PORT TOWNSEND — A fundraiser for the schooner Adventuress is three weeks along and has raised nearly 72 percent of its goal.
Sound Experience, the nonprofit that owns the 98-year-old Port Townsend-based ship, is asking contributors to kick in $29 each during a pledge period of 29 days, which began Sept. 23 and ends Oct. 22.
As of Wednesday, $37,281 of a hoped-for $52,000 had been raised, according to the website at www.soundexp.org.
“The economy is tough, and a lot of people have their hands out,” said Sound Experience Executive Director Catherine Collins.
“So it’s important to keep this fundraiser as ‘grass-roots’ as possible.”
For this reason, the group has not increased its fundraising goal even though “our community has expanded,” Collins said.
The $29 figure is the cost of one young person to participate in a three-hour environmental program aboard the Adventuress.
Classes are tailored to fit individual groups and have recently begun addressing at-risk youths.
While aboard, participants learn to raise and lower sails, sing chanteys and gain the experience of Puget Sound and its marine life, according to the website.
The Adventuress has been docked at Lake Union and Bainbridge Island since Port Townsend’s Wooden Boat Festival in September and is heading to Bellingham this weekend.
It is scheduled to arrive in Port Townsend on Monday and will conduct classes during the week before holding its final public sail of the season Oct. 22.
Over the summer, 1,871 people participated in 92 different programs offered during 2011, most of them three-hour sails, Sound Experience said.
After the last public sail, the vessel will be taken out of the water at the Port Townsend Boat Yard for winter repairs, which will include work on the mainsail, the foresail and the tail shaft.
Collins said these repairs represent phase four of a $360,000 Centennial Restoration Project begun last year to fix up the boat before its 100th birthday in 2013.
Phase four will be financed by private contributions and matching funds, Collins said.
A $180,000 National Park Service “Save America’s Treasures” grant, with donors matching that amount, and a $125,000 historical preservation grant given to the Adventuress by American Express after it gained the most votes in an online contest were used in earlier phases.
The repairs will be conducted in partnership with the Northwest School of Wooden Boat Building, with the new sails constructed using student labor.
The sailing season will begin in March, with next year’s program the last prior to the boat’s 2013 centennial.
Those wishing to donate can visit www.soundexp.org, phone 360-379-0438 or send a check to Sound Experience, P.O. Box 1390, Port Townsend, WA 98368.
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Jefferson County Reporter Charlie Bermant can be reached at 360-385-2335 or at charlie.bermant@peninsuladailynews.com.
