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2017 Wooden Boat Festival has ended
Thursday, September 7 • 5:30pm - 7:30pm
Lifetime Acheivement Awards: Jim Blaiklock, Tim Nolan and Miguel Winterburn

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The Lifetime Achievement Awards presentation will be held Thursday, September 7 in the Maritime Meeting Rooms at the Northwest Maritime Center. Doors open at 5:30 pm and awards start at 6 pm. This heartfelt Festival tradition is hosted by WoodenBoat Magazine and is open to the public.

 

The Wooden Boat Foundation Lifetime Achievement in

Wooden Boat Community Spirit & Culture

Jim Blaiklock

 

Jim Blaiklock has been messing about in boats since he was born, growing up in a sailing family in New Jersey and Sag Harbor. As a beloved member of the Port Townsend boating community, he was a founding member and officer of the Port Townsend Marine Trades Association. 

 

He drew standing room only crowds at several Festivals with his entertaining, knowledgeable demos on Dutchmen and Butterflies. He ran the Kids’ Boatbuilding booth at Festival for years and years, designing the templates and cutting the hulls, procuring supplies all year long, and then staying after Festival on Sundays until every scrap of sail, string, globs of glue, and nails were picked up, using a magnet to find errant nails. He's always been about doing every job completely, and advocated for sweetening the pot, as he'd say... do more than you were hired and paid to do.

 

He volunteered as the Shop Manager for the Wooden Boat Foundation for many years before finally being hired in that capacity. He picked up donated boats from around the Sound, then sailed them back, fixed them up, and they were sold to raise money for the Foundation. 

 

He was a beloved mentor to the scores of Gray Wolf Ranch volunteers that worked in the shop; many recognized his impact on their lives by inviting him to their Gray Wolf graduation ceremonies and dinners as a specially honored guest. Those he mentored spoke of learning more about life from him than anywhere else. He taught them that "slow is fast," meaning take your time and do it right so you don't have to do it over. 

 

Teaching sanding, varnishing, and painting was his way to teach about how to live life with finesse - the word he used and the students cherished. 

 

From the Selection Committee: Jim Blaiklock has been a part of this community since the first Festival, when he rode up on a motorcycle from San Diego, where he was a shipwright. He eventually bought property and moved here. 

 

After a few years as a volunteer, he was hired as the Foundation’s Boat Shop Manager. He mentored kids and adults in the Cupola House Boat Shop. Together with volunteers, he fixed up a Point Hudson building as a shop with larger capacity.  

 

His patient teaching style, seasoned experience, and unconditional generosity are legendary. His gentlemanly ways, friendly charm, and pragmatism have endeared him to scores, if not hundreds, of volunteers, young and old alike, who’ve started or apprenticed in Port Townsend. As mentor, teacher, and loyal friend - Jim exemplifies every aspect of this award. 

 

 

The Wooden Boat Foundation & WoodenBoat Magazine Lifetime Achievement in

Boatbuilding & Design

Tim Nolan

 

A native of Southern California, Tim Nolan has been involved with boats since 1958, when he bought a sailing pram at the age of 11. Growing up he surfed the local beaches of Palos Verdes and worked as a deck hand on excursion and sport fishing boats from San Pedro before enrolling in the Engineering program at the University of Michigan. After graduation he worked at Global Marine in Los Angeles before serving in the Peace Corps for 2 ½ years, teaching Naval Architecture in Guayaquil, Ecuador before settling in the Northwest in 1974.

 

In 1975 he dropped out of commercial design to do what he loved best: work on boats. He worked as a shipwright for several years while continuing to design pleasure boats, including the Cape George 31 Cutter, of which over 50 were built by Cecil Lange and Sons in Port Townsend.

 

For a time he returned to commercial work, designing fishing boats, barges, tugboats, including the Lauren Foss and Corbin Foss, the most powerful in the Foss fleet. In 1985 he moved to Port Townsend and consulted for Admiral Marine Works, working on four large composite yachts.

 

Tim began an association with Ed Monk and Son in 1989 that continues to this day. Tim’s contribution to the design process is primarily structure, and he plays a strong role in managing the plan set development. He is probably best known for his freehand perspective sketches that condense information and speak directly to the builder; he likes detail and enjoys sketching them in a way that looks like they want to leap out of the paper and into the boat.

 

Today Tim Nolan Marine Design continues to provide quality design services to a limited number of customers. Tim owns a total of 137 feet of boats, and when he’s not working on his boats, you might find him playing his fiddle or standup paddle boarding.

 

From the Selection Committee: Tim Nolan is a well-known character in the maritime scene around Port Townsend; he is a letter-perfect candidate for the 2017 Lifetime Achievement Award for Boatbuilding and Boat Design. He has spent his life working both boats and boat lines into something magical on the water. His work carries the scope of breadth from the smallest dinghies to large ocean motor yachts and he has backed all it up with the eye of an artist and the science of an engineer.  He is a rare talent in the Marine Industry and we are very pleased that he has agreed to be our recipient this year. 

 

 

The Wooden Boat Foundation

Shipwrights Hall of Fame

Miguel Winterburn

 

The Wooden Boat Foundation will also be honoring Miguel “Mike” Winterburn with a special Shipwrights Hall of Fame award this year. From his start shaping surfboards to a career building boats, Mike is known as a craftsman without equal, seeking to create beautiful work with an emphasis on function. Many shipwrights in town today consider him one of their first mentors. Local shipwright Brian Wentzel shared, “For me he had a subtle way-- always there to answer a question or suggest a path, but never without the reasoning behind it. He often carefully watched others make mistakes, but never interfered. To truly learn, he believed that we needed to make our own mistakes. Then he’d offer a quick smile and a suggestion for how it could be corrected.” 



Thursday September 7, 2017 5:30pm - 7:30pm PDT
Adventure Stage Maritime West

Attendees (3)