Conservation through Community
September 26, 2025 | By: Emily Conklin
For the second year in a row, the Sailors team had the honor of heading west for the Port Townsend Wooden Boat Festival. This event, the largest wooden boat festival in North America, is helmed by our Skipper volunteer Barb Trailer, who is dedicated to running a successful event that is not only a ton of fun, but also leaves a positive impact and legacy on the local community and the many visitors who attend every year. As she shared with us, sustainability is inherent in the wooden boat philosophy. The Festival emphasizes its dedication to the environment and ways attendees can act sustainably on its website, featuring organizations like ours.
This year, we were asked to share about our Green Boating program on the Innovation Stage and were thrilled to do so with the support of local experts and boat enthusiasts. We dove into the thought processes behind sustainability in boating, barriers to implementing more sustainable methods, and how to stay hopeful when things get tough.


Robert Hodge is the head of the Prevention Team for the Festival, ensuring that all of the over 200 boats coming into the harbor are operating in compliance with environmental standards. He and the other members of the team inspect boats to see if their bilges are off, among other things, following issues with oil and contaminant spills they’ve had in past years. Rob also has a background in the shipbuilding industry, working in the past as a shipfitter and currently serving as the Assistant Business Manager for the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers, Blacksmiths, Iron Ship Builders, Forgers and Helpers Local 104. Through these roles, he has seen the issues that improper management of runoff and other potential inputs to waterways can have, as well as the slow but steady progress towards sustainability in these fields.
Richard Lauridsen is the Partnership Director for Sound Experience, a nonprofit that sails the historic schooner Adventuress to educate, inspire, and empower an inclusive community that works to improve our marine environment and celebrates our maritime heritage. They work with youth groups aboard to foster environmental sustainability, youth development, and maritime careers. Richard and the team envision a future where everyone values Puget Sound/Salish Sea and the world’s oceans, and chooses to act as stewards of their treasured waters. As a champion of these programs and a sailor himself, Richard shared that the antidote to despair is collaborative action. Though the issues facing our environment are many and varied, working with kids to discover and protect our natural world is a healing practice. “They don’t come out un-changed,” he said. “If we want to change the world, it’s through programs like this.”


Together with the audience, we were able to share basic tenets of our Green Boating program and how to thoughtfully engage with the overwhelming questions and options that incorporating sustainability into your boating life can bring. Thank you to our co-presenters for sharing their perspectives, the dedicated staff and volunteers at the Port Townsend Wooden Boat Festival for prioritizing sustainability in all that they do, and to the audience members who brought their hard-hitting questions. We may not have the perfect solutions, but every step forward is one more step towards protecting our oceans.

To learn more and read all of our Green Boating tips and tricks, become a Green Boater today!