Is a festival about traditional boats a good venue to talk about new technologies in boating?
There’s a presumption that hybrid boats are more efficient and better from a conservation perspective, which isn’t necessarily true. But I think the two do fit together quite well. Also, the Northwest is like the Northeast in that it has quite a lot of idiosyncratic boat builders and owners who are willing to step a little outside of the box. You don’t see a lot of mass-produced factory boats up here. These people are very interested in new technologies and they’re willing to give them a try, even though they realize there are going to be teething problems.

Can you tell me about the work the HYMAR team is doing?
Right now, we’re collecting a lot of baseline data on a conventional system. I have the test boat (a Malo 46) and we equipped it with about $60,000, $70,000 worth of test gear. We’ve got a torque meter on the propeller shaft and it also measures the RPM of the shaft. With torque and RPM, you can calculate how much energy the propeller is using. We also have a very accurate fuel measurement system, so now we have the power the propeller is using and the engine’s fuel consumption. With those two things, we can measure the power the boat is actually using, compare it to a model of the boat’s performance and make deductions about engine efficiency and propeller efficiency.

We’ve now got a database that’s unique in the world in terms of the depth of information we’ve got on the conventional system. I spent two or three years studying fuel efficiency issues with diesel engines and with this database I now know how to make a hybrid propulsion system more efficient than a conventional system. It’s no longer a question of whether we can do it. I know we can. It’s now a question of how much more efficient we can make it. We’ll be able to put more numbers on that in upcoming months.

Initially, I was a skeptic of this whole project. I thought that at the end of the day, hybrid systems on boats weren’t going to be cost effective or worthwhile. I’ve already realized that we can really make it quite cost effective in a lot of situations.

None of the current electric systems (used for boats) are very well-optimized. The vast majority of them are really no more efficient, or are even less efficient, than a regular diesel engine. It’s a real challenge to make this technology more efficient in a boat as opposed to a car. In a car, every time you stop at a traffic light you can shut your engine off. Every time you go down a hill or use your brakes, you can recover that energy. You can’t do any of that in a boat.

If you were initially a skeptic, why did you embark on this project?
I kept getting these emails from people who wanted to do it. There’s this pent-up demand for hybrid systems. I wanted to see if it was justified or not. There’s a presumption that it just has to be better. But when I started out, I thought it would be hard to make it better. This whole project was about seeing if that really was the end of the story, or if looking at this in depth, we could find a way to make it look good. That’s effectively what we’ve done. I think we can make it live up to people’s expectations.

How will the system developed by the HYMAR team be better than existing electric systems?
To optimize the systems, you’ve got to bring together a large number of skill sets—expertise in electric propulsion, diesel engines, propellers, control systems … The car industry has spent hundreds of millions of dollars and can afford to put together teams to work on this. In the boat world, even with the big boat manufacturers, it’s a fairly cottage industry. Nobody has that kind of money or resources. You’ve got people who understand one part of the system and can put that part of the system together, but don’t understand the other parts of the system.

With the European Union funding, we’ve been able to put a team together that understands all the parts of the system. That’s what sets us apart from everybody else. It’s having a dozen different experts under one roof.

How many boats are currently using hybrid technology?
For the size of boat we’re looking at, 30 feet and up, I don’t suppose that there are more than a couple hundred in the whole world. There are quite a lot of small launches with electric motors in them, but none of them have worked that well. They require a lot of user intervention to manage them properly. What we have to do is get to systems where the complexity is all hidden from the user and they key decision-making is done by the system and not the user.

You need very expensive battery packs in these boats. They can run from a couple of thousand dollars to a hundred thousand. You’re looking at probably a five-thousand-dollar battery pack if you’re using conventional technology, and twenty to thirty thousand if you’re using lithium batteries. But if you do an analysis of the energy you get out of a battery during its lifetime, twenty- or thirty-thousand-dollar battery packs are cheaper per unit of energy, because you get so much more life out of them. That’s a calculation, to my knowledge, that nobody’s ever bothered to make.

How soon do you think we’ll start seeing more hybrid boats on the market?
The end of 2011 would be my guess. I think we’ll have prototype systems by this time next year. Things are moving a lot quicker than I expected. This summer, we got some terrific insights into some of the key pieces of the system in a level of detail that we weren’t able to before. I’m tickled to death with the way it’s going.

If a boat builder comes in and makes a commitment, that will accelerate the pace of development and encourage other manufacturers to move faster. In that case, I think we could see working systems by this time next year. If we don’t get that level of commitment, I think it’ll be more like two to three years.

What is the market like for hybrid boats?
If we had the equipment today and the systems were proven, we’d have a market for several hundred units a year quite quickly. I think in the longer term, you’re looking at (a market of) somewhere in the low thousands. This isn’t like the car industry. The worldwide market for sailboats over 30 feet is probably under 15,000 a year. If we can take 20 percent of that market, we’ll be doing okay.

When we look at traditional ways of making boats, what lessons can we draw on to create more environmentally-friendly vessels?
Particularly in the powerboat world, traditional powerboats were long and skinny and very fuel-efficient because they didn’t get driven up onto a plane. You didn’t see these tubs that required 400 horsepower to get moving. You have to give up the idea that you’re going to do 30 knots. You can’t do 30 knots without burning gallons of fuel.

To go from 6 to 7 knots doubles the fuel consumption. To go from 7 to 8 knots doubles it again. To go from 8 to 8 and a half knots doubles it again. That last knot of boat speed is more than doubling the fuel consumption. If most boat owners had a miles-per-gallon meter at the helm, they would be totally shocked at what that last knot of boat speed was costing them.

What are the most promising new technologies you see coming down the pike?
Batteries. It’s batteries that are making hybrid technology viable. We have the same challenge as the car industry. If you want to have electric propulsion, you’ve got to have energy storage capacity. And existing lead acid batteries just won’t handle it. So we have to have new battery technology.

Lithium batteries are going to be integral to so many parts of modern life. These batteries have phenomenal performance characteristics. They enable us to radically redesign the energy systems on boats. I’ve been tracking boat systems for over 25 years, full time and professionally, and to my mind they’re about the most important development in the years I’ve been looking at this stuff.

What are the biggest barriers to those technologies being widely integrated?
Again, it’s the fact that the boat industry is a cottage industry. It takes a long time for information and technology to get disseminated. It’s very hard to get new technology implemented in a timely fashion. And then the boatyard themselves, very few of them can afford to have professional engineering staff. We don’t have the mechanisms for educating people and training them, and we don’t pay our people enough anyway. So we get people who are committed because they like the technology, but we don’t attract people into the industry because it doesn’t pay well. The technology levels in boatyards are pretty low compared with the automotive industry.

Is Europe more receptive to green technology than the U.S.?
They’re definitely more receptive. Europeans in general have been much more concerned about these issues for a long time, with the whole Kyoto Protocol and so on. I think we’re going to catch them up pretty quickly with the whole change of the Obama administration and the U.S. getting involved with the Kyoto discussions and so on.

But at the moment, the Europeans are definitely more conscious of these issues. That’s why we got this money from the European Union. We applied in the States for $4 million in stimulus funding (to refine hybrid technology for boats), but we were turned down.

Will hybrid technologies make it more expensive and difficult for people to get into boating?
It will make it more expensive initially, but it’ll make it cheaper in the long run because the systems themselves are much more efficient. And also, because we can install a hybrid system with a diesel engine on the boat—you’ll still need a diesel engine to drive a generator—it’ll run way less power than it normally would. So what you effectively do is amortize the cost of that engine over a much longer time period. With most modern boats, the hulls have outlasted the machinery. During the life of a boat you end up replacing the engine once or twice, whereas in the days of wooden boats the machinery typically outlasted the hull. So now that the machinery gets replaced during the life of the boat, the amortization cost of the machinery becomes a factor in the total cost of the boat over time. If you look at that, and you look at the energy savings over the long run, these boats will be cheaper, though the up-front costs will be higher.

What are some things boaters can do today for little cost that will help reduce their environmental impact?
The number one thing they can do is to slow down by a knot when they’re under power. It’ll cut their fuel consumption in half. And with any engine, the time when it’s at its most pull is when it’s idling and it’s not warmed up. Get on the boat, start the engine and get off the dock. Don’t spend half an hour fiddling with the sails or whatever.

Other than that, we’re a pretty clean industry, particularly on the sailboat side. On the powerboat side, the reality is that those engines are pretty polluting. There’s not been the same pressure on the marine side for engines to clean up emissions as there’s been on the automotive side. But that’s changing. The EPA is starting to apply the same rigorous emissions standards to the boating world as to the automotive world.

Have you found boaters more willing or less willing to adopt green technologies, compared with the general public?
The whole ethos of the sailing community tends toward environmental consciousness, even though the majority of sailboats these days spend more time under power than under sail. The idea of sailing—the energy, the wind—attracts people with more of an environmental ethic. I’m not so sure of powerboaters. There’s an element of powerboaters that is interested in exactly the opposite, which is to have a huge, gas-guzzling boat, open the throttles and blast off as fast as you can go. It’s a much different picture, I think, when you look at the powerboating community.

Where’s your favorite place to sail?
I’ve got two or three favorites. There’s an area in the Bahamas where I just spent a week called the Exumas, which is delightful. I like some of the West Indies. And in the summertime, if it’s not foggy, Maine is lovely. The west coast of Sweden, where we’ve got the boat now, is gorgeous if the weather is nice. But that’s a big if. It’s raining most of the time.

Are you related to Nigel Calder, the British science writer and global warming skeptic?
No. I wish I got his royalty checks. (Laughs) But it hasn’t done me any harm. Whenever anybody Googles my name he comes up. People think I’m a genius.

Nigel Calder is speaking at the Wooden Boat Festival at 6 p.m. Friday on battery breakthroughs, at 6 p.m. Saturday on anchoring and kedging off, and at 1 p.m. Sunday on do-it-yourself diesel engine maintenance and surveying. Complete information is available on the festival website.

But Leonard took to her work with the U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary like the proverbial fish to water. “If I’d known this was my forte, I probably would have done this for my career instead of getting a doctorate degree and sitting in an office all the time,” she said.

Between June 2006, when she joined the organization, and the end of last year, Leonard volunteered more than 5,400 hours—averaging about 43 hours weekly—as a Coast Guard Auxiliary member. Her varied work has so far included serving as a vessel examiner, instructor and public affairs officer. She oversees about 25 people, has recruited new members and even started a new Auxiliary detachment in Forks, Washington.

For her dedication and enthusiasm, Leonard was recently selected as the Coast Guard Auxiliarist of the year for 2008. She was chosen from among 16 Auxiliary nominees, one from each of the organization’s districts throughout the country. Leonard will receive the award this Saturday, Aug. 29, at a national conference in Chicago.

She said though she knew she’d been nominated, she was surprised to learn she’d been chosen for the award. “It was a big surprise and a very happy surprise,” said Leonard, who lives near Port Angeles. “And it’s pretty thrilling. I have a warm-fuzzy going on all the time now.”

Tom Nunes, deputy chief of public affairs for the Coast Guard Auxiliary, trained Leonard and described her as an “affable, bright, determined” person who leads by example.

“She’s demonstrated sincere leadership qualities. It’s do as I do, not as I say,” Nunes said. “She stands out. She’s been a major player and really made a difference.”

Leonard wasn’t planning to join the Auxiliary when she and her husband, Leo, met a captain from the Coast Guard’s Port Angeles station at a Rotary Club meeting in late 2005. At the time, the Leonards had been living in New Zealand for two years, enjoying a leisurely existence. Marilynn had retired from her job as a professor of business administration at Westminster College in Utah in 2000 and Leo was a retired dean of education, human development and travel and travel and tourism at George Washington University.

They were in the process of moving back to the Northwest and got chatting with the Coast Guard captain. “One thing led to another and the next thing you know, Leo and I each had a job in the Coast Guard Auxiliary,” said Marilynn, 66.

Before long, Leonard was hooked into a leather harness, working on a photo mapping project from the open hatch of a Coast Guard helicopter as it flew through the air. It thrilled her. She soon took on additional responsibilities, adding more than a dozen medals to her Auxiliary uniform to mark her various qualifications and achievements.

Marilynn Leonard enjoys a rare free moment during a picnic at the U.S. Coast Guard station in Port Angeles.

She likes the pace of the job and its unpredictability. “There is not a typical day, and that’s one of the things I like about it the best,” Leonard said. “It’s exciting. You don’t always know how it’s going to shake out and sometimes your priorities have to change every few hours.”

Leonard says she and her husband, an Auxiliary flotilla commander for the Port Angeles area, often work six days a week. “We haven’t had a vacation since this whole thing started,” she said, laughing. “My husband has even more hours than I do.”

Though the couple’s commitment might be extraordinary, their capability and intelligence are characteristic of Auxiliary volunteers, said Andre Billeaudeaux, director of the Auxiliary for the Coast Guard’s 13th District, which includes Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana.

“We have a lot of very smart professionals, Fortune 100 people who have retired and this is what they want to do,” Billeaudeaux said. “The various professions represented are incredible. There’s no other national treasure like this. This is a brain trust. This is intellectual capital unbridled.”

There are about 42,000 active duty Coast Guard members nationally and about 30,000 Auxiliary members who perform tasks ranging from patrol work to training. By educating boaters and enforcing safety regulations, Billeaudeaux said, Auxiliary members help the Coast Guard fulfill its mission and also lower the number of incidents it must respond to.

“We have missions everywhere, from Antarctica to the Arctic, from Asia to Africa,” he said. “We’re spread thin. Without the Auxiliary, there’s no way the regular Coast Guard could do what it does today.”

Auxiliary members also provide a valuable continuity, Billeaudeaux said. Active duty Coast Guard members typically spend two to four years in one region and then move on, while Auxiliary members often work in the same district for long periods.

“They’re the keeper of knowledge of the area of responsibility, of tides, of marinas, of key people, of politics, of the maritime domain issues,” Billeaudeaux said. “It’s an incredible amount of knowledge and collective wisdom.”

Lately, Leonard has been spending much of her time working as a public affairs officer for the Port Angeles base. She also oversees Auxiliary members who work in Port Angeles, Forks and Neah Bay, and is a manager for the Citizen’s Action Network, a Coast Guard program that recruits people working or living near waterways to keep an eye on those areas.

Leonard said she can’t imagine a second retirement in the foreseeable future. “I’m sure we are in this for a long time,” she said. “There’s always a lot to learn and a lot of people to meet. It’s just kind of a fascinating place to be.”

If there’s one downside, it’s the lack of time Leonard and her husband have to get out boating on their 19-foot Glasply runabout.

“I haven’t had the boat in the water for three years,” Leonard said ruefully. “I was just lamenting that.”

How many boats have you designed?
How many different designs have I done? Three hundred, maybe. I started numbering them and then I sort of got out of sequence and dropped it. I started at number 60, so it was always off and it was sort of irrelevant after a while. I don’t forget them. I don’t need numbers to remember them.

Which of your boats are you the most proud of?
In terms of owner satisfaction and miles under the keel and the boat having done a great variety of things, I think Night Runner (42’) and Icon (65’)—those two custom boats. I have another one in California called Stealth Chicken (55.5’) that’s a beautiful boat. In terms of production boats, the Islander 28, the Valiant 40, Baba 40, Nordic 44 … I don’t have any one particular boat that is my favorite. I tend to think of them in terms of owner satisfaction. They’re all different and they’re designed for other people. You just do your best on every one. People ask, ‘Which one is your favorite?’ You sort of like the one you’re working on at the time.

Is there a perfect boat for you?
No. I can pretty much enjoy any boat as long as it’s reasonably good-looking. I don’t like ugly boats. If a boat has reasonably good lines, I understand the boat and I understand why it won’t go to weather and I don’t hold that against it. I can sail a wide variety of boats and enjoy the experience. I tend to favor smaller boats because I’m not mechanically inclined. Complex systems intimidate me.

I prefer simple boats. I like to sail by myself. That’s the best way to sail, I think. You don’t need much. I like to reduce it to a very simple exercise. I like to try to do it the way the old guys did, without all the modern conveniences, just to prove I can do it—without a GPS, without a watermaker, without a windlass, all those things sailors today take for granted.

How do you define good performance?
Boat has to go to weather well. Boat has to be well-balanced. It doesn’t have to be stiff, but it shouldn’t be excessively tender. Good helm balance, ability to point 30 degrees to the apparent wind, and good velocity made good. A good keel, nice, deep draft and the ability to be forgiving and take care of itself when it needs to. The real measure it, how does it to go weather? Any boat can get blown downwind, but to go to weather well and have a beautifully balanced helm and good manners and good, predictable behavior, it rewards your effort.

A poor-performing boat, you work harder to get somewhere. I look at a lot of boats people sail and I marvel that people still sail after spending time on these boats. If I was new to sailing and was sailing on some of these boats, I’d probably give up sailing. I don’t understand the appeal if the only thing you’ve sailed on is a pig.

Care to name names?
No.

What type of projects are you working on at the moment?
A motorboat for a guy in Maine, a 55-foot motorboat. Just getting started on a 60-foot long daysailer and I’m halfway through building a 20-foot custom boat for a doctor in New Orleans that’s occupying most of my time right now because the builder’s building very fast. It’s a little boat with a carbon bowsprit and a nice, deep keel, but above the water, you think you’re looking at an old boat.

What are your favorite types of projects to work on?
My favorite projects, and these are probably 85 percent of projects I get, would be projects that are sort of aesthetically driven. The client has an image, he sees a picture of a boat on the water with him in it and he can’t find that boat anywhere that he sees in his head. It might be a hybrid of several boats that he’s seen over the years, or it might be something more normal.

I enjoy doing traditional boats. I love doing boats that look traditional but sail really well. If I had one type that was my favorite, I would call it the wolf in sheep’s clothing. It looks like an antique above the water but it sails very well.

How has the recession affected your work?
It’s affected it big time. One of my biggest projects ever was sort of put on hold. Production boats have died. If you were a young guy trying to be a yacht designer today, going out on your own, I don’t think you could do it. I just don’t know where you’d get the clients.

Finding the right cruising boat can be quite an undertaking. What advice would you offer to people embarking on that path?
I would advise people to hire me as a consultant. When people will call and say, ‘I’m looking at three boats and two of them are your designs and I have a bunch of questions,’ my response is, ‘Take those questions to the broker who’s being paid to sell you a boat.’ I’ve been doing this since I was 14 years old. I want respect. I’m not the free link in the chain of you getting the boat.

You pay your $500 consultation fee and I’ll be your best pal, I’ll be your best advocate, I’ll be your Dutch uncle. I’ll open your eyes and I’ll be the one person in the process with nothing to gain from you buying one particular boat. I can be very objective. I don’t lean toward my own designs. I know pretty much all the boats that are out there and if I don’t, I know somebody I can call to get the information, one of my cronies. So that’s a good place to start.

People can be so tunnel vision when they’re looking for a boat and rule out a lot of good boats based on somewhat superficial aesthetic differences or styling mannerisms or whatever. I try to open their eyes to see a broader range of possibilities. The other thing is, keep it simple. A typical cruising boat today is a very complex machine and a lot of people spend too much time in harbors trying to get something fixed. They want solar cells, they want a wind generator, a genset, big alternators, huge battery banks. Weight is always the enemy on a sailboat, unless it’s on the bottom of your keel. Anywhere else, it’s the enemy.

What are the most common mistakes that boat owners with your designs? (i.e., in modifying or customizing their boats)
They don’t usually modify them. If I draw a sloop, people want to convert it to a cutter because they think that makes them safer. People like to add that inner forestay. And just overweight—too much stuff.

How are advances in materials changing boat design?
You have more options in terms of weight. You can have a 60-foot boat that weighs 16,000 pounds and get away with it, whereas 30 years ago that boat would have weighed 30,000 pounds. Modern materials have opened up a whole new world of light, lighter and ultra-light displacements.

You have to be a little more careful with modern core materials to make sure they’re adhered to the skin. With the skins so thin now, there’s just no wiggle room if the core isn’t perfectly adhered to the skin everywhere. On an old boat with a really thick skin you could get away with it, because the skins were probably overbuilt to begin with. But with a modern boat, you can’t get away with it. You can’t have delamination.

What do you think about the popularity of catamarans?
I like all boats. I like some of ‘em, I hate some of ‘em. It depends on what they look like. It depends on how they sail. I have no problem with multihulls. I started sailing multihulls when I was 16 years old. I just take each boat as an individual.

What are the biggest trends in sailboat design these days?
Sailboats cover such a huge range. On one end you have these giant catamarans for the America’s Cup. You’ve got Moth dinghies that sail entirely on hydrofoils, clear of the water. You have Valiant 42s. On the other end of the spectrum, you’ve got big, heavy cruising cats. There are trends in each genre. For typical production monohulls, the trend is toward more and more interior volume. Certainly, nobody has any overhangs anymore because of a given length overall, if you do away with the overhangs you get more interior volume.

What’s it like for you to go to a Perry Rendezvous and see all these boats you’ve designed and their owners?
Makes me feel good. It’s humbling and satisfying. I’m not a physical therapist, I’m not an orthopedic surgeon, I’m not an aid worker in Africa. I design toys for wealthy people, so there’s nothing very noble in what I do. But I get a little satisfaction from seeing happy owners.

Do you go to any Perry Rendezvous besides the one in Port Ludlow?
I’ve never been to any of them. People have threatened to get me to them, but I prefer not to fly these days if I don’t have to. I’ve done enough of that for one lifetime. I have a beautiful house up here on the water and a real boat, a Boston whaler with 115 horsepower in it, and I don’t want to go anywhere.

But when Seattle’s Olympic Yacht Club started, the price of membership for many was the fear of losing their jobs or alienating family and friends. They took refuge in the club, one of the few places they could be openly gay.

Seattle has changed considerably since then. And 30 years later, the Olympic Yacht Club is thriving and has grown into what is believed to be the oldest gay and lesbian yacht club in the country and the only one in the Pacific Northwest. Launched in 1979, the club will celebrate its 30th anniversary Aug. 22 at an annual membership picnic in Port Orchard.

“It’s about fellowship, getting together with other gay and lesbian and allied folk and just hanging out,” said Mike Cox, the club’s commodore.

Primarily a social organization, Olympic Yacht Club organizes about 14 events annually, including weeklong cruises, rendezvous, a holiday party, Halloween “pumpkin hack” and the occasional family event. There are theme get-togethers, low-key potlucks and land-based events such as camping.

The club currently comprises about 120 members and 65 boats, from kayaks to ski boats, runabouts to blue water cruisers. Owning a boat is not a requirement, nor is being straight an impediment—the club has had numerous heterosexual members over the years, Cox said.

About half the current members are active, Cox said, while others are longtime members who may not show up for events but like to stay in contact with the club.

Kaler Wise, left, and Jim Downey visit at a recent Olympic Yacht Club event.

It’s an affinity born out of common interests and shared struggles. Some members can remember the early days of the club, started just a decade after New York’s historic Stonewall riots. Though gay and lesbian Seattleites had begun organizing politically by then, discrimination was still rampant.

In that charged environment, Olympic Yacht Club founder Andy Johnson was guarded about his personal life. He was active in the Dorian Society, Seattle’s first gay rights organization, and worked as a librarian at the University of Washington, ground zero of the city’s gay rights movement. Still, Johnson told few people that he lived with his male partner.

“People could and were still being fired for that,” Johnson said.

Despite his caution, Johnson reacted enthusiastically when a friend, Mark Arnold, proposed an idea as they sailed through the San Juan Islands one day in 1978.

“Don’t you think,” Arnold asked, “that it’s about time that we had a serious gay boating group in Seattle?”

Arnold’s brainchild wasn’t entirely out of the blue. Various activity clubs for gays and lesbians had sprung up around Seattle in the late 1970s, from hiking groups to karate collectives.

“There was a great deal of interest then in establishing clubs for a wide range of activities so people could go and meet other people outside of the gay bar, which is all we had before then,” Johnson said.

Johnson and Arnold agreed to see how much interest there was in starting a gay boating club. They placed a notice in the Dorian Society’s newsletter in early 1979, inviting interested boaters to call.

“My phone just started ringing like crazy,” Johnson said. “We had 10 people, then 20, then 30.”

Johnson hosted an inaugural meeting at his Seattle apartment that spring and the first event, an overnight trip to Port Blakely off Bainbridge Island, was held in August.

The club’s founding members intentionally chose a generic name, not wanting to advertise its focus. In the same vein, Johnson said, some members insisted that their club newsletter be mailed in a plain brown wrapper. The Olympic Yacht Club website includes no board members’ names and no photos of members, just a first name, an email address and a phone number for those interested in joining.

Members include teachers, military personnel and other professionals who fear workplace discrimination, Cox said, and older members for whom being publicly gay remains an unthinkable prospect.

“There still is some discrimination in terms of jobs,” he said. “And I think there are some older members who grew up in the closet and aren’t as comfortable being out.”

Val Maxam-Moore is among a growing number of female members in the Olympic Yacht Club.

But while some club members consider the boating world more conservative than the broader society, none who were interviewed said they’ve experienced discrimination as a gay boater.

“I’ve felt more threatened in the golfing community than I’ve felt in the boating community,” said Val Maxam-Moore, 46. “I think boaters just have a camaraderie because no matter who it is, they’ve all run out of gas, been stuck, broken down, whatever, and they’ve been helped by another boater.”

Johnson, who’s 66, said that while he’s never encountered outright hostility on the water, he has been asked about the unfamiliar-looking burgee flying from his boat. When pressed for details about the club, he’s typically met with a shocked silence after explaining that it’s a gay and lesbian group.

Johnson chalks up the response to a lack of education. “It’s about getting to know the people and realizing that hey, we have the same problems everybody else does and we pay our taxes like everybody else and so on and so forth,” he said.

“As we continue to exist and be responsible and not be going through the Ballard Locks with our pink streamers floating in the wind, everybody’s cool with it.”

While some aspects of the club have remained constant, the organization has evolved considerably over the years. When it was formed, Johnson said, there was a pronounced divide between gay men and lesbians in the broader society that carried over into the club. Men didn’t want women involved and women, not surprisingly, stayed away.

That dynamic, combined with the historically male-dominated nature of boating, resulted in a yacht club that was almost exclusively male until about 10 years ago. Women now make up about 40 percent of the club’s membership, a change Johnson attributes to the “hard work” of several female members convincing other women to join.

The club also went through a period in its early days as an unofficial hook-up venue, developing a reputation as a sex club that was alienating for some. That changed with the onslaught of AIDS in the early 1980s. The gay community was hit hard and the Olympic Yacht Club lost several members, including Arnold, who died in 1986 at age 35 of AIDS-related complications.

During that period, Johnson said, club members came together to support each other, bringing meals to sick members, taking them to doctor’s appointments, lending a shoulder if needed. Similarly, when Johnson went into treatment for alcoholism in 1982, the club members were there to prop him up.

“The club has been a very supportive force, I think, for a lot of people,” he said.

Over the years, the club increased its focus on boating safety, offering seminars on topics such as engine maintenance and boating first-aid. That aspect is what attracted Sue Ferguson, who joined the club three years ago and is now its rear commodore.

When Ferguson met her partner, a boater, she owned an RV, couldn’t swim and hadn’t spent any time on boats. She took a boater safety course through the Olympic Yacht Club and gained skills and a new community.

“They’re such a great group of people,” Ferguson said. “Everybody has a talent and they’re willing to share.”

Formed in 1977, the Olympic Yacht Club celebrates three decades of boating and camaraderie.

These days, the Olympic Yacht Club seems to have hit its stride. At the Gig Harbor get-together, which capped off an annual weeklong cruise in south Puget Sound, club members visited, showed off their dogs and played rounds of card games punctuated by raucous laughter.

The group included Maxam-Moore and her partner, Mickey Maxam-Moore, 56, who traveled from Florida for the cruise. The pair previously lived in Gig Harbor and joined the club after deciding they were ready to purchase a cruising boat and needed to learn more about boating.

A club member accompanied them on the first cruise in their 30-foot Bayliner, coaching and guiding as they sailed on a snowy January day in 2005.

“It was so helpful,” Val Maxam-Moore said.

Sitting nearby was club historian Kaler Wise, 40, who joined the club in 1990 after hearing about it from his college roommates. He’s belonged to two other Seattle-area yacht clubs but didn’t feel comfortable revealing his personal life to either of them.

“They were very family-oriented. Everything’s ‘Mister’ and ‘Missus,’” Wise said. “I wasn’t ready to go ahead and let them know who I am as an individual.”

A fourth generation Seattleite, Wise started boating as a child on his grandfather’s 50-foot custom-built trawler. After his grandfather died in 1983, Wise said, he wanted to carry on the boating tradition.

He now cruises on his 30-foot Tollycraft, Wise Guy, and is thinking about applying for membership in the Seattle Yacht Club. He’s attracted to the club’s history, its traditions and its amenities, but admits he’s a little nervous about approaching the venerable establishment.

“I’ve been scared to do it because I’m gay,” Wise acknowledged. It’s kind of intimidating. It absolutely is.”

Johnson, who now lives in Palm Springs, California, wasn’t at the Gig Harbor get-together but is looking forward to the August membership picnic. There, he’ll catch up with old friends and proudly celebrate the organization he started three decades ago.

“Helping the club get going and seeing it succeed probably brings me more joy than anything else I have ever done,” he said. “I’m hoping that in 20 years I’ll be around for the 50th anniversary party.”

For information about the Olympic Yacht Club and upcoming events, including the Aug. 22 membership picnic, go to the club’s website.

Blanchard died July 9. He was 98.

Blanchard was the son of Norman J. Blanchard, who founded the Blanchard Boat Company. He inherited both his father’s name and his talent and passion for boat building, working alongside him for many years.

Considered by many the most prolific builder of boats in the Northwest during the first half of the 20th century, the Blanchard boat Company built nearly 2,000 boats ranging from small dinghies to luxury yachts.

Dick Wagner, founder of The Center for Wooden Boats and a friend of Norm Blanchard, said the father and son team distinguished itself by bringing the designs of naval architects such as Ted Geary to life with impeccable craftsmanship.

“Norm and his father in many ways put Seattle on the map as a place where you can get really high-quality built boats,” Wagner said. “They set a standard in the production of yachts and workboats that they built.”

Norm Blanchard as a child beneath the sailboat Sir Tom, designed by Ted Geary. Blanchard Boat Company photos, MOHAI.

The Blanchards’ attention to detail was unparalleled, Wagner said.

“It’s all those details that really make a difference between a boat that is functional but plain and a boat that really has a fantastic appeal, through lights and shadows and the sweep of planking and decking and all those details around the ports and companionways,” he said.

“Those just give it that feeling that this was really built by craftsmen and not just knocked out.”

The Blanchard Boat Company was the choice of designers including Geary, Edmond Monk, Ben Seaborn and Bill Garden, and of renowned shipwrights attracted by its reputation for high standards.

But the Blanchards’ success also stemmed from an ability to switch gears as the market changed. In the heady days of the early 19th century, Blanchard built luxurious yachts for nouveau riche shipping and timber magnates. As the economy continued booming, the company turned out skiffs, government boats and the famous Sir Tom, a 38-foot racing sloop designed by Geary.

But the yard went bust after underbidding the contract to build a 130-foot freighter for famous Seattle architect John Graham. After working for two years in a local shipyard, Blanchard Sr. was back in business, building the 62-foot schooner Red Jacket and more opulent yachts: a 90-foot vessel for Seattle Yacht Club Commodore and lumber tycoon C.D. Stimson, a 115-foot yacht for California oilman Willits Hole.

During Prohibition, Blanchard Boat Company produced rum-runners designed to swiftly carry liquid contraband across the Canadian border. By the mid-1920s, demand for megayachts was waning, while interest in boating by more middle-class professionals grew. In response to that demand, the Blanchards began producing a smaller motoryacht with a high deck and vertical bow. The design was replicated by competitor Lake Union Drydock and named the “Lake Union Dreamboat.”

Another beautiful boat is launched from the N.J. Blanchard boatyard. Blanchard Boat Company photos, Museum of History & Industry.

But it was hard times brought on by the Great Depression that spawned some of the company’s most popular boats. In response to tighter boating budgets, Blanchard Sr. decided to build an inexpensive sailboat with a cabin. The resulting Senior Knockabouts, ranging from 22 to 26 feet, proved a huge hit. The company also developed the Junior Knockabout, a 20-foot daysailer without a cabin.

“What they wanted to do was make a better boat for the size and performance than was available at a slightly cheaper price,” Wagner said. “It was a way that they got through the Depression,” Wagner said.

Despite their pragmatism, the Blanchards never sacrificed aesthetics, said Lew Barrett, commodore of the Classic Yacht Association’s Pacific Northwest fleet.

“If you look at a Blanchard boat, they’re just beautiful. You look at his standard cruiser and every line’s right. It’s sparse, it’s lean, straightforward, well done,” he said.

“It’s almost like (furniture designer) Gustav Stickley on the water. For me, that’s the appeal.”

The advent of mass-produced fiberglass boats after World War II radically transformed the boating industry and rendered the Blanchards’ brand of custom craftsmanship obsolete. In 1969, Norm Jr. sold his late father’s company.

The crew takes a break at the boatyard. Blanchard Boat Company photos, MOHAI.

Today, the surviving fleet of Blanchard-built boats are beloved by classic boat aficionados and frequently turn up at wooden boat shows and rendezvous. Blanchard-era boats were only intended to last 25 years or so, Barrett said, and their continued existence speaks to the quality of the Blanchards’ work.

“They were, as it turned out, built better than anyone thought at the time,” he said. “You could argue whether the materials and technology today are an improvement or just substitutes for the type of things they were doing years ago. It’s testament to the way these guys where thinking and what they were doing.”

In his later years, Norm Blanchard became a frequent visitor to The Center for Wooden Boats in Seattle, where he sailed well into his nineties and always insisted on taking the helm. Center volunteer Vern Velez recalled one of Blanchard’s last sailing trips at the center, when he and his wife were out on a 24-foot Blanchard Knockabout.

Blanchard turned to his wife and said, “Mary, I think we made these seats too high,” Velez recalled. “These boats were built 65 or 70 years ago and he’s still thinking about how to improve them. He was always thinking about his boats.”

The Center for Wooden Boats will hold its annual Norm Blanchard WOOD (Wood Open & One Design) Regatta on Sept. 25 through 27, which usually draws a few Blanchard sailboats. As always, there will be racing Saturday and Sunday, and a dinner Saturday night.

This year, Velez said, attendees will be invited to share their stories about a local legend whose passing marks the end of an era.

“We’re going to make it a celebration of Norm Blanchard,” he said.

The guide, which fellow sailor and author Jonathan Raban called “unusually well-written (and) very thoughtfully researched,” has become an indispensable companion for countless local boaters. Three Sheets Northwest, which is running regular excerpts from Scherer’s guide starting today, sat down with the sailor, writer and teacher to talk about the joys of cruising the waters she calls home.

How did you get into sailing?
My father built a 26-foot gaff-rigged schooner in the driveway of our house when I was in junior high. He built it by hand, everything. He even made the rigging and the blocks. It was a lovely little boat, the Spindrift. It must have stirred something in me. He launched it when I was in my 20s. My husband and I really liked it, so that’s when I really first sailed, on that boat. Both of my brothers were sailors—they were in Sea Scouts. So I kind of grew up with the Spindrift and the Yankee Clipper, which was and still is a Sea Scout Boat in Seattle.

My dad tried to teach me to sail. But I learned the way most of us learned—I went out on a sailing dinghy and figured it out. That’s how I learned—going out on Lake Union and figuring it out myself.

How long have you been cruising in the Puget Sound area?
Our first cruise was in 1978. I was living on a boat for 34 years, so I’ve done maybe 32 years of actual cruising. We used to go out a lot, through the Locks into Puget Sound—anchor, motor, sail. I’ve never had a time where I’ve been cut loose and we’ve just cruised for a year and never stopped. We’ve always worked for a living. We spent four years in Alaska. I had a job and we cruised out from that area.

What do you like most about cruising?
I like the attention that I pay to my surroundings. On a sailboat, you’re outdoors all the time. I really like that I have to pay attention to the wind and the weather and the tides and the current. Everything happens at once when you’re on the water, even when it happens very slowly. I like that. I like the navigating. And it means that I can go the same place all the time because those conditions change every time. I can go to Port Madison and have 10 different trips, 10 different times. Whereas in a car, I don’t think I would have that. It would be the same.

I also like the possibility that once I’m out in saltwater, I’m sort of on a big highway that could go anywhere in the world. And even though I don’t go everywhere in the world on that highway, I like that I’m connected to it. I just love that sense. It’s a fantasy.

Has cruising here changed much over the time you’ve been doing it? If so, how?
There are good and bad ways. It’s more crowded, so anchorages that used to be quite empty can be quite full now. Take a place like across from Friday harbor, Parks Bay. We used to be the only boat there.  Now, there are times when we can’t anchor there because it’s too full.

The thing that’s much better is the water is cleaner. There’s a lot less garbage in the water than there used to be. The ferries used to dump their garbage overboard. Everyone used to dump their garbage. I’d be on a beach, find a plastic garbage bag and I could fill it with junk. The downside is you don’t find cool stuff lying around like you used to. You used to find life jackets, cushions, buoys.

Another thing that’s better is you don’t see as much fuel on the water as you used to. The downside is there aren’t as many fuel docks. There are a lot less fuel docks than there used to be.

Do you have a favorite place for cruising in Puget Sound?
I think Sucia Island is one of the best, Sucia Island and Stuart Island. Stuart gives you the most protection. Sucia’s more exposed, but it’s beautiful and you have lots of choices. Even during the most crowded weekends you can find anchorage in that big Echo Bay. There’s a lot of exploring you can do there. It is so gorgeous and just a lovely place. That’s when the weather is good. I’ve had some of my worst nights in Sucia Island, when I was securely anchored but it was blowing like crazy from the Strait of Georgia and there’s no protection there. So it’s both my favorite and my least favorite.

My favorite cruising destination in crummy weather is someplace where it’s protected and there’s someplace to go ashore and you can have a nice little cozy breakfast. There are lots of nice places like that up and down the Sound.

Have you cruised in other parts of the U.S. or other countries?
We made the trip up the Inside Passage, up once and down twice. In each case we took six weeks. We took a couple months to go up and we took six weeks to come back. We had four years in between (while living in Alaska) and that was our cruising ground, in Southeast Alaska. Big distances. Gorgeous. I’d recommend it for anybody. You don’t go during winter, lord knows. But May and September can be your best times, and that’s of course when everyone empties out and heads south. It’s just spectacular.

What made you decide to write a cruising guide?
I didn’t decide at all. My first book was in publication and my literary agent, who comes from a sailing family, scurried into (publisher) International Marine’s booth because it had sailboat pictures up in it and she needed a break.

She talked to John Eaton, who was an editor at International Marine, and he said, “I’ve always wanted to publish a cruising guide for Puget Sound. Do you know a writer who can do that?” She said, “I certainly do.” That’s how it started.

I thought it was crazy. I looked at what it would mean and I just thought, how am I going to do that? How am I going to go to every cove and harbor in Puget Sound? I looked at what it would entail and I realized I hadn’t been to most of the places in Puget Sound. Like most of us, I go to the same places all the time.

I thought, I’m going to have to do a lot and my husband would have to take time off work without pay to do this, and it was a modest advance. But I couldn’t say no. I really couldn’t say, ‘No, I’m not going to write the first comprehensive cruising guide encompassing all of Puget Sound.’ So I said yes.

What was the experience of writing it like?
The research was fun but it was awfully focused. It changed the whole cruising experience. I had to pay attention in a different way. I had to take on my readers’ eyes and also be extremely thorough. We’d anchor somewhere and then we’d get in our little inflatable and we’d go through the whole bay. We’d go to every mooring buoy and use the little depth sounder on the inflatable to see, how deep are these buoys? Is one deeper than the other? It really became a research project. It made me a better navigator, way better—better at reading the land as well as the water.

Does doing the reporting work required to write a cruising guide take the fun out of cruising?
There was a little bit of that, yeah. It became a little bit of a job. It meant that I wouldn’t just kick back and have a glass of wine when we anchored. I had all these little handwritten notes and drawings and so forth, and then I had to make sure I filed them, and I had to make sure I took pictures. The first edition was all film, but the second edition was digital (photos), so I couldn’t risk losing the pictures. I’d use smaller memory cards and then in the evening I’d download the pictures to my computer and then back them up with a CD, every day, because I wouldn’t go back (to the place). So that was the chore of the project. It was like being a reporter.

Do you have plans for any future books?
I’d say yes. When I finish teaching, when I retire, I think there’s a book about that. There’s a book about middle school kids. I’m not sure what it is, though. I have to discover it. I’m not sure when I’ll revise the cruising guide again. Not for a while.

You’ve mentioned that you prefer cruising close to shore rather than offshore cruising. Why?
I get seasick in the lumpy sea. That’s my bad sea. I did a race around Admiralty Island in Alaska and I used the (Scopolamine) patch that helped me get through. I suppose I could get over it after a few days, but I don’t want to. I want to have a good time. Coastal cruising is what I like, but I don’t think I want to risk an ocean voyage. Everyone has their ocean, their motion, and mine happens to be out there on those ocean swells. It’s always moving, right? It never stops.

Tell me about your boat.
It’s a 45-foot ketch that my husband and I built. We launched it in 1974 and we’ve been pretty much building aboard and living aboard since. It’s been our only boat, our main boat. We’ve had numbers of inflatables. We have our (big) boat but I think our little skiffs and things are awfully important. We have a little sailing skiff that we go out in. It’s just a wonderful little thing. I think I do more sailing in that than in the big one. We anchor and then get in that and sail our brains out.

Do you like sailing on a small boat better?
Yeah, I love it. I have complete control. There’s not as much worry (as with a big boat). It’s just me and the boat and one sail, the line, the oars—it’s just simple.

Why did you and your husband decide to build a boat?
We liked the simplicity of it. This was back in the ‘70s, so this was the back-to-the-land time. People wanted to have their own place and grow their own food and simplify life and live without electricity. Our solution was, let’s not acquire so many things. Let’s have a boat and that will give us what we want. We can have a place to live, we can travel. We thought that would be fun. I think that’s why a lot of people live on boats. So we built a boat, moved on it and it just grew on us. We also liked the building process. My husband helped his dad build this house we’re in now (on Lopez Island) and he loved shipfitting and welding. It turns out I must have gotten my father’s woodworking skills because I love finishing and painting. I love that part.

If you could be cruising anywhere in the world right now, where would it be?
I think I’d like to be up in Canadian waters. At this time of year I don’t have a desire to go someplace else. If you asked me the question in January (laughs) it would be a different answer. I’d say it would be kind of cool to be in New Zealand, or in the Bay Islands, or down in Mexico. But at this time of year, I want to be here. I’d love to be spending a fourth of July in Sitka.

“I’m going to sail around the world in a 48-foot boat,” Loper told herself.

On the other edge of the country, Jani Way had the same vision. Growing up on the shores of Washington’s Lake Sammamish stirred her ambitions of circumnavigating.

“I watched the neighbors sail, and I just got on a flattie and taught myself,” she said. “My dream was to sail the whole world.”

In a stroke of serendipity, the two women met some four decades later on a church trip to Beijing and discovered their shared goal. They became friends, then romantic and sailing partners. Four-and-a-half years after that fateful meeting, Loper and Way set out this week on the adventure of a lifetime, putting into motion the plans made all those years ago.

Newly retired as of April 1, the pair plan to cruise their 46-foot Hallberg-Rassy, Lovely Lady, through the San Juan Islands until Labor Day. They’ll head down to San Diego to join the Baja Ha-Ha race to Cabo San Lucas at the end of October and then cruise further south to the Galapagos Islands. They’ll turn north, go through the Panana Canal and travel the Caribbean, then head up the east coast of the United States, to the Bahamas and across the Azores.

Removing the ship’s mast will allow them to cruise the canals of Europe. After that, it’s on to the Red Sea, North Africa, Australia, New Zealand and wherever wind and fancy takes them. With 10 years allocated for the trip, there’s not much need for a timetable.

Friends and family gave Loper and Way books and postcards as going-away gifts.

On Sunday, Loper, 60, and Way, 61, joined friends and family for a bon voyage party at Shilshole Bay Marina before departing the following day. Per the couple’s request, they were given books and Pacific Northwest postcards with written messages to read when they’re missing connections with home.

Sipping champagne and hugging friends good-bye, Loper was excited and confident about the trip.

“I don’t have any anxiety,” she said. “I’m fearful and respectful, but I don’t have any anxiety. If you don’t have fear, you can do stupid things.

“Ninety percent of the time (cruising) is spent in pretty benign conditions,” Loper said. “And I chose the right boat with the right equipment.”

A former test pilot for The Boeing Company, Lopez bought Lovely Lady new in 2000 as a 50th birthday gift to herself. She added various systems to the boat over the years, learning how to maintain and repair each before installing the next. To test her long distance mettle, she sailed from Victoria to San Diego with Mahina Expeditions, which teaches sailors to prepare for offshore cruising.

“It was excellent training,” Loper said. “It validated that I had done all the right work and I was ready to go with my own boat.”

Voyaging holds somewhat different appeal for the two women. Loper is most excited about meeting people from other countries and cultures, while for Way, the attraction is more fundamental.

“It’s mostly the basics of the wind,” said Way, a former registered nurse. “It’s the sailing I really like.”

Lovely Lady, a 46-foot Hallberg-Rassy, will take the couple to far points on the globe.

Loper and Way will chronicle their voyage on their blog, Rose & Jani’s Sailing Adventures, so friends and family can keep apprised of their experiences. Mike Cox, who came by the bon voyage party, said he’s excited for the women, though envious.

“I’m jealous,” he said. “It’s been a fantasy for me to do something like that at some point. We’re hoping that when they get to the Mediterranean, we’re going to try to join them for part of it.”

Cox said he wasn’t surprised to learn of the women’s plans, pointing to Loper’s background as a U.S. Army Reserve brigadier general and the first female pilot hired by Boeing. “Knowing Rose, I’m not surprised that she’s doing this,” he said. “She sets her mind to things and they happen. Being a pilot, she knows how to plan things and prepare for any eventuality and has a level head.”

The women’s families, however, have a different take on the matter. “They think we’re stupid,” Loper said, smiling.

Their voyage might be unusually adventurous for a couple in their 60s, but as Loper points out, her 93-year-old mother isn’t in a position to talk. As a child living in Rochester, New York, Loper’s mother would dive off a bridge into the Erie Canal if someone gave her a dime to buy an ice cream cone. During the winter, she jumped off the same bridge onto a sleigh positioned below on the frozen ice.

“She always told me if I took lessons and I was safe, I could do anything I wanted to do,” Loper said. “That’s a wonderful thing for a mother to tell her child born in 1948 who’s a female.”

It’s been a particularly productive 10 years. When Campbell joined the NMTA in 1999, the organization was grappling with a $1 million debt and declining membership. Under his leadership, debt was eliminated, membership grew at a steady 4 percent per year and the Seattle Boat Show doubled in size. Equally significant was a shift in attitudes.

“What Michael did for the NMTA was to change the way we as members think about what our association does for us,” said Bill Baker, owner of Bakes Marine Center and a former NMTA board chair.

These days, the organization is about far more than just putting on a boat show.

“We want to get together and ask, ‘Can we save money on our healthcare, can we communicate better about challenges in the industry, can we fight city hall or work with the legislature?’” said Campbell. “Can we share best management practices? … and how do we actually grow this industry? Because—it’s the worst cliché—but a rising tide lifts all boats.”

Such thinking is characteristic of Campbell, according to Steve Greaves, chairman of the Washington Boating Alliance. “He takes a problem and wrestles with it, and finds a solution, and then pushes that solution,” said Greaves. “There aren’t many people like that.”

It’s an attitude that characterizes Campbell’s earlier career, too. A former professional racecar driver, he moved into sports promotions and for six years was president of the Sports and Events Council of Seattle/King County. That was “the most exciting time for the business of sports in Seattle’s history,” Campbell said: the city was trying to save the Mariners, Sonics and Seahawks, and was on the verge of agreeing to replace the Kingdome with Qwest Field and Safeco Field.

Campbell enjoyed wrestling solutions out of that quagmire of controversial issues. The biggest challenge, he said, was “building a consensus among voters, because ultimately it went to the ballot box.”

Campbell is credited for doubling the size of the Seattle Boat Show and fostering collaboration within the boating industry.

Building consensus was a cornerstone of the work he undertook next at the NMTA. In particular, he led the effort to calm the long-held animosity between the NMTA and rival organization the Northwest Yacht Brokers Association, which resulted in joint marketing of the Seattle Boat Show and Boats Afloat Show in 2004.

Campbell had hoped the two organizations might merge, which didn’t happen. While cooperation between them “never came as close as my vision,” Campbell said, he nonetheless considers bringing the industry closer together as his best accomplishment as president.

The NMTA’s participation in the national Grow Boating Program works on the same principle. Campbell has asked enough questions of enough business owners to know that competitors in the marine industry have much in common. Promoting boating benefits everyone, and a small surcharge on exhibit space at the Seattle Boat Show for NMTA members has provided the budget for advertising, events and promotions since 2003.

Some of the initiatives have been fantastically wacky. For one boat show, the NMTA flew in a New York lawyer who promised to build a Chris-Craft replica in Lego bricks—provided he was given 200,000 bricks to play with. At another, visitors offered to stand at the show in water skis 24 hours a day, on the agreement that whoever stood the longest would win a ski boat.

The latest promotion is one Campbell, 63, describes as “as good a push as anyone’s come up with in the country, so far as I know.” This summer, 12 local families will win the use of a Cobalt 222 powerboat for a week by entering a contest hosted by the “Evening Magazine” television show. Entering the contest requires filling out a form on SeattleBoatShow.com, which helps drive traffic to a site that is being grown into an effective sales tool for NMTA members.

Working to present boating as “something that’s attractive, that’s aspirational, that’s rewarding” comes naturally to Campbell. Hearing him enthuse about his weekend sail to Port Madison with children and grandchildren aboard, it’s clear that when he says, “Life just gets better on a boat,” he really means it.

After leaving the NMTA at the end of June, Campbell plans to do some sailing on his boat, Butterscotch. Photo by Emily Mansfield.

Of course, inspiring people to get into boating is only part of the job; standing up for members’ interests is just as important. One of the first things Campbell did after joining the NMTA was to hire Cliff Webster as lobbyist for the marine industry in Olympia. Webster credits Campbell for understanding both that trade association members want their leaders to get involved in government affairs on their behalf, and that change requires a voice from the marine industry itself as well as the lobbyists.

“As president of a trade association, you are the eyes, ears and voice of the industry,” Webster said. “(Campbell) has clearly been outstanding in this role.”

Key legislative issues during Campbell’s tenure have included making boater education mandatory, negotiating between the Puget Soundkeeper Alliance and Department of Ecology over boatyard stormwater regulations, and pushing for a state office of boating.

“There’s work still to be done,” Campbell insists. “But if there wasn’t work still to be done, then why would it be fun for George or any other of the people working here?”

George Harris, the NMTA’s boat show director and vice president since 1999, will take over as NMTA president July 1. Campbell is upbeat about his successor.

“He’s the Rock of Gibraltar. He’s been with me all 10 years, and without him we’d be nowhere. He really makes things happen.”

And Campbell? He has several options open to him, but remains vague over which he’ll chose. “I’ll stay here, keep working … I love working. I want to make a difference,” he said.

Ten years is the longest Campbell has spent in one job, and he said it feels like time to move on.

“When I was young my dad told me, ‘Always leave a party when you’re having a good time.’ And it sounded like the stupidest thing I’d ever heard … But there’s of course so much truth to it.”

Emily Mansfield is a freelance writer and the former editor of Pacific Yachting PNW magazine.

“My mantra right now is, ‘Let’s be lean and flexible,’” said George Harris. “Every minute I’m thinking about our budget and business plan so we can really have some clarity for what things look like over the next year.”

Harris, the NMTA’s boat show director and vice president since 1999, will take over leadership of the organization when current president Michael Campbell retires July 1. The change in leadership comes at a particularly challenging time for the marine industry, which has been hard hit by the economic downturn.

Harris said despite the recession, the NMTA will not be scaling back its member benefits or its participation in the Grow Boating Initiative, a national effort among recreational boating industry leaders to increase participation in boating.

“We could have said, ‘Let’s save our Grow Boating dollars this year,’” Harris said. “But we are going to keep promoting boating this year because that’s our mission.”

A lifetime boater, Harris joined the NMTA in 1999 after spending eight working as a product and sales manager for Connelly Skis. The association’s board of trustees selected Harris from a group of four finalists chosen from a pool of almost 60 applicants.

“George Harris has shown over the past 10 years that he is committed to the Northwest Marine Trade Association,” said Dwight Jones, chairman of the NMTA’s board of trustees. ”He has treated the membership with honesty and fairness and he truly understands the challenges that face our industry.”

Campbell was hired as the NMTA’s president in 1999, overseeing the organization as it eliminated debt of nearly $1 million, developed a comprehensive Grow Boating program and substantially increased the size of the annual Seattle Boat Show.

Harris credited Campbell for increasing NMTA member benefits and furthering initiatives such as the state’s boater education requirements and the move to establish a state office of boating.

“Michael’s legacy to the NMTA is leaving behind a highly functional trade association that delivers more essential benefits to members than ever before,” he said.

Harris and Campbell will be working together over the next two months to develop the NMTA’s strategic business plan for the 2009/2010 fiscal year.

If you’re Karen Thorndike, you do it all over again.

Thorndike, who finished her record-setting journey in August 1998, is preparing for a second solo circumnavigation. She plans to leave her home in Snohomish, cast off her lines by early September and head out on her 36-foot sloop, Amelia.

“I realized that I wanted to get back out there and experience some of the things again that I was afraid of or that I was too busy to enjoy,” she said.

Thorndike recently sat down for an interview in her 1985 British-built Rival, a rugged offshore boat moored in Edmonds that’s as unassuming as its owner. Cluttered with equipment and tools, the boat’s only indication of its extraordinary achievement hangs on a wall in the saloon, a framed Guinness World Records certificate acknowledging Thorndike’s accomplishment. Her sextant and logbooks from that trip are featured in an exhibition at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C.

Soft-spoken, with a ready laugh, the 66-year-old Thorndike might not seem the type who’d venture out alone across the world’s oceans. Judy Nasmith, a sailor and Seattle yacht broker, became friends with Thorndike after following her first circumnavigation and considers her an inspiration.

“Her accomplishments are just amazing,” Nasmith said. “She’s so humble about it all, too. She’s an inspiration to all woman sailors.”

Amelia in her slip at the Port of Everett. In a few months, the boat will be ready for another circumnavigation.

Unlike many renowned sailors, Thorndike-who circled the world the first time in her 50s-didn’t grow up on boats. Her interest was sparked in a roundabout way. A hiker and climber, she was on a three-day trek in the early 1980s to the west coast of Vancouver Island. When she reached the coast she looked down, saw a boat and realized there was an easier, intriguing way to reach deserted shores.

Thorndike took some sailing lessons, began racing and was soon delivering boats from Hawaii to Seattle. During one of those trips, her dream of circumnavigating began to take shape. Thorndike confided in a male crew member and friend about her plans.

“That’s impossible,” he told her. “You have no idea what you’d be getting yourself into.”

After that, Thorndike kept her plans to herself. For more than 10 years she worked toward her goal, saving and preparing and telling no one.

“I never talked to anybody about it until I bought the boat,” she said. “I would not discuss it with anyone, because I didn’t want to deal with that negativity.”

Good luck beads are draped over the ship's clock, mementos of Thorndike's world voyage.

Six months before her departure Thorndike bought her boat, christening it Amelia after the pioneering female pilot. It was the first boat she’d ever owned and she had no experience with offshore solo sailing. Others might have chosen a less daunting journey for their first singlehanded effort, but not Thorndike.

“One thing that really appealed to me is that there are no guarantees,” Thorndike said. “The fact that it isn’t easy is the whole point.”

Nancy Erley understands the lure of the open ocean. A Seattle-based, award-winning sailing instructor who has circumnavigated twice with all-women crews, Erley said being surrounded by an expanse of water and sky instills humility and self-reliance.

“The ocean has a certain draw to it that the rest of the planet doesn’t,” she said. “It has a profound beauty to it and also, you’re faced with your own self. You’re such a small speck on the planet. You really look to your own resources on the boat.”

The trepidation Thorndike felt about her first circumnavigation wasn’t focused on the punishing storms and terrifying seas she encountered. It wasn’t even about loneliness. What worried her most was avoiding marine traffic and operating her boat shorthanded.

At the end of a 95-day nonstop passage from South America to Tasmania, Thorndike struggled to remain awake for an excruciating three days while making a hazardous landfall.

“I was so tired that I could not sit down. If I sat down I would have fallen asleep,” she said. “It was awful.”

A framed Guinness World Record attests to Thorndike's accomplishments as a sailor.

Though Thorndike realized what difficulties lay ahead, she never considered bringing anyone with her. “I wanted the record, for one thing, and I really wanted to see if I could do it,” she said. “I mean, what an adventure! I could imagine myself when I would leave Cape Flattery (Neah Bay), and I could imagine the first time I would see it again.

“What I couldn’t imagine was the middle part,” she said. “It was like a rollercoaster ride, thinking about it.”

Thorndike’s two-year journey brought the challenge she craved and then some. A bout of heart problems in the Falkland Islands derailed her travels for several months, forcing her to return to Washington for medical care.

Qualifying for the Guinness record prevented Thorndike from going through the Suez or Panama canals, since she would require assistance that would invalidate her singlehanded status. Instead, Thorndike rounded all of the Southern Hemisphere’s five “great capes,” including Cape Horn, whose howling winds, fierce currents and enormous waves make it the most feared ship passage in the world.

Encountering gales lasting for days, Thorndike discovered that the single rogue wave depicted in the book and movie “The Perfect Storm” was far from reality.

“It’s not this wall of water. You’re on a wave and behind you is a bigger wave and behind that is a bigger wave and even a bigger wave,” she said. “Once you’re there, there’s nothing you can do, absolutely nothing.”

A sense of humor goes a long way when sailing alone across an ocean. (click to enlarge)

After completing her inaugural circumnavigation, Thorndike joked that the one piece of equipment she’d add to her boat the next time she circled the globe was a man. Truthfully, she hoped to meet the man she would sail with around the world. He never materialized, nor did her dream evaporate.

Spending time recently with an 80-year-old female friend, Thorndike realized she couldn’t wait, couldn’t stand the regret of not setting out again while she still can.

Thorndike sometimes wishes she’s embarked on her life-changing journey sooner. She would have made different choices in her life, she said. She would have discovered sooner how being at sea profoundly changed her view of the world.

“Part of me said I couldn’t afford it, but the other part of me said you can afford almost anything if you really want to do it. You can find a way.”

To those harboring their own dreams of sailing over the horizon, Thorndike’s advice is simple. “Do it,” she said. “Do it now. You’ll get more out of it than you could ever imagine.”