Yuletide greetings, Maritime Friends!
We’ve reached the dark time of the year where daylight is measured in minutes and time is measured in remaining shopping days. It’s a natural time of year to take a breath, take stock, and reflect on the year that is rapidly approaching past tense—and what a year it’s been!
In 2025, Northwest Maritime undertook hundreds of days of activity in multiple cities—for all ages, on the water and in the shop, big events, one-on-one classes, and everything in between—at our home campus in Port Townsend and increasingly farther afield. Impossible to list them all here, but at least the following are included in the written version of the musical montage that was 2025:
- Maritime education, launching young people into their maritime futures: We engaged over 1,000 young people in hands-on maritime education, starting with four and five-year-olds in our summer camps and culminating in our programs for high school students—Port Townsend’s Maritime Academy and South Seattle’s Maritime High School, which graduated its first class in the school’s short history with great results. Over 50% of the inaugural class are heading to college, also over 50% are heading into maritime. How can both be true? For many students, college is the first step into maritime careers.
- Incredible festival. Life-changing races: Tens of thousands of people came to the Wooden Boat Festival, and thousands more participated or followed along with our WA360 and SEVENTY48 races this year. More than the numbers reached, for me, it’s the little moments of interactions with racers, boat owners at the festival, volunteers who make it all happen, and this year, I even participated in the most ridiculous version of the SEVENTY48 (in case you missed it, I wrote about it for 48° North).
- Exporting impact and expertise: We do good work, on shore, on the water, on the peninsula, and throughout Puget Sound. Our broad portfolio of activities gives us an opportunity to engage with all sorts of people and organizations here in the PNW and across the country. This year, we got a call from Maine Maritime Academy, one of the six maritime universities in the country, to help them build a system of programs to better connect young people in Maine with the opportunities of the sea. We said “Of course!” and have begun working with them as part of our Blue Schools Initiative, which is, in short, exporting the lessons we’ve learned through our history to help other communities jumpstart their own maritime learning centers. It’s incredibly rewarding work, and validating for what we have created here over the decades.
All of that, plus year-to-date, over 50 boats have been started and launched from our Boatshop. Pretty cool!
So as you go a-wassailing, or whatever you do to bring in the new year, I just wanted to say thank you. Northwest Maritime is a community effort, and you are part of that community. Thank you for your part in making these life-changing experiences possible.
Happy merry!
Jake
Northwest Maritime CEO
