Getting on the water

On Easter Sunday Kate Aitchison showed up with her Colorado College class, having spent two weeks with them carving side panels for two McKenzie boats. Kate added the transom art for Turtle Island and we sent Lynne and the boat on their way with big smiles.

We spent the next six days turning the students’ artwork into two spectacular boats.

We finished the boats around noon on day six and drove to Bluff, Utah, for the finale–a San Juan River trip with Tse Kooh Outfitters. Kate brought her 2017 original carved boat, Katie Lee, and the two boats we built in the previous class in 2024. A spectacular fleet.

Ian Marynowski, a friend of Kate’s, took this outrageous shot of us from the rim.

A stormy evening.

Then it was back to the shop to prepare for a trip to Oregon for the McKenzie River Wooden Boat Festival. Cricket painted the names on our new fleet of McKenziacs.

We’re naming the fleet after pioneers of the McKenzie drift boat. The first three are for Torkel Kaarhus, Veltie Pruitt, and Prince Helfrich.

We arrived a couple days earlier and camped at Olallie Creek. It’s one of the more beautiful places on earth.

We hiked to Blue Pool, where the McKenzie River emerges from the ground in an insanely blue spring.

We took the boats out on Clear Lake, where trees drowned 10,000 years ago by a lava dam still stand in the cold, clear depths. It is a very clear lake.

On Saturday we joined a huge gang of boaters for the float to the Festival. Fretwater Boatworks was well represented by boats that we built and those of our students.

It was a moving treat to have descendents of the boat names stop by–several of the Helfrich clan–grandchildren and great grandchildren of Prince, Shelly Pruitt–daughter-in-law of Veltie, and Maurya Kaarhus, who told us some great stories about her grandfather Torkel.

But no rest for the wicked. We drove straight back home and jumped into a series of projects. While running some new plumbing under the boatshop we met this little fellow–an Arizona Tree Frog–the first of its kind we’ve ever seen.

We remodeled our woodshed to make a more convenient place to store our expanding inventory.

Cricket planting a Mothers Day lilac tree.

AzRA donated a piece of yard art which we are turning into a planter. It turns out aluminum dories at a certain point cost more to repair than a new boat. We say stick with wood.

Hello from the daffodils!

Glade and I built a deer-proof garden.

Cricket and Glade had to go to work in Grand Canyon, poor souls, and Brad headed back to the San Juan with old friends and a fleet of wee boats. Here’s Lisa in the Puntiac.