Not a bad day

I started my day by getting up at 5:00 am (on a Saturday?) and following my neighbor Ralph and his brother-in-law Lincoln. We went south by boat from the beach in pretty lumpy water that would have, on any other day, had me rolling over and going back to sleep. Today however, we had a mission. The tide was going to be its highest between 5:00 and 6:00 am and the huge cedar log that they had found last weekend and prepared for the journey on yesterday afternoon was waiting for us. After about a 45 minute pounding, we arrived to find our giant log pretty much floating and, after tying off to both ends, we managed to get it pulled off to deeper water and catch the outgoing tide towards home. The project was working like clockwork by now so I left the boys from Flapjack Lodge to their towing job and I motored ahead. I stopped by mom and dad's to visit for awhile and let Captain Jack get out and stretch his legs a little. I had a cup of tea with mom and listened to dad talk to his friend in China over the computer while waiting for the guys to catch up. After awhile, going just a little faster than the current right down the middle of the bay with a beam of sunshine highlighting their progress, they passed on by. So after a trip up the stairs to the barn to see the table mom had set for the Chinese dinner party tonight, Jack and I jumped back into the boat and caught up with Ralph and company in time to plan on how to land the beast without taking out any pilings or losing the whole thing in the current that was really ripping by now. After a quick phone call that got our neighbor Chris out of bed to provide an extra hand on shore, we nudged our prize into shore and tied it off. Whew! We all got our boats secured and admired our work for a little while. We then dispersed till the tide went out so we could get more lines on it in preparation for maneuvering it to a good place on evening’s flood tide. In the quiet of the afternoon I found myself hanging around the Salmon Beach rowboat and despite a long list of other things that I should have been doing, I found myself with a scrapper in my hands scrapping away on the bottom of the boat, happily I might add. Much to my delight I found that, as usual, working on anything on or near the trail will prompt a comment from everyone that walks by. Being a decent day, I had both plenty of people and comments. It was great because it gave me a chance to introduce the Salmon Beach Rowboat Project to some neighbors that hadn't heard about it yet. The progress report for today, after not much more than an hour to an hour-and-a-half, is that I have uncovered two more boathouse brands, one on each side of the bow just like the boat at the Seaport Museum. So, with the fire dying down and Captain Jack asleep at my feet, I guess it is my turn to go to bed and dream about all the Salmon Beach rowboats that might possibly be hiding inside that giant cedar log resting peacefully on the beach.

Apologies

Just a quick note to you all to let you know that we didn't fall off the deck and float away. Spring has sprung and there is so much to share that it will take several posts to catch up. I started the spring cleaning here at the beach by getting all of the firewood that was stacked on the boat deck split and stacked in the wood shed. I think that it is the first time we that the woodshed has been full this early in the year. With that done I finally had a place to move the row boat to so that we could start scraping the old paint off. I think that this will be a great place for it for a while, at least till next fall. The boat deck for those of you that haven't been here is right next to the trail that connects all of our cabins to each other and the outside world. A lot of visiting happens out there so it will be easier to share the project with the neighbors. Much more later...see you on the trail

To Roger Edwards

I would like to thank Roger Edwards (in the red hat), founder of the Salmon Beach Historical Society, for his help in our efforts. All of the old photos that you will see here are from the vast collection of Roger Cushman Edwards. Roger is, in my opinion, one of our greatest natural resources here at Salmon Beach. He's devoted decades of his life to the gathering of the beach's history in collections of pictures, interviews and, finally, the publishing of a beautifully done book called "Tacoma's Salmon Beach". His efforts in putting together the book have given us all a valuable connection to our past and has made us aware, not only of the value of documenting our time here at the beach, but preserving tidbits of of the past as we stumble upon it. The people that snapped photos of friends and family so that they could show off their tent camps, fish, or boats, had no idea that, in some cases nearly a century later, we would be looking at the same pictures and pointing out both the differences and the similarities. It kind of makes you think. At any rate, if not for the efforts of Roger we would not have the large number of photos to look back on or the stories that go with them. For that I say, thank you Roger.

Do you have a rare Salmon Beach rowboat?

These pictures were taken of the Foss Boat today at the Seaport Museum.

It's Friday the first day of Spring and I am taking a vacation day. So I started the day off by stopping by the Seaport Museum down on Thea Foss waterway to do a little research and hopefully get some good pictures to share with you. Rhonda and I had been talking about it for a long time and as long as I was there today I signed us up for a family membership. So, now we are card carrying members (as soon as we get the cards in the mail). Anyway, I was not disappointed. I spent at least an hour there and had the whole place to myself. I did find what I was looking for and more. First of all the Salmon Beach Boathouse brand that was burned into the wood of each of the rental fleet at the boat house is not only on the Foss boat at the museum but is is on it think in seven different places. I am looking forward to doing a little scraping to see if we have more brands than the two on the outside of the stern. There is also a pretty nice boat shop in the northwest corner of the huge building that they occupy but unfortunately nobody was working this morning. There is so much space and I have high hopes that it will soon be full of boats, big and small. Anyway what I would like you all to do is if you have a wooden rowboat is check the stern , bow, seat, and breasthook to see if you have one of the few rare surviving boats from the Salmon Beach rental fleet. I also have an oar from the boathouse and apparently when they had the brand heated up it was used to mark everything so check your old oars too. So if you happen to have a boat like ours and it happens to have the brand of the Salmon Beach Boathouse let us know. We would love to hear from you (we heard that somone had a 10 foot boat with the salmon brand on it).

A Salmon Beach rowboat comes home

I hardly know where to start. My friend Scott (second from the left) and I have been working on the restoration of a 14 ft. Whitehall for the last two years. Our conversations, while either working or admiring our work, always seemed to come around to getting a hold of a set of plans for an original Foss rental rowboat. The shop that we are working in sits literaly a stone's throw from the location of the old Salmon Beach Boathouse where these fine wooden rowboats were rented to the public. Sadly, the boat house was torn down decades ago and the rental fleet scattered to who knows where years before that. So, imagine our surprise and excitement when a neighbor called me on a Thursday night and told me that they had found what appeared to be an original rowboat from that long lost fleet. Well, the picture tells the story. Not even 48 hours later we are bringing our next project "home", past Chloe the mermaid, and what I am sure will turn out to be years of, not only "messing about with boats", but creating some new history and great memories for the new generations of Salmon Beachers.