The North Olympic Sail and Power Squadron, a local unit of the U.S. Power Squadron, is an organization devoted to safe boating through education, civic service and just plain old having fun on the water.
This coming weekend, Sept. 22-23, the squadron will present America’s Boating Course.
The classroom program, which costs $41 and includes a 260-page primer, is ideal for recreational mariners who operate personal watercraft and the family boat, fishermen operating outboard utility boats and paddlers of canoes and kayaks.
A full range of topics will be covered in the two-day session, including the basics of boating safety and the minimum safety equipment required for your specific vessel.
Among the topics will be seamanship issues and right-of-way rules between differing vessels as well as the proper use of the marine radio.
Additionally, there will be a discussion of state and federal regulations, navigational aids and an introduction to piloting and digital charting.
This course also ushers in an additional feature to a number of the classes that are offered by the North Olympic squadron, which enables the student and a certified instructor to go aboard a boat and apply their classroom instruction on the water.
Ray Thomas, the squadron’s on-the-water coordinator, said the student and instructor will make an appointment to go aboard either the student’s own boat or a member-provided vessel, and there is no additional charge for this new component.
Future on-the-water classes that build on the foundation of this course will include seamanship, piloting, advance piloting and sailing, as well as a radar seminar, Thomas said.
For further information or to register for the America’s Boating Course — which will be held this coming Saturday and Sunday at Rainbow’s End RV Park, 261831 U.S. Highway 101 in Sequim — phone Bill Atkinson at 360-475-1215 or Guy Bear at 360-670-5582.
Crozier projects
I stopped by Crozier Craft’s facility on Edgewood Drive last week to catch up on its projects.
Chad Crozier and his crew are building a one-side walk-around aluminum boat for Joe Luce of the Lower Elwha Klallam tribe.
Joe will use the 30-foot boat to dive for geoducks and sea urchins.
The 10-foot-wide boat that will be powered by twin 300-horsepower Yamaha engines also will be used to set pots for Dungeness crab and gillnetting for salmon along the U.S.-Canada border.
To accommodate Joe’s multifaceted fishing endeavors, a large fish box will be constructed forward of the cabin.
Forward of that, a net reel will be installed that holds about 300 fathoms of net. A forward driving station also will be set up that will come in very handy when working with the net.
Chad also has Anthony Charles’ 24-foot Radon at his shop.
Anthony, who is on the Tribal Council for the Lower Elwha Klallam, is having Crozier Craft rebuild the davit for the crab-pot puller on his 28-year-old boat.
Viking Mist, a 36-foot Radon owned by Dan Green of Neah Bay, is back at Chad’s facility for the installation of twin Cummins QSB 5.9 diesel engines that will be coupled to a pair of Konrad outdrives.
Regular readers will probably recall that Crozier Craft had previously gutted the fiberglass boat and then fabricated an aluminum pilot house, fish boxes, fuel tanks and bulwarks.
In addition, the 38-year-old commercial boat has been in the large building at the Port Angeles Boatyard for a well-deserved paint job.
Lisa Britton of Port Angeles, who has mastered the skill of painting vessels using a roller and a paint brush, painted Viking Mist in one of Radon’s traditional color schemes, red and black.
In an earlier conversation, Lisa said black and red are the most difficult and least forgiving of all colors to work with.
But she was obviously up to the challenge because the boat looks spectacular.
When the boat leaves Crozier Craft, it will be returned to the boatyard, where Eric Bert of Modern Yacht Joinery, whose shop is also in the boatyard, will build the interior.
Handsome visitors
Platypus Marine Inc. had two stately yachts sitting on the hard at its yard on Marine Drive in Port Angeles.
One of them is Sirius, a Nordhavn 76 that was built by Ta Shing in Taiwan and launched in December 2011.
The yacht has four staterooms and is powered by a single MTU Series 60 535-horsepower engine.
She was out of the water for a few days to allow factory personnel to perform routine warranty work on her and to give her a new coat of bottom paint.
The other yacht is Quest, a 75-foot Nordlund that was built by the same Tacoma yacht builder that built the two Puget Sound Pilots boats Puget Sound and Juan de Fuca.
Capt. Charlie Crane, Platypus’ director of sales and marketing, said personnel will service the stabilizers, replace the “O” rings in the dripless seals and install new zincs after a fresh coat of bottom paint has been applied.
Pretty ketch
Tamsen came into the Port Angeles Boat Haven on Wednesday afternoon and moored to the transient float outboard of the Harbormaster’s Office.
The 172-foot ketch, which then got under way for San Francisco early Thursday morning, came to Port Angeles by way of Vancouver, B.C., Hawaii, Tahiti and New Zealand to top off her fuel and clear Customs.
The story of Tamsen and her crew dates back almost 40 years when Dr. Robert Firestone, a psychologist and author, got together with six other families to purchase an 85-foot, two-masted sailing schooner named Vltava.
The purpose was to turn the boat over to their combined 11 children so that they would learn teamwork and to depend upon each other as well as gain confidence, independence and responsibility.
In October 1976, Vltava left Long Beach, Calif., on a journey to circumnavigate the globe that would conclude in San Francisco on March 8, 1978.
Along the way, they were hit by a rogue wave that nearly swamped the boat.
They had to replace a sour engine, used their life raft as an on-deck pool to beat the heat in the Red Sea and repaired a torn mainsail after it came crashing down on deck in a storm.
Whatever skills were learned and confidences gained, they also developed a camaraderie and trust among themselves that endures to this day.
In fact, these 11 original crew members of Vltava are now the owners of Tamsen, which was built in Italy by Perini Navi and launched in 2010.
For those who keep track of such things, I read somewhere that the cost of the sailing yacht was approximately $28,000 an inch — you do the math.
For those who would like to know more about Tamsen, there are a number of sites on the Internet, including the following, which I found particularly informative: http://tinyurl.com/pdncrew.
PA Harbor watch
On Monday, the Tesoro Corp. terminal in Port Angeles provided bunkers midharbor to British Laurel, a 789-foot crude-oil tanker under contract to BP Shipping.
On Saturday, Tesoro provided bunkers to Alaskan Frontier, a 941-foot crude-oil tanker also under contract to BP.
Tesoro on Tuesday refueled the Crowley-owned articulated tug and barge Commitment.
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David G. Sellars is a Port Angeles resident and former Navy boatswain’s mate who enjoys boats and strolling the waterfronts.
Items involving boating, port activities and the North Olympic Peninsula waterfronts are always welcome.
Email dgsellars@hotmail.com or phone him at 360-808-3202. His column appears every Sunday.