Fiberglass need not apply - Center for Wooden Boat in Seattle, Washington

Sunset, July, 1996 by Peter Fish

This is a salmon boat," Dick Wagner says. "From the 1880s, the oldest we have. Here's a Columbia River One. Built for the Lower Columbia, where there are lots of sandbars. Shallow draft, but with a keel."

We are admiring the vessels at the Center for Wooden Boats, which berths on Waterway Number Four on Lake Union. That's in Seattle, which probably should go without saying. If you were going to put a Center for Wooden Boats anywhere, you would put it in Seattle: with the possible exception of Imperial Venice it is the most boat-obsessed city in the history of the world. As for Wagner, the center's founder, he has a sailor's ruddy complexion and cherubic features, and his manner is restrained - until he begins talking about wooden boats.

"I grew up in New Jersey," Wagner says. There he had only limited experience with the sea: "I didn't even know where fish came from." Wagner attended Columbia University, then studied architecture at Yale. In 1957 he moved to Seattle and had an epiphany, although that's perhaps too euphonious a word for what actually happened. "I was on my motor scooter. A car hit me head-on. I can't remember any of it. Everyone who saw it said I was roadkill."

Wagner spent three months in the hospital, where he decided he no longer wanted to be the world's most successful architect. And perhaps because of his trouble with land transportation, he found himself being drawn to the water.

"The place that was most magnificent to me was Lake Union," he says. "People were living on houseboats. You could buy the best houseboat in town for $100." Wagner bought one, and also began exploring Lake Union's small boatyards. These yards were an endangered species, as were the wooden dories and skiffs they built. The 1950s and early 1960s were, after all, the age of fiberglass. The curved, plastic craft were the maritime equivalents of tail-tinned Coupe DeVilles. Wagner was not impressed. "As an architect, I paid a lot of attention to detailing. With wood, you see it all. With fiberglass, you don't."

By this time Wagner was married: he met his wife, Colleen, because she lived on the houseboat next to his. The Wagners increased Lake Union's population of wood boats by starting a rent-a-sailboat operation. Wagner's architectural career went not merely on the back burner; it was out of the kitchen entirely, but he didn't care. Other sailors shared his enthusiasm. The Wagner houseboat, he says, became crowded day and night "with people who wanted to talk traditional wooden boats without being laughed at." From these houseboat seminars the Center for Wooden Boats was born.

Today the nonprofit center operates a 200-boat fleet. Most of the vessels are decades-old craft restored by center volunteers, and many are available to rent. The center is like a museum where you can sail the exhibits: there is nothing quite like it anywhere in the United States. "We don't regard the boats as sacred objects," Wagner says. "They are not the Declaration of Independence - something you don't want to touch."

Throughout the year the center offers classes in sailing and boatmaking. They not only teach nautical skills but let students toss around those saltwater words cherished by readers of C. S. Forester and Patrick O'Brian: fo'c'sles, monkey fists, Turk's heads. In July the center sponsors the annual Lake Union Wooden Boat Festival, a maritime Mardi Gras that draws thousands of visitors and thousands of boats.

Wagner takes me out for a sail. Someone once said that living in rainy Seattle is like loving a beautiful woman who always has a cold. But on this sunstruck afternoon, the city sparkles. As the Beetle Cat skims across the lake, Wagner talks about the center's work with people you might not expect to see at a yacht club. The disabled. Troubled adolescents. Gang members. "Historic museums can be places of healing," he says. "The water is nobody's neighborhood. It clears away fears and prejudices."

We dock and leave the center to drive to an old beach resort on Camano Island, an hour north of Seattle on Puget Sound. In a year or two Wagner and company hope to convert the resort into a satellite Center for Wooden Boats. Work is already going on in one of the old boathouses. For the last six weeks, 12 high school students, guided by a center staff member, have been building a 14-foot flatiron skiff. "It's pretty careful technical work," Wagner says. "The boat's got to be symmetrical and it's got to keep the water out."

That latter, most basic requirement is on everyone's mind as the students lug their skiff over the gravel beach to the water. It is a handsome effort, traditional in design if not in name: it is dubbed The Jerry, after the late Jerry Garcia. Will The Jerry float or be just a box of rain? The students push the skiff into the sound and jump aboard. The Jerry rocks with the gently lapping waves. It floats. Yes. Wagner smiles. Another wooden boat is launched upon the seas.

The Center for Wooden Boats is at 1010 Valley Street, Seattle; call (206) 382-2628. Its annual Lake Union Wooden Boat Festival runs July 5, 6, and 7. Admission costs $3, $5 per family.