[Advanced] Boatbuilding School (2)

A third of the school’s students come from within 300 miles of Puget Sound. Others have come from all over the United States, plus Japan, Scotland, South Korea and beyond.

“Here’s an Air Force colonel working next to our young student from Japan,” Leenhouts told me recently as we toured a busy workshop where students clustered around the steam-bent planks of a 14-foot Davis Boat, a design from the island community of Metlakatla, Alaska.

The shop was like a sensory chamber for woodworking obsessives. The spice of red cedar mingled with the tangy smell of teak oil, while the whiska-whiska rhythm of hand planes got backup from a keening power saw.

Fun after class

When lessons are over, other diversions aren’t far. Across the street from the school’s waterfront office is the Ajax Café, a longtime fixture in the 1890s-era home of the town’s founder, Samuel Hadlock.

The night I dined on herb-coated chicken with gnocchi and baby spinach ($16), washed down by aged cider from nearby Finnriver cidery, a dozen boat builders at a long table were celebrating Friday.

At the playfully informal Ajax, where your dinner menu is apt to come wrapped in the jacket of an old LP vinyl record (for me, “Rod McKuen’s Greatest Hits,” which sort of seemed like an oxymoron), celebrations involve wearing all sorts of hats plucked from pegs on the café’s wall. As a piano player plinked out Elton John tunes, the boat builders sported everything from a striped Cat in the Hat chapeau to wide-brimmed ladies’ evening hats of the 1940s.

Port Hadlock isn’t the quaint “Victorian seaport” of Port Townsend. Rather than a lot of galleries and boutiques, there’s Big Pig Thrift Store and a propane depot. Beyond the Ajax, prominent eateries include Zoog’s Caveman Cookin.

There’s plenty more to do and see nearby, especially if you’re a hiker, birder or kayaker. About a half-mile east on Oak Bay Road, turn toward Indian Island and cross the bridge over the man-made canal that serves as a boater’s shortcut to Port Townsend.

Trails to Explore

On the road’s north side, Indian Island is a securely fenced naval-munitions depot (don’t even think about trespassing). But on your right over the next couple miles is Jefferson County’s Indian Island Park, with beach-access points linked by marvelous water-view trails that traverse wooded hillsides and drop down by lagoons and pretty Oak Bay.