PORT TOWNSEND — The historic two-mast schooner Adventuress is preparing to leave Port Townsend for its summer sail schedule — a long process that will last a month.
This weekend, the white plastic cover will be removed from the 133-foot wooden sailing vessel as crew and volunteers prepare the Adventuress for the first public sail of the year March 20.
“Pretty shortly, we will be putting our ship back together,” said Catherine Collins, executive director of Sound Experience, a marine education organization that owns and operates the schooner.
The ship spent about five weeks in drydock for scheduled winter maintenance and was returned to its dockside home at Point Hudson Marina in January but was not entirely reassembled.
Each winter, Sound Experience holds “Winter Work Weekends,” when volunteers spend the weekend living and eating on the Adventuress while they do routine maintenance and help prepare the ship for another year of use, Collins said.
The final winter work weekend will be held Saturday and Sunday, and on March 1, the summer crews will arrive to begin orientation and training, and finish reassembling the ship to make it ready to sail again, she said.
A white plastic cover encloses the Adventuress and converts it into a marine science classroom space during the rainy winter season.
On Tuesday, the Adventuress was still acting as a classroom as about 30 first- and second-grade students from Grant Street Elementary School rotated between marine science stations where they pulled up samples of seawater to look at plankton, examined the food chain of the ocean and explored the ship’s interior.
Occasionally, a delighted shriek erupted from one of the groups of students as they explored their unaccustomed marine environment.
It’s a pretty typical scene, as there have been about 300 students from kindergarten through high school onboard the ship this winter, said Zoë Ballering, membership and public programs coordinator for Sound Experience.
The Adventuress also serves as a classroom for marine trades, Ballering said.
Port Townsend High School students in the marine trade program do much of the winter work on the Adventuress, refinishing wood surfaces such as the deck and tree-size booms, which were taken down from the masts and stowed on the deck of the Adventuress, requiring the children to clamber over them on their way to their science stations, she said.
The marine trade students also used the school’s wood shop equipment to refinish decktop boxes and repaired some metalwork.
Much of the Adventuress is in pieces, with parts being repaired or refinished, some stored out of the way and some, like the sails, stored ashore.
The Adventuress has four crews: two winter crews that operate the classroom portion of the experiential education program and maintain the ship through the winter, and two summer crews that alternate operating the ship.
The public trips typically remain inside Port Townsend Bay and are primarily under sail rather than using a motor, as long as there is enough wind, Ballering said.
“Even if there is little wind, we have a lot of sail,” she said.
Ballering said trips can include as many as 40 guests, all of whom help with raising sails and some other operations.
“The sails are heavy,” she said.
For more information about the Adventuress sailing schedule, four-day and six-day sail trips, three-hour public sail trips or membership, call 360-379-0438 or email mail@soundexp.org.
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Reporter Arwyn Rice can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 56250, or at arice@peninsuladailynews.com.
