Opening of haul-out season

The Port of Port Townsend's Travelift schedule reopened on Monday 14 January after the December–January winter pause (the lift takes two weeks down for annual hydraulics service and operator training). The first week of the new season is always the busiest of the year not yet labeled "haul-out season" — the boats that are first in line are the ones whose owners have been waiting since November, the boats that have something specific that has to happen in the slow season before the spring rush starts in mid-March.

Six boats came up the ramp that week. Three are featured in this issue: F/V Cape Fox on Tuesday morning (see the Cape Fox feature for the Type III install that followed), S/V Lavandula on Thursday (deferred to a March refit slot, see the Lavandula feature), and the Hinckley B40 Orcas Lullaby on Friday (the watermaker install, see the Orcas Lullaby feature). The remaining three boats are not in this issue: a quick bottom-paint on a Bayliner 32, a propeller-shaft seal swap on a 1988 Grand Banks 36, and a rudder-shoe inspection on a Catalina 30 whose owner is preparing to sell.

The safety brief

Jens runs a fifteen-minute safety brief before any apprentice from any yard works on a hauled-out boat in our area. The brief covers: confined-space entry (no apprentice goes into a tank without the journeyman who is leading the work standing at the access port); fall protection (a 12-foot fall from a hauled-out keelboat is a 12-foot fall, the same as any other 12-foot fall, and is governed by the same OSHA 1926 Subpart M requirements that apply to construction); hot-work permits (we do not light a torch on any vessel until the Port's hot-work permit is signed and the fire watch is in place); and the Port's standing rule that any apprentice working on a hauled-out vessel must wear a hard hat in the active Travelift zone.

This week Jens delivered the brief three times: once on Tuesday morning to the SEA Marine apprentice who was helping with the Cape Fox hull pressure-wash; once on Wednesday afternoon to an electrician's apprentice from a third yard who was running a wiring chase under our boat (and into our work area); and once on Friday morning to Lucia, the shop's own apprentice, on her first day back from a two-week winter break and her first work on a hauled-out boat since November. Jens delivers the brief on the calendar — once a year per apprentice, regardless of seniority — and on event (any new apprentice, any new yard).

The Port's hour

On Monday morning at 0700, before the lift came online, the Port harbormaster's office held the season's standing tenant-meeting in the office at the head of the inner basin. The meeting is open to every marine-trades tenant on the yard; about thirty people came this year, against approximately twenty in 2025. The discussion ranged from the proposed pumpout-boat expansion (the Port is in the early stages of budgeting a second pumpout boat for 2027, see the March pumpout-week entry), to the September Wooden Boat Festival's 49th-anniversary planning (which is well under way at Northwest Maritime), to the long-running infrastructure question of whether the Port should replace the south finger of the inner basin (which is, as of January 2026, beyond its design life by approximately fifteen years).

The shop's contribution to the meeting was, as usual, the same: we offered to teach the annual MSD compliance class at the September Festival again. The Port said yes. We will be in Tent 7 again, on the wooden boats side of the Northwest Maritime grounds, on the morning of Saturday 12 September 2026. We will run two sessions: an 0900 session for the gillnet fleet's annual ADEC compliance refresher, and an 1100 session open to the public on Type III holding-tank installs for live-aboards. Bring a chair. — L.B.