Speaker 1: So welcome back to Love Someone with Delilah, our podcast
Speaker 1: that we've been doing for the last couple of years
Speaker 1: talking to people who are changing the world one heart
Speaker 1: at a time. We've talked to educators, We've talked to
Speaker 1: people in all different walks of life who are using
Speaker 1: their gifts, their talents, their skills to impact the world
Speaker 1: for good. And with me in the studio right now
Speaker 1: is Wayne how do you say your last name? Chimente, Jimenti, Jiminty,
Speaker 1: Roz Delaney, and Polly Nol And then we've got a
Speaker 1: couple of other students that came with Wayne today to
Speaker 1: my studio to do this podcast. And you are representing
Speaker 1: the Community Boat Project. That's right, changing lives one boat
Speaker 1: at a time, not one heart to the time, one
Speaker 1: vote at a time. I love that. So before we
Speaker 1: get into what you actually do at the Community Boat Project,
Speaker 1: I need to tell our listeners about our wonderful sponsor
Speaker 1: of this podcast series, a business I'm sure you are
Speaker 1: intimately familiar with because your builders, the Home Depot. The
Speaker 1: Home Depot is the sponsor of our podcast and the
Speaker 1: number one retailer of power tools and accessories. You live
Speaker 1: in a farmhouse like I do, and you realize what
Speaker 1: a time saver. Having the right power tool and knowing
Speaker 1: how to operate it can be whatever type of home
Speaker 1: you live in. Power tools let you fix, repair, or
Speaker 1: assemble faster and more proficiently. The Home Depot is set
Speaker 1: up to help you find just the right tools, and
Speaker 1: they have every one of the biggest brands too. It's
Speaker 1: quite a display, says the woman who is no stranger
Speaker 1: to visit the home Depot. More saving, more doing. First off,
Speaker 1: I wanted to tell listeners how I found you wing
Speaker 1: late at night after I finished the show. One of
Speaker 1: the ways that I destress after talking on the radio
Speaker 1: for five hours is I go online and I look
Speaker 1: for weird, strange, cool art objects or animals to rescue
Speaker 1: or whatever that will add character to my farm. And
Speaker 1: I stumbled across this tiny house that was like a
Speaker 1: gypsy caravan that was beautiful, and I said, I need that.
Speaker 1: I think I need that.
Speaker 2: A lot of people look at that have the same response.
Speaker 2: I got to have it, and then you know, the
Speaker 2: next day, reason comes into it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, Well I was one of those people that
Speaker 1: thought I had to have it, but I was I
Speaker 1: was fascinated with the craftsmanship of this little tiny house
Speaker 1: and it looks like a gypsy caravan. It was very
Speaker 1: colorful and very pretty. And you wrote to me and
Speaker 1: you explained who had built the tiny house. So tell
Speaker 1: us how the tiny houses came to be, because that's
Speaker 1: not really a boat, but how that came to be
Speaker 1: part of the Community Boat Project.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that our name Community Boat Project has
Speaker 2: now become sort of a misnomer because we build everything.
Speaker 2: In fact, I was thinking that maybe we should just
Speaker 2: switch it from Community Boat Project to just community builders.
Speaker 2: And we have high school students that come in and
Speaker 2: then we have mentors from the community. Those mentors can
Speaker 2: be everything from violin makers to ex physicists to x architects,
Speaker 2: to wood carvers to just Joe Schmoe to you know,
Speaker 2: somebody who's a cook who likes to, you know, make
Speaker 2: barbecue or make cakes. And so you have a bunch
Speaker 2: of students who are in the room and some of
Speaker 2: them know what they want to learn. Other ones don't
Speaker 2: know what they want to learn. They just looking for
Speaker 2: something to stimulate their passion in learning. And we try
Speaker 2: say what do you want to do? You want to
Speaker 2: try building a boat? Do you want to try building
Speaker 2: a musical instrument? Do you want to try building a
Speaker 2: tiny house? We I think build our first tiny house
Speaker 2: about five years ago. It was a real winner in
Speaker 2: that a lot of students loved the notion of tiny houses,
Speaker 2: particularly in our county, Jefferson County. Although it's a rural county,
Speaker 2: everybody thinks of it is gentrified Port townshend It actually
Speaker 2: has a higher homeless population than King County. And it's
Speaker 2: just that those people are living in the woods and
Speaker 2: not under bridges, so you don't see it.
Speaker 1: WHOA, I did not know that.
Speaker 2: You would not know that.
Speaker 1: So it's actually the Community Boat Project of Port Hadlock
Speaker 1: is the right is the title, And you're in the
Speaker 1: Pacific Northwest? And how long? How many years has your
Speaker 1: project been going?
Speaker 2: This project started in nineteen ninety f so we've been
Speaker 2: running programs for twenty six years. Originally I was stopped
Speaker 2: on the side of the road. I was a tall
Speaker 2: ship captain at that time, but I was stopped on
Speaker 2: the side.
Speaker 3: Of the road.
Speaker 1: Wait wait, wait, wait wait, you just can't throw that
Speaker 1: out there, Wayne, I was a tall ship captain at
Speaker 1: the time. You are very tall. You're like six two
Speaker 1: six three sixty four. But you're not talking about you
Speaker 1: were a ship captain who was tall. You were talking
Speaker 1: about the tall ships that go into ports that tour
Speaker 1: the world, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if you're thinking about traditional square riggers or schooners,
Speaker 2: very large sailing vessels. That was my life for thirty
Speaker 2: five years.
Speaker 1: So when I went to Boston Harbor and they had
Speaker 1: the tall ships that came in for the Fourth of July,
Speaker 1: and these beautiful ships came through the fog at five
Speaker 1: six o'clock in the morning as the sun was just
Speaker 1: beginning to pierce through, you would have been on one
Speaker 1: of those beautiful, majestic tall ships.
Speaker 2: Yes. In fact, I did theeteen eighty one of the
Speaker 2: very first Boston tall Ship Festivals in nineteen eighty which
Speaker 2: then left and we went to Europe afterwards.
Speaker 1: So I was there in nineteen ninety and ninety one
Speaker 1: on a boat in the harbor and I get seasick,
Speaker 1: but I didn't care because I wanted to see the
Speaker 1: tall ships come in.
Speaker 2: There's something about ships or boats in general that just
Speaker 2: touch every human's romantic soul. So even though you are
Speaker 2: not near the water, though you may live in the
Speaker 2: Midwest and maybe a corn farmer. You see a boat,
Speaker 2: suddenly there's something that touches you deeply, and that's just
Speaker 2: something about their their beauty and yet practical. And there's
Speaker 2: something deeply, deeply in our human psyche that responds to boats.
Speaker 1: So you were a tall ship captain, where were you
Speaker 1: at when you transition to blessing the community and enabling
Speaker 1: and inspiring dozens of kids?
Speaker 2: So in nineteen ninety three, I was running the schooner Adventurous,
Speaker 2: which is a Puget Sounds local tall ship. It's the environmental,
Speaker 2: over one hundred year old vessel, just absolutely gorgeous, and
Speaker 2: I did that for thirteen years. So I was running
Speaker 2: the Adventuress when I first got involved with Marcy van Cleef,
Speaker 2: who wanted to just give public school kids free, high
Speaker 2: quality experiential experiences. So her thing was, I'm tired of
Speaker 2: just the rich kids getting their really cool privileges. How
Speaker 2: can we make it that every kid, if they want to,
Speaker 2: can get out on a boat, can go water testing
Speaker 2: in the woods, you know all the things that you
Speaker 2: know just the private schools do, and let's do it
Speaker 2: for free, and let's make it accredited. So she appro
Speaker 2: me about doing an on the Water program, which we
Speaker 2: call the Voyagers, which would take students out every Friday
Speaker 2: and they would it would be an accredited class and
Speaker 2: then go on a two week outward bound style journey
Speaker 2: in the spring. Something that'd be you know, usually five
Speaker 2: six thousand dollars experience. What was this woman's name, Marcy
Speaker 2: van Cleeve St Marcy Vans.
Speaker 1: I was just gonna say, you stole my line. I
Speaker 1: was going to get hold of the Pope see if
Speaker 1: we could get a sainthood for this person for her
Speaker 1: insight and her vision.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because we are only one branch of this incredible
Speaker 2: program called the Pie program where kids learn to repair bikes.
Speaker 2: There's another one that just as a whole orchestra Water
Speaker 2: to you name it is going on through this Pie program.
Speaker 2: It's just about kids following their passion rather than the
Speaker 2: set high school curriculum.
Speaker 1: And is it only in your area or has it
Speaker 1: has it spread to other communities, because I know in
Speaker 1: the town I live in, we don't have any of that.
Speaker 2: Right When they started the Pie program, it was one
Speaker 2: of the very first alternative programs in the public school
Speaker 2: system in the state of Washington.
Speaker 1: For US.
Speaker 2: It is also spread up to the Poor Townshend School
Speaker 2: District in another program which is very parallel called Oceans.
Speaker 2: So of course Jefferson County, Poor Townshend School District, Chimicum
Speaker 2: School District, and Quilsene School District.
Speaker 1: So twenty six years ago this was birthed.
Speaker 2: Right, and so I helped Marcy when I was off
Speaker 2: the ship. I had a you know, I had like
Speaker 2: a two week on, two week off schedule with the Adventuress,
Speaker 2: and I could help Marcy when I was off the ship. Finally,
Speaker 2: I decided to give up the Adventurous job at one stage,
Speaker 2: and that coincided with me. I was helping Marcy on
Speaker 2: one of the spring journey. There was myself, her another captain,
Speaker 2: Captain Mary Beth Armstrong. We had a very bad day
Speaker 2: on the water. We were using some open boats that
Speaker 2: were a replica of Vancouver's longboats, so they were eighteen
Speaker 2: hundreds technology, and we had a day when a front
Speaker 2: came in a storm. We only to go about two
Speaker 2: miles and we could barely get there because the boats
Speaker 2: were so bad at going to windward. They didn't row
Speaker 2: to inward, they didn't sail to windward. We got in
Speaker 2: that night sodden, cold, and Marcy said, and MB said,
Speaker 2: and I said, we need better boats. And Marcy just said, oh, well,
Speaker 2: let me write a curriculum and we'll just start another
Speaker 2: class next year. That coincided with me leaving the Adventuress
Speaker 2: and we started what was then a boat building program
Speaker 2: with the idea of having local designers design us boats
Speaker 2: that were specific for the task, that were safe, they
Speaker 2: were fast to row, fast to sail, and also had
Speaker 2: a lot of watertight integrity. And we did it. We
Speaker 2: just started building wilts.
Speaker 1: With kids, learning to use hand tools, learning to do woodworking.
Speaker 1: How many kids were in your first program, Well.
Speaker 2: I think probably about ten kids that came in.
Speaker 1: What did you see happen in their lives, in their personalities,
Speaker 1: in their character when they started working with you, working
Speaker 1: with each other, working with the community building boats.
Speaker 2: Well, I think one thing is that everybody has to
Speaker 2: go to school at the high school level, and the
Speaker 2: curriculum is very narrow about what they offer you. They
Speaker 2: say the humans have at least seven different types of intelligence,
Speaker 2: and we are catering to one. So if you are
Speaker 2: a great artist, if you're great with your hands, if
Speaker 2: you're a great kind of engineering problem solver. You probably
Speaker 2: are not going to be a great sit down at
Speaker 2: the desk all day math and English person. So that's
Speaker 2: when we start doing something like this, people blossom suddenly.
Speaker 2: People who are good with their hands, people are good
Speaker 2: problem solvers, people who are artists. They all get in
Speaker 2: there and they they start to feel good about themselves
Speaker 2: and guess what, they get credits for it.
Speaker 1: So I want to talk to Polly and Roz. Roz,
Speaker 1: how long have you been with the program?
Speaker 3: So I started hanging out at the Community Boat Project
Speaker 3: when I was fourteen, when I was a freshman in
Speaker 3: high school. And I'm twenty two now, so that's eight years.
Speaker 1: So when you started what attracted you? What drew you
Speaker 1: to the Community Boat Project?
Speaker 3: I was told that I could get math credits without
Speaker 3: going to math class.
Speaker 1: That's a beautiful thing. You got math credits, but you
Speaker 1: have to use math, and building a boat you have
Speaker 1: to use a lot of math.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I think so much of it is
Speaker 3: like so many of the things that kind of fit
Speaker 3: into the math skill set are like so different than
Speaker 3: like curriculum, I mean that are so different than like
Speaker 3: arithmetic or other things that you see repeated in like
Speaker 3: math curriculums, you know, like spatial thinking and reading a
Speaker 3: tape measure.
Speaker 1: And what is your favorite thing about the Boat Building Project?
Speaker 1: What is your area of passion?
Speaker 3: I mean, so I think for me, I do love
Speaker 3: to build things. You know, I've built a lot of
Speaker 3: stuff in my life. I've built some other boats outside
Speaker 3: of the Community Boat Project too. What I'm really interested
Speaker 3: in is I'm interested in problem solving, and I'm interested
Speaker 3: in youth work. In my time at the Community Boat
Speaker 3: Project and just as a student of the Chimmickum Pipe Program,
Speaker 3: I really just you know, got to know a lot
Speaker 3: about how different people are and how when you have
Speaker 3: just a room full of really different people, how to
Speaker 3: come together and do great things. And so that was
Speaker 3: really what struck my fancy.
Speaker 1: And how many kids have you worked with over the
Speaker 1: last eight years that you've seen them, like Wayne said,
Speaker 1: just blossom when they discover that they're so incredibly talented
Speaker 1: and gifted.
Speaker 3: Oh a whole bunch, like a lot of them. I
Speaker 3: don't have a number for you, five, ten, fifteen, twelve.
Speaker 3: More than that. More than that, I've done some other
Speaker 3: youth work. I've definitely worked with kind of a lot
Speaker 3: of kids at this point.
Speaker 1: And is this the trajectory you're thinking? Are are you
Speaker 1: thinking your life is going to be your life work
Speaker 1: involved with boats or your life work involved with kids.
Speaker 1: I'm going to do it all, do it all. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And Pollie, how long have you been with the program?
Speaker 4: I started in June, like this June.
Speaker 1: Oh, so you're a newbie.
Speaker 4: Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 1: What attracted you to the program? How did you find
Speaker 1: your way?
Speaker 5: Well, college kind of wasn't something that like really excited me,
Speaker 5: and I did some running start in high school, and
Speaker 5: it was just for me. It was just really stressful,
Speaker 5: and it just wasn't something that I could just picture
Speaker 5: myself doing to get where I wanted to be in life,
Speaker 5: and that was like just be able to live, like
Speaker 5: have money and be able to live and just do
Speaker 5: things like.
Speaker 4: Travel and stuff.
Speaker 5: So one day I was sitting in class in my
Speaker 5: art teacher's room, which I stayed like all my senior
Speaker 5: year pretty much, and he met Wayne somehow and he
Speaker 5: was like, hey, you should do this program. And I
Speaker 5: was like, Okay, I've never built anything before, let's do it.
Speaker 5: And so then I talked to Wayne and I had
Speaker 5: like a little interview thing and the first time that
Speaker 5: I ever met him, he had me go down in
Speaker 5: one of the boats and bail it out with water
Speaker 5: like one of the docks. And to me, I was like,
Speaker 5: this is really cool, Like this isn't something that you
Speaker 5: can ever learn inside of a classroom.
Speaker 1: So he was mister Miagi. Yeah, and instead of wax on,
Speaker 1: wax off, he was water out, water out.
Speaker 4: Exactly.
Speaker 1: Did he give you like a big bucket to bail
Speaker 1: or something?
Speaker 4: I think an old milk carton an.
Speaker 1: Where you cut it open but you use the handle exactly? Wow,
Speaker 1: you're tough, Wayne. And if she passed the boat bailing,
Speaker 1: were you didn't get a letter in the program? Was
Speaker 1: this a test to see just how committed she was?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 2: I mean life is not all dreamy projects. You don't
Speaker 2: get to a great place without doing a lot of
Speaker 2: grunt work. And so for us that you know, sometimes
Speaker 2: you're doing an absolutely gorgeous you know, joint or wood carving,
Speaker 2: but sometimes you just got to sand and paint the
Speaker 2: boat and that's that's life.
Speaker 1: Hold on for just a second, folks. We're going to
Speaker 1: talk about your projects a whole lot more here, but
Speaker 1: I need to pause just for a moment for this
Speaker 1: very important message back with Wayne and a couple of
Speaker 1: interns from the Community Boat Project, Ros and Polly talking
Speaker 1: about the incredible work that they are involved with.
Speaker 2: Can I just tell quick Roz story?
Speaker 1: Yes? Please?
Speaker 2: So you know you did to bring in this kit.
Speaker 1: Can I tell the Quick Ross story?
Speaker 5: Oh?
Speaker 2: Gay, go ahead?
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 1: So when I was fourteen, So wait a second, Wait
Speaker 1: a second, it takes me a minute.
Speaker 2: You know it's the story I'm going to tell.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I do know the story you're going to tell.
Speaker 3: So when I was fourteen, I was one of the
Speaker 3: most socially awkward people you had ever laid your eyes on.
Speaker 3: It made people physically uncomfortable to look at. Yeah. I
Speaker 3: was so uncomfortable, a lot of anxiety, a lot of
Speaker 3: like trauma in the home.
Speaker 1: Didn't know how to relate to people.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And so my motto was, if you can't make friends,
Speaker 3: make cheesecake.
Speaker 1: That's a good motto. My daughter blessing hers as, if
Speaker 1: you can't make friends, make brownies. She bakes brownies at
Speaker 1: least two or three times a week.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, it's a great way to go. So
Speaker 3: I was baking a cheesecake every Thursday to bring to
Speaker 3: the shop so that everyone would like me and want.
Speaker 2: To be my friend.
Speaker 3: And so I was, you know, kind of slowly amassing
Speaker 3: some social capital at the Community Boat Project, all through
Speaker 3: baked goods.
Speaker 1: Is a great plan, Rose, great plan. Yeah, Like did
Speaker 1: you do flavored cheesecakes? All kinds of weird stuff? You
Speaker 1: are my girlfriend? I love this.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So I had kind of like amassed this sort
Speaker 3: of social capital. I was quickly like you know, insinuating
Speaker 3: myself into this program. And Wayne decided that he wanted
Speaker 3: me to be on like the team that was going
Speaker 3: to be lofting and building new boat for that year,
Speaker 3: the Epic. It's still the boat we use for the
Speaker 3: on the water programs. And I was a special ed
Speaker 3: kid all my life. And I told Wayne that I
Speaker 3: couldn't be on that team. I didn't have the confidence
Speaker 3: to believe that I could do these things. And I
Speaker 3: asked him to take me off that team, and to
Speaker 3: my eternal gratitude, he said no. He very obstinately said no, No,
Speaker 3: You're going to do it. You're going to do great.
Speaker 3: Even if you mess it up, we'll fix it. And
Speaker 3: for all those years we were working on that boat,
Speaker 3: I was one of the three main students in that project.
Speaker 2: So you know there's roses is I will not do math. Heard,
Speaker 2: it's her line, sand I'm not going to do math.
Speaker 2: And we're talking about now lofting, which is taking from
Speaker 2: a set of plans, a small set of plans, and
Speaker 2: blowing that set of plans up to full size. And
Speaker 2: we're lofting now a thirty three foot schooner. And uh,
Speaker 2: just raw another young woman called Dati and a master
Speaker 2: boat builder Ray Speck, who built one hundred and fifty
Speaker 2: boats in his life, and the three of them have
Speaker 2: to transfer all this information from plans to reality and
Speaker 2: then start to build a boat. So does that person
Speaker 2: have math skills or not?
Speaker 1: Clearly mad math skills, Absolutely amazing math skills. You just
Speaker 1: can't tell her that. It's never say the word, never
Speaker 1: say the M word. Call it cheesecake baking.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no four letter words to start with them.
Speaker 1: Wow, I'm setting here. I can't even talk. I'm so
Speaker 1: blessed by that story. Well, you certainly overcame all that
Speaker 1: social awkwardness because you are delightful and definitely comfortable in
Speaker 1: your own power and strength. And I love that. I
Speaker 1: also love the fact Wayne that all the students who
Speaker 1: brought to my farm to are all women.
Speaker 2: So yeah, this year we had paid internship, of which
Speaker 2: Polly was the first one to step up to. Every
Speaker 2: one of those people were female. But I'm just going
Speaker 2: to have to say that our thing is not about
Speaker 2: men or women genderless love that, and so we're actually,
Speaker 2: you know, it's just kind of an interesting phase where
Speaker 2: everything was about a women's empowerment, woman's empowerment, and now
Speaker 2: we're like, yeah, it's just about people who have traditionally
Speaker 2: not been able to be attracted to those trades. And
Speaker 2: that that includes people of color, that includes a lot
Speaker 2: of Native Americans, that includes just a lot of folks.
Speaker 2: I mean traditionally you think of boats as like old
Speaker 2: white guys, you know, but they're so fun to build
Speaker 2: and get on. Everybody should be on there.
Speaker 1: I told you earlier. I was raised on the Oregon
Speaker 1: coast and one summer I worked at a fish canning
Speaker 1: plant and we'd go in really early in the morning,
Speaker 1: and my brother worked there and his job was cutting
Speaker 1: the fish. So if you were a sports fisherman and
Speaker 1: you would go catch to salmon, you would tag them,
Speaker 1: bring them in. My brother would cut them with this
Speaker 1: machine that had these razor sharp knives that came down
Speaker 1: and chopped them in perfect little steaks. And then my
Speaker 1: job was to put them in a can and then
Speaker 1: a machine put the lid on and pressure cook them.
Speaker 1: And you got to take your salmon home with you
Speaker 1: four hours later.
Speaker 4: Girl.
Speaker 1: So I was a cannery girl, and at lunch time
Speaker 1: we would go out on the docks and talk to
Speaker 1: all the fishermen that were lifelong fishermen, all of them
Speaker 1: old white men. I don't think there was a single
Speaker 1: guy there under the age of fifty. And there was
Speaker 1: nobody of any any ethnicity outside of Caucasian. And so
Speaker 1: you know, that is the image in my mind of
Speaker 1: somebody who's building a boat or working on a boat,
Speaker 1: and I love that. You're just blown that out of
Speaker 1: the water. So, how many boats have you built?
Speaker 3: I think like from the ground up, we've built four
Speaker 3: new constructions and we've had some other rebuilds and restoration projects.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's kind of hard to say, and we say
Speaker 2: how many boats that we build because we in this
Speaker 2: specific thing that we want. I mean, you only you
Speaker 2: don't need a lot of boats. We really need want
Speaker 2: one or two boats for our program. So we're constantly
Speaker 2: refining that design. We're on our fourth iteration of that.
Speaker 2: It's sailing right now, and I think we're there as
Speaker 2: far as like the perfect boat. But people bring us
Speaker 2: dinghies and things all the time to fix up, and
Speaker 2: so we always try to pick a project that we
Speaker 2: want the students to be able to handle. We don't
Speaker 2: want anything that's too crazy, and we want to be
Speaker 2: able to get it done in a school year. So
Speaker 2: some of those projects are really easy, just paint jobs.
Speaker 2: Other ones are you know, a little bit of restoration
Speaker 2: work of replanking work. Right now, we're restoring a beautiful
Speaker 2: Mackinaw boat that we got from a maritime museum that
Speaker 2: closed up and Ana Chordus and it's a great boat.
Speaker 2: Need a little bit of recocking, it's going to need
Speaker 2: some paint, needs to figure out the rigging. That's the
Speaker 2: kind of project that we're taking on and it's then
Speaker 2: it's going to be another beautiful boat out there in
Speaker 2: the world. One of our volunteers is going to buy
Speaker 2: this one.
Speaker 1: Now, tell me about the tiny houses. We started to
Speaker 1: talk about that because that's how I found my way
Speaker 1: to you, and you're working on one now that's going
Speaker 1: to be Polly's m Tell me about that, Polly.
Speaker 5: So with tiny houses, I've always kind of like looked
Speaker 5: at them, and I've always my family we've gone camping
Speaker 5: so many times that it's like living inside of a
Speaker 5: tent trailer is what we would do. Is like that
Speaker 5: just seemed like it never really felt too small for
Speaker 5: me leaving with five people in there, it was like,
Speaker 5: never too small. But just tiny house isn't just like
Speaker 5: living in a different way than everyone else was such
Speaker 5: a big interest to me, and it was I didn't
Speaker 5: want to live in a house where you had like
Speaker 5: plumbing and you had to deal with just like I
Speaker 5: don't know, just like all other things that houses bring.
Speaker 5: But living in a tiny house it's like you can
Speaker 5: be off the grid completely and it's small enough to
Speaker 5: where I wouldn't have to buy a house. So with
Speaker 5: this tiny house project, I kind of just I didn't
Speaker 5: really want to like openly ask Wayne and be like, hey,
Speaker 5: we old me a house, So it was kind of
Speaker 5: like me more hinting at it, and he got my hints,
Speaker 5: and then one day he was like, it's like, what
Speaker 5: do you think.
Speaker 2: About building a tiny house for one of the interns you're.
Speaker 5: The only Yeah, but well I think what I first
Speaker 5: asked was if this next tiny house we belt, could
Speaker 5: I buy it?
Speaker 4: And he was like, yeah, you could buy it.
Speaker 5: And then it was like, why not just make one
Speaker 5: for you that like it's accustomed to you and like
Speaker 5: what you would like. And for me that was just
Speaker 5: life changing or I was so happy.
Speaker 1: So you get to design it the way that you
Speaker 1: would envision, exact things in it that will make you happy. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: were you involved with the tiny house that I saw online,
Speaker 1: the low one that looked like a gypsy caravan? Were
Speaker 1: you ors? That depends on which one it was and
Speaker 1: how many of those did you sell? Because it was
Speaker 1: a fundraiser to fund the program, right right?
Speaker 2: Well, see tiny houses well also will have to include
Speaker 2: school buses, in houseboats and some other things like that
Speaker 2: that we throw in that tiny house category. But you know,
Speaker 2: the key is that we work with recycled materials. So
Speaker 2: what we call upcycling. We try to keep what we
Speaker 2: actually buy at the hardware stord to an absolute minimum.
Speaker 2: So we have people who build boats give us tons
Speaker 2: of wood. We have the lumber yards at something slightly damaged.
Speaker 2: We are always scrounging the waste, not want not second
Speaker 2: use places and what we find is what we build with.
Speaker 2: Then you add a bunch of really great people with
Speaker 2: artistic vision to that and a lot of manpower. Before
Speaker 2: you know it, you just have this organically grown house
Speaker 2: that just has that living art.
Speaker 1: It is living art. The one that I saw that
Speaker 1: I wrote to you about was living art and it
Speaker 1: was I know, it's made somebody very, very very happy
Speaker 1: because it was just it was joy on wheels.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 1: So she has a home, a safe, comfortable, beautiful, colorful
Speaker 1: home to live in and to start a business out of.
Speaker 1: And all those students got all those skills and it
Speaker 1: built community. I love this.
Speaker 2: That's why it's so it's so easy to like the
Speaker 2: Shelter from the Storm Program.
Speaker 1: So tell me, Polly, tell me about the Shelter from
Speaker 1: the Storm Program. Is that what your internship is with?
Speaker 4: Yes, that's what me.
Speaker 5: Roz and then another person, Felix, and then Sarah. We
Speaker 5: are all part of the Shelters from the Storm Program.
Speaker 5: And that's interns building tiny houses people in the community,
Speaker 5: along with kids that come on Thursdays for their class.
Speaker 5: And that's like, I don't know, are like, how many
Speaker 5: kids do we have this year at eighteen? And they
Speaker 5: come and they do tons of different things, Like there's
Speaker 5: like welding happening. There's people working on the house boat,
Speaker 5: there's people well carving, let's we're working on outboard motors.
Speaker 5: The place is just bustling with people doing different kinds
Speaker 5: of things. But I guess our main thing is just
Speaker 5: on Wednesday, Thursday, Fridays in the morning, it's us just
Speaker 5: like the five of us and we just usually work
Speaker 5: at my tiny house or we work on just random
Speaker 5: projects that need to get done.
Speaker 1: So you were talking Wayne about the homeless situation in
Speaker 1: your community. I just saw a pretty in depth story
Speaker 1: online about the homeless situation in San Diego, California that
Speaker 1: like one out of four students at one high school
Speaker 1: are currently homeless.
Speaker 2: Well, those different things that go on in different communities.
Speaker 2: So there's some things that are just national international trends,
Speaker 2: and that's wealth distribution. So you know, wages have not
Speaker 2: raised for the working man as fast as the economy
Speaker 2: has grown. And add to that, the Northwest is a
Speaker 2: very popular place to come to right now, so gentrification
Speaker 2: is throughout the Northwest. Suddenly a lot of the housing
Speaker 2: is just bought up by people who are retiring from
Speaker 2: wherever else they don't want to be. And then one
Speaker 2: of the biggest things that happened to us is Airbnb.
Speaker 2: I mean for decades, Port Townshend has what's called shed
Speaker 2: boy culture. There's a lot of people who move into town.
Speaker 2: They're the fishermen, or they're boat builders, or they're just
Speaker 2: painters whatever, and they live in some small dwelling which
Speaker 2: we generally call a shed. They'd probably call it a
Speaker 2: tiny house now. And so people were happy with that.
Speaker 2: You know, they're young or people just simple livers. Now
Speaker 2: you add Airbnb, which has happened over the last ten years,
Speaker 2: and all those places come off the market because for
Speaker 2: one or two nights you can get the income that
Speaker 2: you used to get for a month. So suddenly you've
Speaker 2: pulled the bottom end housing right out and suddenly you
Speaker 2: have a huge homeless problem.
Speaker 1: Well, we can't fix everything, but we can build tiny houses.
Speaker 2: Right, We are not going to fix these big trends,
Speaker 2: but we can do the little thing that we can do.
Speaker 2: You know, where does your skill set intersect with the
Speaker 2: greatest need of the world, And at this place is like, oh,
Speaker 2: if you know how to build something there and you
Speaker 2: can in some little way help in some small thing
Speaker 2: about homelessness, that's that's all you can do.
Speaker 1: If everybody would do that, that's enough.
Speaker 2: I know it would be cured.
Speaker 1: And that that was why I wrote my book One
Speaker 1: Heart at a Time, because I think we're all waiting
Speaker 1: for something outside of us to shift to fix it,
Speaker 1: and we're getting frustrated because not only is it not happening,
Speaker 1: it's getting worse. And so we're looking with anticipation to
Speaker 1: something outside to fix it. But what you're doing? What
Speaker 1: the community boat project, what the tiny house project? How
Speaker 1: many projects are there under the umbrella now?
Speaker 2: So we have four programs and we are dealing with
Speaker 2: about fifty kids a year in deep programs.
Speaker 1: So you're helping them, You're helping them get through school,
Speaker 1: you're helping them find their passion, give them life skills.
Speaker 1: More importantly, you're helping them build community and feel comfortable
Speaker 1: in their own skin and connect with people and get
Speaker 1: over like Ros said that social awkwardness. And you're helping
Speaker 1: the environment. You're recycling everything and salvaging everything. Do dumpster
Speaker 1: dive like I do, because I love to dumpster dive
Speaker 1: for goods.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, there is so much to live at the
Speaker 2: benthic level is so wonderful because you have you know,
Speaker 2: people come in, they gut houses, they throw all this
Speaker 2: great stuff right out. Well that's that's where it can
Speaker 2: float right on down to us.
Speaker 1: And then you turn it into beautiful works of art.
Speaker 2: Yep. Polly goes out about once a week just to
Speaker 2: hit the different places looking for her windows and you know,
Speaker 2: little bits and pieces.
Speaker 1: Polly, we need to talk. I've got some INDs with
Speaker 1: some places. Yeah, okay, yeah, yeah, we'll talk dimensions. Yeah.
Speaker 3: We Actually one of the cool details about Polly's tiny
Speaker 3: house was we were able to pick up like the glass
Speaker 3: top of a coffee table and we framed it up
Speaker 3: as a window. So now we have this giant oval
Speaker 3: window sitting in the sleeping loft.
Speaker 1: That came off a coffee table. Yeah.
Speaker 4: It was super colimmer.
Speaker 5: Like Wayne, I think he emailed me because we were
Speaker 5: just like just email back and forth, but like things
Speaker 5: we can pick up and stuff, and he was like, hey,
Speaker 5: I found this giant like oval coffee table top and
Speaker 5: let's use it out a window. And I was like, okay,
Speaker 5: let's do it, like not really knowing because I've never
Speaker 5: built anything in my life other than my back porch,
Speaker 5: which is like four by four back porch.
Speaker 4: And so we get there and this thing is so heavy.
Speaker 1: So it's tempered glass safety glass.
Speaker 5: And we framed it and stuff, and then I panted
Speaker 5: the inside like a nice hot pink color because I
Speaker 5: love pink, and so you can see it from the inside.
Speaker 5: And I think last Thursday we put it up and
Speaker 5: it was one of the most terrifying experiences I think
Speaker 5: I've had with my tiny house because it's so heavy.
Speaker 5: And here's Wayne and this other guy, Steve, who comes help,
Speaker 5: and they were putting it up into the house, and
Speaker 5: I was inside of it on this ladder and I
Speaker 5: hate ladders, and they were like pushing it in and
Speaker 5: then I'd be on the other side making.
Speaker 1: Sure holding it up so it doesn't fall through.
Speaker 5: But we also Steve and I made it so that
Speaker 5: we put too like braces around the corner so like
Speaker 5: it really couldn't fall through, and then I screwed it
Speaker 5: all in.
Speaker 4: It was fun. It was terrifying for me, but it
Speaker 4: was fun.
Speaker 1: But you overcame face and you got to see, yeah,
Speaker 1: an amazing thing come to life. How did you how
Speaker 1: did you frame around the oval?
Speaker 2: We can't tell you.
Speaker 1: Trade sea beards.
Speaker 2: We are working on Poly's sense of color, so maybe
Speaker 2: by the end of the nine months that will Oh it's.
Speaker 3: Going to be the running gag here is. Wayne's sense
Speaker 3: of color has always been safety orange.
Speaker 5: I painted my roof beams like you can see from
Speaker 5: the inside like this nice like Robin's egg blue. And
Speaker 5: Wayne just couldn't even believe that that was going to
Speaker 5: be inside my house.
Speaker 1: Oh it sounds beautiful. Thank you beautiful. Yeah, well, thank
Speaker 1: you for coming and talking to me today. If somebody
Speaker 1: wants to get involved, how can they find you?
Speaker 2: So all our programs are free and accredited, and we
Speaker 2: don't really sell anything, so of course we just live
Speaker 2: on grants in individual donations and you can find us
Speaker 2: on the web. So go for Community Boat Project and
Speaker 2: Port Hadlock. And one thing that Polly is doing right
Speaker 2: now as part of our internship is she is making
Speaker 2: sure there's Facebook posts up every week that'll show you
Speaker 2: the progress of this great new tiny house.
Speaker 1: Community about project that you can follow the building projects. Wayne.
Speaker 1: If somebody is listening, who's a teacher and educator? A
Speaker 1: school principle and they go, oh my gosh, we need
Speaker 1: to have something like this, Maybe not boats, maybe not
Speaker 1: even tiny houses, but something like this where kids can
Speaker 1: do hands on learning and get out of the classroom
Speaker 1: and into real life. Could they contact you to pick
Speaker 1: your brain on how to get that going.
Speaker 2: They could definitely contact me. There's not much of a
Speaker 2: brain to pick, but we can definitely hear them in
Speaker 2: the right direction. It's like a salmon try to go
Speaker 2: through a dam when you work up against the school
Speaker 2: system as it now stands. But that doesn't mean that
Speaker 2: it can't be done.
Speaker 1: Clearly, it can be done because you did it and
Speaker 1: it's being done, so it can be done. If one
Speaker 1: person has done it, it can be done. If one
Speaker 1: person has started this community boat project and you've been
Speaker 1: in in existence for almost thirty years, it can be done.
Speaker 1: We just got to find people who are willing to
Speaker 1: be the salmon swimming up the stream.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think every community is different. You know,
Speaker 2: we are a maritime community. We started with boats. As
Speaker 2: we started building our program, we kept looking where the
Speaker 2: community needs and we have followed those. So it's boats,
Speaker 2: it's tiny houses. Every community is going to be different.
Speaker 2: One of the great stories from last year was that
Speaker 2: there's something called the seventy forty eight, which is a
Speaker 2: row that goes from Tacoma to Poort Townshend And it
Speaker 2: just started a couple of years ago, and there was
Speaker 2: a group in the Mountains of Colorado that saw that
Speaker 2: and said, what a cool thing, Let's do it with
Speaker 2: our kids. And then they got an enormous thirty something
Speaker 2: foot dragon boat. They cut it into three pieces, they
Speaker 2: somehow hacked it together. I mean, I was just atrocious
Speaker 2: boat building. But they got fifteen high school kids into
Speaker 2: this thing, and they came here and they did the
Speaker 2: seventy forty eight, and there was a year long project
Speaker 2: for them. It was, I mean, just an incredible project
Speaker 2: to watch.
Speaker 4: One thing about the kids.
Speaker 5: One thing I heard I don't know if this is
Speaker 5: like fully true, but I did hear this is that
Speaker 5: their school had like a school shooting at it. And
Speaker 5: so they wanted when you researched their school not to
Speaker 5: come up as the school that got shot up, but
Speaker 5: as a school that these kids went and participated in
Speaker 5: this growing thing. And so they wanted that to be
Speaker 5: what comes up, not stuff about their school.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we actually had a little bit of that.
Speaker 2: Chimmickham is a pretty good school district, but they've been
Speaker 2: losing enrollment and so they've been having budget struggles. And
Speaker 2: last year the Chimmicam teachers came to us and said,
Speaker 2: we're tired of Chimmicam always getting bad press. Can we
Speaker 2: borrow one of your boats and do the seventy forty
Speaker 2: eight so that when people look at Chimicam schools, they're
Speaker 2: seeing this great story of these teachers who trained every
Speaker 2: week so that they could do the seventy forty eight
Speaker 2: and they did it. So that lifts the spirits of
Speaker 2: everybody in that school district.
Speaker 1: Wow, I'm so proud of you. I'm so proud of
Speaker 1: you kids. And you're young adults. But to meet your
Speaker 1: kids and the heart that you have and the way
Speaker 1: you're transforming communities and transforming lives and transformed your own lives,
Speaker 1: it's awesome.
Speaker 3: I want to put in also for people that are,
Speaker 3: you know, trying to enact change in their community. Marcy
Speaker 3: Vancleeve is certainly a force of nature, but she founded
Speaker 3: the pipe program with four other teachers. You know, you
Speaker 3: can't do it alone, so you got to find the
Speaker 3: people who will help you out.
Speaker 1: Thank you, thank you for being here today.
Speaker 2: Well, thank you for reaching out to us and let
Speaker 2: us tell our story and for the work you're doing.
Speaker 2: It's just amazing to get the good news out there
Speaker 2: for a change.
Speaker 1: Amen. We need good news right now and we need
Speaker 1: to change the world one heart at a time. And
Speaker 1: we can't wait. We can't wait for someone out there
Speaker 1: or something out there to happen. We have to be
Speaker 1: the change we want to see. So thank you, thank you, Delilah,
Speaker 1: be the change you want to see in the world.
Speaker 1: That pretty much sums up the message I want to
Speaker 1: convey to you with this podcast series. Wayne puts it
Speaker 1: this way. Find where your skill set intersects with the
Speaker 1: greatest needs. That's how we change the world. One heart,
Speaker 1: one boat, one tiny house, one cheesecake, one cup of tea,
Speaker 1: one hug, one listening ear at a time.