A lofting of the 1906 George Kneass Whitehall skiff on the floor at the Northwest School of Wooden Boat Building in Port Hadlock, WA. This boat was documented by instructors from the boat school at a documentation class I helped teach last November. Instructor Jack Becker has decided to build the boat in the Small Craft Construction Course. I happened to be up there giving a lecture with my friend Shelly Leavens about preservation of historic fabric in restoration projects, and took the opportunity to check on the progress. The lofting is completed, and students are starting to built the white oak backbone. 

The original boat is on its way to San Francisco Maritime National Heritage Park, the premier maritime museum in San Francisco where it was built. It has been donated to SFMNHP by The Center for Wooden Boats in Seattle, which accepted it as a donation from the original owners in the spring of 2010. I am on the Collections Committee at CWB, and was in on the decisions to accept, document, and donate. A perfect example of our new “catch and release” policy.