Plannning Session for this year's Portland Wooden Boat Show, this Saturday, May 30

Members and Friends of RiversWest,

This coming Saturday, May 30, we will be having a planning session for the RiversWest Portland Wooden Boat Show at the boat shop. The Wooden Boat Show has been an annual event for us for years, and is one of the highlights of RiversWest. This year we want to make the show bigger, more exciting than ever, with more boats, more activities, and a bigger turnout than before. This will take a lot of member participation. We expect the session on Saturday to be partly a brainstorming session and partly a working session to start getting things ready. the Wooden Boat Show is planned for August 15-16.

We have lots of ideas for activities, demonstrations, and attractions for boaters of all ages. We want to make this a whole family event. We will need lots of volunteers both before and during the show. Some of our ideas so far are:

Cutting out hulls and other parts for Kids Boat Building

Planning demonstrations (would you like to do any of these?):

• Knot tying
• Bronze casting
• Wooden cleat carving
• Fiberglassing
• Scarfing
• Sailmaking

Signs and advertising

• Distributing posters
• Writing ad copy for Fresh Water News, the Oregonian, etc
• Cleaning up the signs, or designing new ones

Helping with activities at the show

• Food vending
• Possible dinner for exhibitors
• Kids boat building
• Boat rides
• Kayak races
• Organizing the placing of boats at the show
• Judging boats--we are thinking about having prizes for several categories
• Whatever else you can think of

Boat fiberglassing demo at RiversWest Saturday, May 16

This coming Saturday, May 16, the people who purchased the unfinished Cartopper at the Swap Meet are going to put on a fiberglassing demo. This demo will start around 9:00AM at the Boat Shop, and should last until roughly noon. We are requesting a $10 donation from people attending.

The cartopper is a stitch and glue boat approximately 10 feet long. The seams have already been taped and epoxied; on Saturday the outside of the boat will be glassed and epoxied. For anyone with an interest who has not seen this done before it is a golden opportunity. If you have done it but want to pick up some pointers from people with more experience, it is also a golden opportunity.

There will be the usual Saturday morning socializing and general Boat Shop activity as well.