For the local mariners, boatbuilders, and tradespeople of Port Townsend’s working waterfront, few accolades are as coveted as the Wooden Boat Festival’s annual Lifetime Achievement Awards.

Whether it’s for Community Spirit and Culture or Boatbuilding and Design, some of the Peninsula’s most prestigious boatbuilders, captivating characters, and community builders are among the awards’ ranks.

For 2022, two people — or in this year’s case, one person and one family — were awarded the honors for their roles in the maritime community.

Winning the Community Spirit and Culture award was the Hanke family, a last name synonymous with the docks of Port Townsend.

Steven Rander won this year’s Boatbuilding and Design accolade for his decades-long career as a boatbuilder, nautical racer, and owner of Schooner Creek Boat Works.

An award ceremony was held Thursday evening during the Wooden Boat Festival, with around 100 visitors attending — including previous award-winners Jim “Kiwi” Ferris, Diana Talley, and more — at the Northwest Maritime Center campus.

“This festival, this building, this community, this wooden boat world that we all love and count on wouldn’t be the same if it wasn’t for the people that we’re honoring tonight,” said Carol Hasse, one of the Wooden Boat Festival’s founders and current Port Commissioner for the Port of Port Townsend. “Because of the pandemic, we’re catching up with three participants.”

Included with the 2022 award winners were 2021 Lifetime Award recipients David King, Jim Franken, Diana Talley, and Jake Jacobson, who were unable to speak last year due to COVID.

King started speaking on his time in the maritime trades and the importance it had on his life.

“Boat work, like the sea itself, is indifferent to pretension. It speaks for itself; this stuff works or it doesn’t work, it lasts or it doesn’t last,” King said.

He brought out the laughs during his speech, sharing an amusing story of his first Port Townsend experiences.

“I heard about this festival in a small town in Washington state. So Alice (King’s partner) and I arrived for the festival in 1978, on our first day … our truck and trailer and everything we owned was towed from the Salmon Club parking lot next door and impounded where the courthouse is now, so we had to stay,” King said.

Talley spoke next, recalling her years of experience in the working waterfront and the many memories made along the way.

“I realized I had been born in the perfect time, long enough ago to have cut my teeth on the traditional arts of the sailer-boatbuilder, but also be in a place and time when innovations were everywhere,” Talley said.

Pete Hanke, commissioner for the Port of Port Townsend, attended the award ceremony and accepted the Community Spirit and Culture on behalf of his family.

“We’re all here because we have a love for a special boat, everyone loves that perfect boat that’s in your life today,” Hanke said. “I’m excited that we are here after a couple years of this pandemic, we can enjoy the Wooden Boat Festival, enjoy what we love the most in our hearts, and gosh, 45 years of the Wooden Boat Festival.”

The 2021 Lifetime Achievement Award recipient Jim Franken and 2022 recipient Steven Rander spoke after, discussing their careers and lifelong pursuits as mariners and boatbuilders.