Aging Schooner's Restoration Begins
On its last commercial voyage, the Wawona's heavy bow sliced through icy Alaskan waters while its 36-man crew searched for cod.
That was in 1947.
Since then, the three-masted schooner - the last of its kind and a South Lake Union landmark for more than a decade - has been navigating a sea of nostalgia, weathering the twin storms of age and a tight budget.
But now the nearly 100-year-old Wawona has a new destination - a Puget Sound drydock where today work will begin on a projected $3 million, five-year restoration. When it is finished, The Northwest Seaport Maritime Heritage Center - its owner - hopes the Wawona will once again be ready to go to sea. This time, in search of tourists.
First stop is a four-day layover in the Duwamish Shipyard, where the 165-foot wooden schooner will be pulled out of the water. Engineers will make laser-guided measurements to produce a computer model of the hull, a sort of high-tech blueprint for restoration. The Wawona should be back in its slip at the Seaport Center on Sunday.
The rest of the summer will be spent building exact replicas of the bow's deteriorating sections. Work on the rest of the Wawona, however, will have to wait for more donations, said Bob Sittig, chairman of Seaport's restoration committee.
But will it ever sail again?
"That's a very controversial subject," Sittig said. "If we do the job properly, she will be able to sail, but I can't say if she'll ever ply the waters of the Pacific again."
That, of course, was what the Wawona was built for. When it first set sail in 1897, the ship hauled lumber to rapidly growing cities along the West Coast, from Los Angeles to Portage Bay. But when engine-driven ships made its eight-knot speed obsolete, the Wawona was refitted for cod fishing and worked the Alaskan waters six months a year.
By 1963, after 16 years of neglect, it was purchased by the Seaport's predecessor, Save Our Ships, and moored in Kirkland. It came to Lake Union in 1980.
For volunteer H.K. Lowe, who first saw the ship 20 years ago, the restoration is like watching your best friend restored to health.
"I remember when I first went on board, I went straight below decks," he said, a thumb hooked on his Wawona belt buckle. "Holy cow, I thought, it's just like I stepped back in time 100 years, and that just grabbed me. I guess you could say I fell in love."