New restorations and recollections of rowing history

Local rowing club’s boat comes in

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In rowing, speed is everything.

Except in Port Townsend.

The town famous for its Wooden Boat Festival is also home to the Rat Island Rowing & Sculling Club, which finds a similar foothold in the thickets of history.

If for no other reason than it was a cheap place to start.

“The wooden boats came first because we were poor,” said Ted Shoulberg, founder of the club.

“Most of the clubs don’t row wooden boats, they give them away,” he added.

The club is currently working on restoring a shell they were given for free, and others in their collection have not cost much more.

For instance, Shouldberg said he once traded four chocolate eclairs with chocolate oars for two boats, one of which won gold in the 1960 Olympics.

While modern day rowing shells have evolved several steps ahead, moving through fiber glass to carbon fiber, this local club is unique in its number of classic cedar medal-winners that have found their way to their boathouse.

Woodworker Paul Carter precisely picks apart a stripped screw.
Woodworker Paul Carter precisely picks apart a stripped screw.
AGAINST THE GRAIN

Their collection is made up of mostly western red cedar shells designed by the Pocock family, whose boats dominated the Olympics with 21 gold medals from 1920 to 1964.

Fiber glass boats manufactured overseas came into use in the 1968 Olympics, and for the next 20 years America was unable to win again.

The weights of the older, wooden eight-seat champions range from around 200 to 300 pounds.

Today, rules set a minimum weight of 140 pounds for rowing shells as modern technology could go even lower.

“Nobody rows wooden boats anymore because they’re slow,” Shoulberg said.

“We are a very unique club in the world because we salvage these boats, we row them, we wreck them, and we repair them. And we also restore them,” he added.

For years, the club worked away boarded up in obscurity.

“I didn’t care that nobody cared because I was just doing what I like to do,” Shoulberg said.

Then the spotlight returned to the Pocock name.

First, a book came out about the 1936 Olympic rowing team from the University of Washington who beat Nazi Germany’s team entitled “The Boys in the Boat,” by Daniel James Brown (no relation to the author of “The DaVinci Code”).

That book was then turned into the documentary “Boys of 36,” which used one of the club’s boats in its filming.

Now, Hollywood is having a hand at it.

“George Clooney is doing a movie of the book,” Shoulberg said.

Shoulberg is holding out hope that Clooney might even make an appearance at this year’s Wooden Boat Festival.

“That’s my fantasy,” he said.

The history the club holds has become a hot commodity with the filmmakers scanning one of the club’s boats in order to use as reference for the movie.

All of this attention, however, is unintentional.

“It’s accidental. We didn’t tell Dan Brown to write the book; we didn’t tell George Clooney to make a movie,” Shoulberg said.

“You do what you love and the world comes to your door,” he added.

Dave Winters and Peggy Myre work in tandem on restorations to the newest historic Pocock vessel in the rowing club’s collection.
Dave Winters and Peggy Myre work in tandem on restorations to the newest historic Pocock vessel in the rowing club’s collection.
KNOCK ON WOOD

The club is now making history of its own by undertaking its very first restoration of yet another of the Pococks’ rowing shells without the help of master boat builder Steve Chapin.

“He’s our guardian angel,” Shouldberg said of Chapin, whose patchwork and craftsmanship has brought many Pococks back to life.

“The patches are a miracle,” Shoulberg added as he described an intricate process with steam bending and joining a 30-degree bevel with wood that is five-thirty-seconds of an inch thick.

The hulls of the Pococks’ wonders are similar in thickness to the famous Stradivarius violins, and repairing them takes a master’s care.

Chapin still gives his advice to the club, but the hands-on effort has fallen to members of the club working in teams of five or six for five-hour shifts, three days a week, in hopes of having the shell ready to race in time for this year’s Wooden Boat Festival.

They hope to show it off at an annual race they host over that weekend.

“We race only wooden boats. They can be row boats, they can be anything,” Shoulberg said.

Before the race, the timber attractions get laid out on the beach for all to see.

“It’s just beautiful to see them all sitting there,” Shoulberg said.

Since they’re lacking Chapin’s craftsmanship to get the new boat done in time, club member Paul Carter has been placed at the forefront of the current restoration, putting his woodworking skills to the test.

“Steve is 1,000 — he’s 50, in terms of skill,” Shoulberg said of Carter.

And how does Shoulberg stack up?

“I’m a wood butcher,” he said.

Beyond the restorations, the club also teaches two sets of rowing classes which will begin in the spring.

Basic strokes are taught to beginners and experienced rowers are immediately out on the water.

After a quick endurance check, they take them out on a truly Port Townsend adventure.

“We row around the effluent buoy and back — to the mill,” Shoulberg said.

To learn more about the club’s history and its classes, go to RatIslandRowing.com.