Minneapolis, where they were inspired by all the entrepreneurs doing saunas in different ways, Stillwell said. They visited a sauna on a frozen lake with a hole dug into the ice for a cold plunge.

“You would literally go from 200-degree-plus temperatures into like 35-degree water with snow everywhere and ice. It was phenomenal,” Stillwell said.

The Pacific Northwest is becoming a leader in North America sauna culture, with the Puget Sound area turning into big players.

Currently on a month-to-month lease with the Port of Port Townsend, Stillwell said the intent is to stay at the location, if the endeavor works out.

While there are other saunas on the Salish Sea, they are mobile and have to pack up. Stillwell said she’s pinching herself about landing the location.

Sessions are 90 minutes long, and the business offers memberships, drop-ins and punch passes. Admittance costs $40 for drop-ins and $175 for unlimited monthly memberships. Booking can be done directly at seasidesaunapt.com.

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Reporter Elijah Sussman can be reached by email at elijah.sussman@peninsuladailynews.com.