The 15-foot-long wooden row boat, with its red cedar shimmering in the morning sun, was a sight to see Saturday as it glided effortlessly on Lake Crescent during its maiden voyage.
But what makes this slender Rangeley-style lake boat special is not its beauty, which it certainly doesn’t lack. Rather, it’s what it will be used for, and for that matter, who built it, that makes it exceptionable.
Over eight months, 39 people volunteered their time to construct the vessel in a Sequim garage. Many of them are veterans; only one had any experience building a boat.
But on the shore of Lake Crescent, they saw their labor of love pay off as the boat took to water for the first time and its title was handed to Project Healing Waters.
Its purpose: to provide therapy to veterans of wars past and present who find comfort in the simple pleasure of being outdoors with a fishing rod in hand.
“It’s a very special boat,” Chuck Tye, Healing Waters’ northwest coordinator, told the volunteers Saturday before signing the title.
“Whether you know it or not, you are helping with the healing process.”
Healing Waters teaches veterans wounded physically and emotionally by past service how to fly-fish, and takes them on fishing trips.
The boat, the first for the organization’s northwest chapter, will be used on those outings, Tye said.
Fishing trips
The Olympic Peninsula Fly Fishers club, which organized the boat-building project, hosts an annual fishing event for Healing Waters each spring.
The trips work wonders, veterans say, by getting them out in the fresh air and learning to master a new skill.
“This way they get to see that there’s more to life than just doom,” said Stanley Marquette, a Vietnam veteran from Sequim who donated a trailer for the boat.
Some have post-traumatic stress disorder; others have physical wounds.
The boat, while brand new, has already received its own battle scars, the volunteers joked.
Damaged by tornado
While the boat was being shown at a gathering of the Federation of Fly Fishers in West Yellowstone, Mont., on Aug. 28, a tornado suddenly hit the town, said Dean Childs, Olympic Peninsula Fly Fishers vice president.
The boat was lifted into the air, dragging the trailer, and was dropped onto a nearby sidewalk.
“My life went before my eyes,” Childs said.
He said he and other volunteers had to work their “heinies off” to fix it by Saturday.
But the volunteers had a good sense of humor about it, particularly the veterans.
“It’s a wounded vet,” joked Joe Hudon, a Korean War veteran from Sequim.
Childs, the main proponent of the boat-building project who donated his garage for the volunteers to work in, was one of the first to try it out Saturday.
“It’s the best rowboat I’ve ever seen,” he said afterward, with a large grin.
Because of his father
Childs, a Navy veteran, said he did it for his father, who fought at Iwo Jima during World War II and Pusan during the Korean War.
“He had trouble when he came back just like vets now, but nobody understood that,” he said.
With the ongoing war in Afghanistan and troops returning from Iraq, Tye said he expects that the need for Healing Waters won’t end anytime soon.
“Their wounds are not isolated to today,” he said.
“The project is going to be around for a long time.”
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Reporter Tom Callis can be reached at 360-417-3532 or at tom.callis@peninsuladailynews.com.
