PORT TOWNSEND — She tells sea tales by the seashore Saturday — and organizers hope the festival will inspire women to work in the marine trades.
Eleven women will tell of their seafaring experiences through stories and songs during the second annual She Tells Sea Tales festival at 7 p.m. at the Northwest Maritime Center, 431 Water St. in Port Townsend.
Doors will open at 6 p.m. Storytelling and songs will begin at 7 p.m.
Tickets at the door will be $15 for adults and $5 for youths 17 or younger. They also can be purchased in advance at www.nwmaritime.org.
“Last year, the show was sold out, with standing room only, so get tickets early,” said Kelley Watson, maritime studies instructor at Port Townsend High School and one of the women featured at the festival.
The evening will include appetizers, soda and Sunrise Coffee, with cider from Finnriver Farm & Cidery, beer from Port Townsend Brewery and wine for sale.
Girls’ Boat Project
The fundraiser will benefit the Girls’ Boat Project, a joint venture between Port Townsend High and the Northwest Maritime Center to introduce girls to the maritime trades.
Girls who take part in the project learn traditional maritime skills in a yearlong course that covers sailing, woodworking and boatbuilding in a setting where a woman working in the boat industry is not an anomaly, Watson said.
“There are not a lot of positions in the industry for women,” she said.
The Girls’ Boat Project is in its third year of offering the for-credit high school program.
Six girls are currently registered, including a senior who is making the boatbuilding course part of her senior project.
Watson started as a volunteer and at one time taught girls who signed up for the course three hours every Wednesday afternoon — the school’s early release day.
Now a hired teacher at the high school, Watson has other duties Wednesdays and had to scale the class back to one hour a week, she said.
Watson created She Tells Sea Tales as a way to help fund the program.
The Girls’ Boat Project’s first undertaking was to help the Community Boat Project founded by Penelope Partridge and others to restore the Felicity Ann, a 23-foot wooden sloop used by Ann Davidson in 1952 to make her the first woman to sail solo across the Atlantic Ocean.
This year, the Girls’ Boat Project has turned to the basics of boat construction.
“The class is evolving,” Watson said.
The class is building an El Toro 8-foot sailing dingy in the school’s woodshop and taking sailing lessons on the Northwest Maritime Center’s longboats — one Wednesday at a time.
“We’re building confidence by building competence,” Watson said.
She said the stories are not just for women, despite the theme of the event and its celebration on the eve of International Women’s Day, which is Sunday.
The sea stories feature the adventures of real working sailors who also happen to be poets, writers or singer-songwriters, she said.
The real thing
Sea stories may sometimes be associated with fish stories and other tall tales, Watson said, but more often than not, the events described are the real thing.
“Sometimes, the truth is stranger than fiction,” she said.
The women who will take part in the event have experience as commercial fishermen, boat owners, tall-ship sailors and boat builders.
In addition to Watson, who has experience as a writer and a tenderman — a crewman on a salmon packing boat — participants are:
■ Pat McGuire of Port Townsend, an artist, storyteller and gillnetter. A gillnet is a fishing net that is hung vertically so fish get trapped in it by their gills.
■ Diana Talley of Port Townsend, a sailor, storyteller and shipwright.
■ Tele Aadsen of Bellingham, who is a writer working on a book and who has experience as a troller. Trollers fish by trailing a baited line along behind a boat.
Aadsen also maintains a blog called “Hooked” at www.teleaadsen.com.
■ Anna Orr of Port Townsend, a mariner, singer and songwriter.
■ Emilee Monson of Port Townsend, a storyteller and tall-ship sailor who works at the Community Boat Project in Port Hadlock.
■ Erin Jakubek of Port Townsend, who has experience as a troller, farmer and storyteller.
■ Billie Delaney of Port Townsend, a set netter, salmon and crab fisherman, writer, storyteller and set netter. A set net is a fishing net fastened in fixed position.
■ Becca Argo of Port Townsend, who has experience as a gillnetter. She is a singer-songwriter and plays the ukulele.
■ Selena Rubio of Port Townsend, a boat project student and singer-songwriter.
■ Holly Hughes of Chimacum, who has experience as a tenderman and teaches writing at Edmonds Community College.
________
Reporter Arwyn Rice can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5070, or at arice@peninsuladailynews.com.
