PORT TOWNSEND — The redesign of the port’s logo has moved away from the profile of an unknown ship and now centers on the classic 81-foot schooner Alcyone instead.
“We wanted to honor the local marine trades and local boats by focusing on a vessel with a genuine connection to the Port of Port Townsend,” said Eron Berg, port executive director, who oversaw the redesign process.
“Alcyone was and is the perfect boat,” he said.
The new logo shows the gaff-rigged Alcyone slicing through the Salish Sea in front of the Point Wilson Lighthouse, a landmark well known to regional boaters. Even the sails in the logo are authentic. They had been hand-stitched for Alcyone by Port Townsend Sails.
History
Authentic history and authentic boats are at the heart of what makes both Victorian Port Townsend and the marine trades of the Port of Port Townsend unique, the port said in a press release.
The logo has a retro feel to it since Port Townsend graphic artist Marian Roh of RohGraphics used a hand-painted color scheme.
Berg said he wanted the new logo to evoke the fact that the Port of Port Townsend marks its 100th year as a public port district in 2024.
Prominent in the logo itself is that the port was established in 1924.
Alcyone arrived from its Seattle moorage some 54 years ago.
The gaff-rigged schooner, moored at the Port’s Boat Haven Marina, has been owned by Sugar Flanagan and Leslie McNish since 1987. Before then, it was owned by Pete Hanke Sr., who had purchased it in 1965 from its builder, Frank Prothero, the port said.
Hanke moved Alcyone from Seattle’s Shilshole Marina to Port Townsend in 1969, where it has remained ever since. Prothero, a master of traditional wooden boatbuilding and foreman of a legendary boatbuilding shop on Seattle’s Lake Union, constructed it for his own use in 1956.
Port Townsend-based shipwrights have worked with Flanagan and McNish on many Alcyone upgrades, and the couple uses the schooner for charters and on-the-water education. They have also made five ocean crossings.
The port began working with Roh in early 2022. Commissioner Carol Hasse, an internationally known sailmaker who had made Alcyone’s sails, was involved in the early logo design discussions.
Fellow Commissioner Pete Hanke Jr., whose family had owned Alcyone before its sale to Flanagan and McNish, was involved in the final decision, along with Pam Petranek, the port’s third elected commissioner and co-owner of the Cape Cleare, a sailing troller moored next to Alcyone in the Boat Haven.
Once the logo was completed, the port moved to place it on all port materials, equipment and facilities, according to the release.
It is on letterheads, business cards, the doors of port trucks and is making its way onto port signage.
Prior to the redesign, the port had two or three logos that sometimes appeared on different materials. The dominant one was the silhouette of an unknown square-rigged sailing ship with no known connection to Port Townsend.
“Just like Alcyone in that logo, the port is moving quickly ahead even as we acknowledge our legacy and our past,” Berg said.
