THE 25-FOOT CEDAR canoe Jared Fennell is building as a senior project for the 2010 Paddle Journey was not the only Aleutian-style craft at the Northwest Maritime Center last weekend.
Tucked up in the eaves of the boat shop was a baidarka, or wood-frame kayak, that was donated when the center opened.
Built in Aleutian Islands style, it fooled Mitch Poling, Jared’s project adviser, for a second.
“It looks like it was built in the early 1900s,” Poling said Saturday, after boat shop educator Kees Prins and Joe Casto, who is helping Jared build his canoe, brought the baidarka down from the rafters.
That’s because the person who built it, a 44-year-old dental technician named John Donahue, modeled it after Aleutian baidarkas that he researched online.
Donahue had left his business card tucked in the boat frame, and when contacted by phone Monday, he said he built the baidarka in 1996.
“It’s old in the respect that I used it for years,” he said.
The son of a shipwright who worked in Port Townsend, John, who now lives in Silverdale, said he grew up building boats.
He likes skin and frame construction, he said, because it’s a free-form boat-building style that can use whatever you’ve got on hand.
For his first attempt at a baidarka, the Russian name for kayak, he used pieces of fir and white oak, which were bent to form the ribs, that he salvaged from an old hot tub. He sealed the nylon skin with porch and deck paint.
“I didn’t buy any materials,” he said. “It’s all made out of scrap.”
Machine marks on the wood gave away its age, Poling said, and the lashing that holds the frame together would have been irregular in width if it had dated from the early 20th century, according to Darcie Pacholl, Jared’s aunt.
The nylon skin, which would have been sealskin, was long gone, having become worn and not worth the trouble to replace, Donahue said.
As a first attempt, the baidarka was serviceable, he said, but didn’t paddle very well SEmD too much flex in the keel compared to the weight of the tips.
Seagoing baidarkas are “sprung” like an Alpine ski, Donahue said SEmD the keel is articulated, the Aleutian Island-style made of three pieces of wood lashed together, so that it flexes with the waves.
“The bow should have 30 percent more spring than the keel,” Donahue said.
“When a wave hits the bow, the bow goes up and the stern should go down.”
With only photographs as guides, however, it was hard to get the ratio right, something he improved with subsequent projects.
Compared to Jared’s 25-foot open canoe, called an angyak, the little baidarka looked light and fast.
“I’d love to be in that thing,” said Jared’s grandmother, Maggie Fennell, as she sewed the nylon skin over the canoe’s stern.
“We could tell people, ‘Here’s our sports model, and this is our utility model.'”
Donahue, who said he learned to make sails as a boy in Carol Hasse’s sail loft at Point Hudson, has every book published on skin and frame construction.
There are more than 50 different versions, he said, and he has built some from Greenland and other cultures.
He also knows the history of the baidarka, and how craftsmen like Jared’s ancestors adapted to the times and technology after outside contact.
“Their interpretive skill was so powerful,” he said. “They didn’t care about tradition. With the advent of the rifle, they didn’t have to go as far to hunt, so [they] use something like a short white-water kayak today.”
After undergoing back surgeries, his paddling days ended, Donahue said, so he decided to give away all the skin and frame craft he had built.
The one given to the Northwest Maritime Center was the last to go.
“As an art object, it was interesting,” he said. “It was not that great a boat.”
Calling all Zellerbachs
Alyce Hansen is floating a local tradition of her own.
Hansen, who worked at the paper mill for 38 years, is one of a team of people who put on an annual get-together and no-host luncheon for people who worked at the mill when it was owned by Crown Zellerbach.
It’s a tradition that Hansen and Dorothy Calloway started in 1983, when the mill was sold, and has continued ever since.
“We decided we should do the retiree thing,” Hansen said.
Crown Zellerbach hosted an annual dinner for retirees, Hansen said, which she and Calloway wanted to continue.
Originally held in the dining hall at Fort Worden State Park, the reunion is now a luncheon at the Highway 20 Roadhouse.
Retirees, spouses and friends are invited to attend the luncheon, which is on Monday, March 15, with prepaid reservations due by Friday, March 12.
“It’s open to anyone who has lunch money,” Hansen said.
Hansen started working at the mill in 1945 in personnel, then worked up to secretary to the resident manager, serving under five different managers.
Originally from Cottage Grove, Ore., Hansen and her husband, Gene, who joined the Navy on Dec. 6, 1941, came to Port Townsend when he was assigned shore duty with the Harbor Entrance Control Post at Fort Worden.
Gene eventually went to work at the mill in its heyday, Hansen said.
“There were 902 employees at one time,” Hansen said.
The average was around 700 during her years at the mill, she said SEmD considerably more than there are now, especially since the bag plant, which employed both women and men, has closed.
Women also worked on the plant floor during the war, Hansen said.
When questions came up about mill history, Hansen said, she often had to go and dig out the records.
“They used to call me the historian,” she said.
The luncheon also brings a lot of mill history alive.
Anna Simcoe, whose husband, Fred, started working at the mill when it opened in 1929, was a regular in past years.
Anna, who was 101, was among the dozen attendees who passed away since last March, according to the letter the reunion committee sends out.
Keeping the mailing list updated is a challenge, Hansen said, especially as people get up in years and move out of town to be near relatives.
“We know there are people on the list who are too incapacitated to come to the luncheon, but they feel bad if they don’t get a letter,” she said.
So she is hoping to reach people who might be interested, including spouses, family members and friends of retirees who would like to talk about the old days.
Cost of the luncheon is $16 per person.
Send check payable to Frank Borgstrom, 734 Foster St., Port Townsend, WA 98368 by Monday, March 12. (No refunds after noon on March 12.)
Contact Borgstrom at 360-385-2395.
The event starts at 11 a.m. Monday, March 15, with a reminiscing hour, followed by lunch at noon at the restaurant, 2152 Sims Way, Port Townsend.
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Jennifer Jackson writes about Port Townsend and Jefferson County every Wednesday. To contact her with items for this column, phone 360-379-5688 or e-mail jjackson@olypen.
