EP# 14 - Slowing Down Aboard the David B

EP# 14 - Slowing Down Aboard the David B

In this episode of Beyond the Boat, Leroy talks with Christine and Jeffrey Smith of the David B, a nearly century-old wooden vessel carrying guests through Southeast Alaska. Their story begins with a boat they believe may have chosen them: a weathered vessel with an original Washington Iron Works engine, hidden craftsmanship, and enough promise to inspire years of restoration. Today, the David B is more than a charter boat. She is a home, a workplace, a companion, and the center of a community that includes crew, returning guests, mechanics, shipwrights, and people whose lives have been changed by time aboard. Christine and Jeffrey share what passengers often do not see: the winter maintenance, the constant responsibility, the long season, the food planning, the weather decisions, and the quiet pressure of caring for both people and vessel. They also describe what the boat gives back: adventure, companionship, connection, and the rare chance to slow down in a wild landscape. This conversation explores wooden boat stewardship, old engines, wood-fired cooking, Alaska’s living landscape, and the way a boat can become part of the family. Learn more at: https://northwestnavigation.com/ [https://northwestnavigation.com/] Beyond the Boat is an independent, listener-supported project. Listener support helps preserve and share the stories of wooden boats, their caretakers, and the communities that surround them. Support sustains the listening, but it never steers the stories. If you’d like to help keep the show afloat, you can contribute as a supporter or become a monthly member at: www.buymeacoffee.com/beyondtheboat There are no paywalls, no exclusive content, and no obligation to contribute. The stories will always remain free to listen to. Special thanks to Todd Powell for ongoing monthly support, and to Peter McGraw, Charlie Syburg, and Jim & Margie Paynton for their generous contributions to the project. Have feedback or know someone who should be on the show?  Email me at: BTBoatPodcast@gmail.com

EP# 13 - Becoming One of the Hands

There’s a moment when a boat stops being just an object—and starts becoming something more.  In this conversation, Tucker Piontek, lead instructor at the Northwest School of Wooden Boatbuilding, reflects on how that shift happens. His path into the world of boats wasn’t direct. It moved through design, fabrication, and composites before a project on the schooner Adventuress changed how he saw the work—and his place in it. What begins as a story about learning a trade becomes something deeper. Tucker shares what it feels like to take apart and rebuild a historic vessel… to recognize the hands that came before you… and to realize that you are now one of them. He talks about the pride and weight of that work, and how it eventually led him to teaching—where the goal is not just to build boats, but to shape how people think.  At its core, this episode explores what wooden boats give back. Not just skills or craftsmanship, but presence, perspective, and a connection to something that carries forward through time—through hands, through care, and through shared experience. Tucker Piontek is the lead instructor at the Northwest School of Wooden Boatbuilding in Port Hadlock, Washington. With a background in industrial design, fabrication, and composites, he brings a broad perspective to the craft—one that blends traditional skills with modern realities, and emphasizes problem-solving, curiosity, and the human side of making. Find out more about the NW School of Wooden Boat Building: https://nwswb.edu/about-us/ [https://nwswb.edu/about-us/] Beyond the Boat is an independent, listener-supported project. Listener support helps preserve and share the stories of wooden boats, their caretakers, and the communities that surround them. Support sustains the listening, but it never steers the stories. If you’d like to help keep the show afloat, you can contribute as a supporter or become a monthly member at: www.buymeacoffee.com/beyondtheboat There are no paywalls, no exclusive content, and no obligation to contribute. The stories will always remain free to listen to. Special thanks to Todd Powell for ongoing monthly support, and to Peter McGraw, Charlie Syburg, and Jim & Margie Paynton for their generous contributions to the project. Have feedback or know someone who should be on the show?  Email me at: BTBoatPodcast@gmail.com

EP# 12 - The Fifth Member of the Family

In this episode of Beyond the Boat, Leroy Lewis talks with writer Lisa Nickel, who grew up aboard a 42-foot wooden tugboat in Tacoma, Washington. What began as a family boat soon became something much deeper — a place of work, adventure, pride, and belonging.  Lisa shares what it was like to grow up as part of a working tugboat family: learning lines and dock duties, helping with meals during overnight tows, hauling out each summer for paint and repairs, and joining the close-knit community of wooden tugboat owners at Olympia Harbor Days. Along the way, she reflects on how the tug Teal became, in her words, a “fifth member” of the family. The conversation also explores Lisa’s later path from teacher to writer, and how her book Tugboat Sandman became a way to preserve a disappearing part of Puget Sound history. Together, Leroy and Lisa talk about stewardship, memory, work, pride, and why some boats continue to live on long after they leave the water. This is a warm and thoughtful conversation about wooden boats, family life, and the stories that keep maritime heritage alive. Beyond the Boat is an independent, listener-supported project. Listener support helps preserve and share the stories of wooden boats, their caretakers, and the communities that surround them. Support sustains the listening, but it never steers the stories. If you’d like to help keep the show afloat, you can contribute as a supporter or become a monthly member at: www.buymeacoffee.com/beyondtheboat There are no paywalls, no exclusive content, and no obligation to contribute. The stories will always remain free to listen to. Special thanks to Todd Powell for ongoing monthly support, and to Peter McGraw, Charlie Syburg, and Jim & Margie Paynton for their generous contributions to the project. Have feedback or know someone who should be on the show?  Email me at: BTBoatPodcast@gmail.com

EP# 11 - Not Just Preserving Boats — Preserving Pathways: Aaron LaPointe and Historic Maritime

Aaron LaPointe grew up around the water—but it was wooden workboats that pulled him in for good. Now he’s the Executive Director of the Historic Maritime Foundation, stewarding a growing fleet of historic vessels and building a hands-on pathway for young people and career-changers to enter the maritime trades. In this conversation, Aaron and host Leroy Lewis talk about the quiet honor of workboat careers, why the “historic” side of tugboating is disappearing even as modern tugging booms, and what it takes—money, community, and stubborn love—to keep big timber boats alive. They dig into Aaron’s personal roots of responsibility, the legacy of his grandfather’s tugboat career, and the foundation’s “history in motion” model: getting these boats off the dock, into people’s hands, and back into the world where they belong. This is an episode about stewardship as privilege, preservation as community work, and the kind of joyful responsibility that makes people show up—again and again—for boats that can’t survive without them. https://www.historicmaritimefoundation.org/ [https://www.historicmaritimefoundation.org/] Beyond the Boat is an independent, listener-supported project. Listener support helps preserve and share the stories of wooden boats, their caretakers, and the communities that surround them. Support sustains the listening, but it never steers the stories. If you’d like to help keep the show afloat, you can contribute as a supporter or become a monthly member at: www.buymeacoffee.com/beyondtheboat There are no paywalls, no exclusive content, and no obligation to contribute. The stories will always remain free to listen to. Special thanks to Todd Powell for ongoing monthly support, and to Peter McGraw, Charlie Syburg, and Jim & Margie Paynton for their generous contributions to the project. Have feedback or know someone who should be on the show?  Email me at: BTBoatPodcast@gmail.com

EP# 10 - A Poem That Sails: Captains, Crews, and the Work Beyond the Boat

In this episode of Beyond the Boat, Leroy Lewis talks with Jamie Trost—Senior Captain, manager, and co-owner of the Traverse Tall Ship Company—about what it really means to operate traditional sailing ships in the modern world. Jamie has served on an extraordinary range of vessels—including the Lady Washington—and he describes the unseen reality behind a “simple” day sail: hiring and training crews, balancing maintenance triage with public programs, reading weather like a second language, and delivering an experience that’s exciting without ever compromising safety. Along the way, we explore why tall ships still matter: for most of human history, five to seven knots was the fastest way a person could travel for days on end—and the teamwork required to do that hasn’t changed. These ships don’t just preserve history. They create it—every time a crew learns to work together, and every time a passenger steps aboard and feels what it means to rely on other people. www.tallshipsailing.com [http://www.tallshipsailing.com/], https://www.facebook.com/TraverseTallShipCompany [https://www.facebook.com/TraverseTallShipCompany], https://www.instagram.com/schoonermanitou/ [https://www.instagram.com/schoonermanitou/] Beyond the Boat is an independent, listener-supported project. Listener support helps preserve and share the stories of wooden boats, their caretakers, and the communities that surround them. Support sustains the listening, but it never steers the stories. If you’d like to help keep the show afloat, you can contribute as a supporter or become a monthly member at: www.buymeacoffee.com/beyondtheboat There are no paywalls, no exclusive content, and no obligation to contribute. The stories will always remain free to listen to. Special thanks to Todd Powell for ongoing monthly support, and to Peter McGraw, Charlie Syburg, and Jim & Margie Paynton for their generous contributions to the project. Have feedback or know someone who should be on the show?  Email me at: BTBoatPodcast@gmail.com