Alex Spear
In a town full of maritime characters, Alex Spear’s contribution to Port Townsend’s wooden boat legacy is hard to typecast for its breadth and nuance. As a craftsman, Alex made his bones in Point Hudson’s sawdust-filled heyday. Working with the likes of Ed Louchard and Steve Chapin on signature projects like the the creation of the pilot’s gig Salish Star, a short but celebrated production run of Point Hudson Peapods, and pioneering at least one of PT Watercraft’s first builds, what would become the eponymously named Spear 11. By most measures, his crowning achievement of craftsmanship has been his personal and ongoing stewardship of the boat he’s owned for 45 years, Vito Dumas, doing most of the work himself and perfectly.
There are boats that exist as dockside show ponies, there are boats that get used, and rarely do boats have owners who excel at both. Alex is an inspiration; he is always sailing. Weekends away, campaigns to Haida Gwaii, waxing the floor in classic boat races around the buoys and around the islands. Alex and Vito know each other, to watch them sail is as close to witnessing unity that I have ever seen first-hand.
Talented craftsman, excellent sailor, and truly a pillar of our community. His work in official capacities are easiest to see. Longtime board member of the Wooden Boat Foundation then Northwest Maritime, Alex lent his wisdom and generosity to the creation of this campus and thereby all of the growth of programs and experiences since it opened its doors in 2009. What’s harder to see is Alex’s kind and graceful enthusiasm for others’ success. He’s been a mentor and a friend, and over the years has lent a hand and his patronage to start up boat shops, advice and labor for boat projects, all with his signature smile and a twinkle in his eye. Some people have exceptional talent as sailors, some as craftsmen, some are the warm-hearted glue that helps people find their better selves and keeps communities together. Alex is one of the rare people who embody all three.
Ernie Baird
Born in Chicago in 1947, Ernie Baird is the son of an insurance agent and a microbiologist. As a college student, he studied philosophy at the University of Chicago. During the Vietnam War, Ernie became a conscientious objector. In 1970, he began two years of alternative service as a CO in Portland, Oregon. Upon completing his alternative service, Ernie worked as an iron worker in Portland. And then finally, in 1977, he landed in Port Townsend. He engaged in civil disobedience as part of the World Peace swim team as Trident submarines arrived in Bangor, Washington. In September of 1978, Ernie went to work for Mark Burn at Port Townsend Boatworks. Ernie says he was hired because he could lift an eight-by-ten, ten-foot-long, and could pull a trigger on a Skilsaw, but Mark could see the potential that Ernie had as a shipwright. Ernie’s off time was spent building Grace B, a beautiful Crotch Island Pinky.
Ten years later, Ernie struck out on his own and started Baird Boat Company. At first, Ernie was operating out of the back of his pickup truck. In 1989, he used his crew share as a black cod fisherman to build a shop and began a more substantial business, hiring some of the best local talent. Later, as his business grew, Ernie hired boat school graduates and others who showed an interest in boat construction. In 2004, Ernie turned his business over to seven of his employees, who started Haven Boatworks. Baird Boat Company continued as a business out of Ernie’s home shop, where he repaired small vessels with the help of various apprentices. Today, Ernie’s legacy is evident in the many men and women he helped who are still working in the marine trades in the Port of Port Townsend and beyond.
Lee Ehrheart
When the Lifetime Achievement awards began in 2007, one of the most important considerations and criteria for awardees was that the individuals not only worked and made a living in the marine field, but they had given that extra bit of energy back into the industry—mentoring and training those that would become the future leaders in our industry. In the case of Lee Ehrheart, we have an individual who has given much back to the marine industry, and we are so very pleased that he has been selected to be awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2025.
Lee H. Ehrheart was born late in the month of July 1938 and has spent the past 60 years restoring, building, surveying, living in, and cruising wooden boats. For the last 30 years, Lee has made his living as a marine surveyor specializing in older wooden boats. From his base in Port Townsend, he has had the catbird seat of seeing a thriving community of wooden boatbuilding and repair, and the surveying of those boats is a vital part of that industry.
Lee’s experience with wooden boats came early on with the purchase of the Colin Archer-designed fishing boat Havorn in Norway in 1965. Lee worked to rebuild the Havorn with the idea of world voyaging while he was working at the Elias P. Tomra Boat Yard in Tomrafjord, Norway. From 1967– 1968 he sailed Havorn through Europe, the Mediterranean, West Indies, and finally to San Diego, CA. From 1969-1975, he worked at the Harbor Boat and Yacht Co. in San Diego, further learning the skills and tricks of the shipwright’s trade.
In 1975, the itch was again scratched and Lee and his family sailed Havorn through the South Pacific to New Zealand. For a couple of years, he worked at Salthouse Bros. Boat Yard in Auckland, learning the skills of new boat construction, which was quite different from the repair of older boats. A couple of years taking a break from boatbuilding to prepare Havorn for the voyage to Seattle, in 1979, he hung his shingle out and went back to boatbuilding in Ballard while living on the Havorn. Lee attended anything that passed as a celebration of wooden boats for many years, with Havorn gracing the dock always from the Center for Wooden Boats and Lake Union to the Port Townsend Wooden Boat Festival.
Lee attended the very first Society of Associated Marine Surveyors (SAMS) meeting in 1990 and joined the organization in 1992. He served as the first Pacific Northwest Regional director of SAMS. In 1993, he founded the Havorn Marine Survey and Shipwright school and, for more than three decades, has given back to the marine industry with the training and education to pass on to younger shipwrights and marine surveyors. At the age of 87, he still surveys and enjoys gardening with a recent Master Gardening certification. A very full and very fascinating life, for an extraordinary member of the wooden boat community.
Carol Baker
No one has done more in this community to collect, organize, catalog, and build not just one, but two extensive maritime library collections, one at the Port Townsend Public Library, established in 1993, and the other at Northwest Maritime’s H. W. McCurdy Library. With these two large collections, residents and visitors have free and public access to resources on all maritime subjects.
Carol Baker was born in New York City and learned to sail as a child in the waters off Long Island. As a teenager, she enjoyed racing her Sunfish on the Great South Bay. After college, in 1970, she drove west to Seattle, where she fell in love with the Pacific Northwest. While living in Seattle, she met friends who lived on boats and thought she would like to try that herself. In 1980, she bought Puffin, a 25’ wooden gaff rig sloop which became her home for the next 10 years. In 1982, after attending Wooden Boat Festival, she sailed Puffin to Port Townsend and was lucky to acquire a live-aboard slip in Boat Haven. One of her first jobs in Port Townsend was working for the Port as a “Dock Cop,” walking the docks and making sure visiting boats paid their nightly moorage fees. Also, during this period, Carol shipped out several times as an Ordinary Seaman on Research Vessels, mostly going to the Bering Sea.
Carol’s library career began in 1987 when she got a job at the Port Townsend Library. She immediately started to hear from boatbuilding and sailing friends about the lack of nautical books and the community’s need for more. Since the library budget was not large enough to accomplish this, Carol took on the task of writing a development grant requesting funding from the Washington State Library. During the 1992 Wooden Boat Festival, Carol garnered 40 lengthy letters of support for the grant from community leaders—a big part of making the grant successful. With funding in hand, Carol was able to spend 1993 establishing the Library’s much expanded maritime collection, which is still there and in use today.
Carol’s second library project began in 2009 after the merger of the Wooden Boat Foundation and Northwest Maritime when she took the lead in moving, cataloging, and re-shelving the WBF’s Cupola House library collection into the new Northwest Maritime Center’s H.W. McCurdy Library.
Under Carol’s ongoing guidance, the H.W. McCurdy Library has grown from the original WBF collection of 1300 books to nearly 7000 items which are also integrated into with the Port Townsend and Jefferson County Public Libraries, through the online catalog system (C.L.E.O), making borrowing books accessible to anyone with a local library card. Highlights of the collection include a number of rare 19th century books on Yacht Design, an early edition of Captain Joshua Slocum’s Sailing Alone Around the World, inscribed by the author, two large photo albums documenting shipping on Puget Sound from the Age of Sail to the Mosquito Fleet, and a large collection of the legendary Rudder Magazine (donated by an Australian) going back to the 1920s.
With the establishment and the continued expansion of these two maritime collections, Carol has given the Port Townsend community a resource and welcoming space where current and future generations can come to learn and be inspired.
She feels very fortunate to have found a calling that combines her librarian skills with her love of books and all things maritime.
Jeff Hammond
Jeff Hammond was born and raised in Wisconsin. He went to two colleges there, Rippon and Carroll, studying elementary education. During the summers, to pay for his college education, he worked in house construction. Eventually, Jeff quit school to build houses full-time. In 1985, Jeff moved to Port Townsend, WA, to attend The Northwest School of Wooden Boatbuilding’s six-month program. He then attended for an additional six months. After just a few weeks of working in cabinet shops in Port Townsend, Bob Prothero asked Jeff to come back to the school—this time as an instructor.
The rest is an amazing history of a dedicated, patient man teaching and inspiring hundreds of students over the next 30 years, most of that time as chief instructor. For a brief time, he was also acting director of the school. Jeff’s unique ability to draw boatbuilding procedures on a chalkboard, while talking, has helped so many future shipwrights to understand boat construction. Jeff saw the school’s move from its Otto Street location to its Port Hadlock location. In 2010–2011, a new building was constructed on the upper campus of the school and was named in Jeff’s honor. After all, Jeff was the heart and soul of the school at that point. Even after moving to Bend, Oregon, in 2015, Jeff continued to fill in for instructors on leave or when certain projects needed his help.
In 2022, Jeff returned to Port Townsend, built a beautiful house for himself and his wife, Marilyn, and is using his patternmaking skills to sew clothing, packs, hats, and quilts. To this day, Jeff continues to maintain close relationships with many of his former students.