The annual Change of Watch ceremony is complete at Sequim Bay Yacht Club.
The ceremony was held Wednesday to usher in the bridge for 2012.
Eighty members including 13 former commodores attended the formalities that were held at the John Wayne Marina.
Phil Walker is the incoming commodore, and he’ll be assisted by Judy Shanks as vice commodore and Johan Van Nimwegen as rear commodore.
Sandy Thomas retains her position as the club’s secretary, and Mary K. Conner will serve as assistant secretary.
Shirley Patterson and Jim Fitzpatrick, who currently serve as the treasurer and assistant treasurer, respectively, will also remain on the bridge for the coming year.
The current commodore, Jim Jones, will serve as immediate past commodore. Trustees Larry Barnes and George Brown will each serve another term and be joined by Mary Stearns.
In 1975, John Wayne, the iconic film actor, director and producer, donated acreage at Pitship Point on Sequim Bay to the Port of Port Angeles for the purpose of building a marina.
During his lifetime, The Duke owned two yachts: Norwester, a 76-foot vessel, and his more-famous Wild Goose, a 136-foot converted World War II minesweeper.
It was during his tenure as the owner of Wild Goose that he developed his fondness for the Pacific Northwest. For years he spent the summer months cruising the local waters, visiting Victoria and Vancouver, B.C., and steaming up the Inside Passage to Alaska.
When he was filming, Wayne made arrangements to fly in to meet up with the yacht on weekends.
His contribution of the John Wayne Marina property is the legacy of his love for the majesty of the Pacific Northwest.
Out and in
Platypus Marine in Port Angeles hauled out Kingfish on Thursday morning. She is a 107-foot Christensen yacht that was built in Vancouver, Wash., in 1997.
Capt. Charlie Crane, Platypus’ director of sales and marketing, said personnel applied an Awlgrip coating to the lower house, and she was back in the water and under way Friday.
Christensen Shipyards has been a fixture in the luxury yacht market in Vancouver since 1982. Boats from 100 feet to 165 feet in length are built in their 180,000-square-foot facility along the Columbia River.
Golfer Tiger Woods purchased a Christensen 155 in 2004 and named it Privacy.
The yacht, which is currently for sale for a reported $25 million, would make a terrific Christmas gift for the mariner who has everything.
The tri-deck motor yacht has 6,500-square-feet of living space which includes a master suite and six staterooms. It is decorated in dark cherry wood and beige marble, with leather-upholstered furniture, white carpeting and walls covered in white silk.
It has a theater projection system, a gym, an eight-person Jacuzzi, a permanent crew of 13 and can sleep 21.
Shopping ideas
Speaking of Christmas, there are only 6 shopping days left until Santa Claus drags his bag of goodies down our chimneys to consume his waiting cookies and milk while distributing gifts to the young and old alike.
Although it is exceedingly unlikely that anyone reading this column will find the yacht Privacy stuffed into his or her stocking, there are an untold number of options available to those shopping for a mariner.
According to an unscientific poll conducted by Boat Owners Association of the United States (BoatUS) that asked power and sailboat owners what they wanted for Christmas, a new global positioning system, or GPS, was the No. 1 choice.
A new boat was second, and foul-weather gear came in third.
A mere 5.5 percent said they wanted new front teeth, and remarkably, 36 percent of the respondents said they had been bad and expected nothing from Santa this year.
Boat US spokesman Scott Groff noted: “From this data, we can assume that good boaters don’t like being lost, and also enjoy being aboard shiny new boats in the rain.”
Other great gift ideas for the North Olympic Peninsula boater include:
■ Sleek, lightweight and comfortable inflatable life jackets.
■ A carbon monoxide detector.
■ Emergency signaling kits — flares, signal mirror, whistle, etc.
■ A kill-switch leash; it kills the engine if the boater falls overboard.
■ Up-to-date navigational charts.
■ Navigation tools and calculators.
■ Hand-held VHF marine radio with extra batteries.
■ Personal emergency position-indicating radio beacons, or EPIRB.
■ Tool kit and spare parts for boats
The price range for these items runs from less than $10 to several hundred dollars, but giving the gift of safety to a friend or loved one will help ensure a safe return to port after a day on the water.
Repaired and gone
Mere moments after sunrise Saturday, Alaskan Explorer eased off the Port of Port Angeles’ Terminal 1 North and headed for Valdez, Alaska, for another load of crude oil.
Alaska Tanker Co.’s 941-foot, double-hull tank ship came into port in the wee hours of the previous Saturday to have routine maintenance items resolved.
According to Chandra “Hollywood” McGoff of Washington Marine Repair, the topside repair company on the waterfront, two shifts of personnel spent the week replacing the port and starboard water quality valves, making repairs to the accommodation ladders and performing miscellaneous piping repairs.
Thursday, much of the day aboard Alaskan Explorer was focused on offloading bunkers from the Lovel Briere, a fuel barge that was brought to Port Angeles from Seattle by the 107-foot tug, Hunter D.
Loading up
On Thursday, IVS Kwaito, a 580-foot cargo ship, moored to the Port of Port Angeles’ Terminal 3.
She will be here for a week taking on about 5 million board feet of logs harvested from private lands in Western Washington.
Kwaito was initially expected to arrive Monday, but as can happen in the shipping industry, she was unavoidably delayed.
There are a host of reasons why this could have occurred but the most likely scenario is that the offloading of sugar in her last port of Crockett, Calif., which is home to C&H Sugar, took longer than initially scheduled.
Bunkering up
On Monday, Tesoro Petroleum provided bunkers to Voyager, an 892-foot-long oil tanker with a 151-foot beam that is flagged in the Marshall Islands.
Tesoro on Monday also refueled Golden State, a 600-foot petroleum products carrier that is flagged in the United States.
Then on Wednesday, Tesoro bunkered Sierra, an 831-foot, double-hull crude oil tanker that was formerly named Kenai.
Fuel was also provided to Obelix Bulker, a 738-foot cargo ship that should arrive in Kashima, Japan just in time to ring in the new year.
On Saturday, Tesoro had its refueling barge alongside CSL Cabo, a 40-year-old, Liberian-flagged cargo ship that is 594 feet long.
Tesoro also bunkered the Maltese-flagged cargo ship, Furia R, that is 620-feet-long with a 102-foot beam.
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David G. Sellars is a Port Angeles resident and former Navy boatswain’s mate who enjoys boats and strolling the waterfront.
Items involving boating, port activities and the North Olympic Peninsula waterfronts are always welcome.
Email dgsellars@hotmail.com or phone him at 360-808-3202.
His column, On the Waterfront, appears every Sunday — although David will be taking next Sunday, Christmas Day, off. The column will resume Jan. 1.