PORT TOWNSEND — Northwest Maritime Center leaders signed an $8.1 million construction contract Tuesday morning.
Jim Whittaker, the first American to climb Mount Everest, was at the motivational helm, as the group symbolically launched the project at Hudson Point Marina aboard the Wooden Boat Foundation’s gaff sloop Dorjun.
“I’ve always wanted to get people into nature, and the world is 70 percent the sea,” said Whittaker, an avid sailor who discovered the beauty of Point Hudson while floating in from a South Pacific voyage more than 20 years ago.
“This will be an outstanding facility to introduce people to the sea.”
For Whittaker, the Maritime Center’s honorary capital campaign chairman — and a motivational speaker and past president of Seattle-based Recreational Equipment Inc. — the project represents the educational program he calls, “No Child Left Inside.”
Primo Construction of Carlsborg will construct the new two-building, 26,000 square-foot maritime education facility on the two-acre Port Townsend waterfront site adjacent to the marina.
“Within 30 days, you are going to see major activity on that site,” Stan Cummings, Maritime Center and Wooden Boat Foundation executive director, told about 20 community leaders at the marina’s center dock.
“This is momentous.”
Aboard the Dorjun, Whittaker joined Maritime Center board vice president Dave Grimmer, and urban planner Keith Gurnee, who sat in for Primo Construction, along with Rob Sanderson and Andy Gale, who run the Maritime Center’s education programs.
Port Townsend Mayor Michelle Sandoval expressed her enthusiasm with a cheerful “yippee!”
“It’s a long time coming, and we’re glad to be a part of it,” the mayor said.
