It’s my 27th September on the Olympic Peninsula. Port Townsend’s Wooden Boat Festival dates back almost that far, but in spite of my affinity for boats and water, this year’s festival is the first I’ve been able to go to. 
  Maybe I should have stayed home. 
  I no longer own a sailboat or a fishing boat. The only watercraft in my garage are a couple of canoes. Well, three, if you count the wood-framed Folbot——a broken-ribbed, multi-patched, duct-taped, canoe-kayak hybrid that I built from a kit many years ago. 
  Life is simpler without having to deal with time-consuming boat maintenance. Boats have invisible tentacles that suck money out of wallets and bank accounts. 
  Having owned a mid-sized sailboat for several years, I concluded that boats should either be big enough to live on or small enough to carry around in pickup trucks. 
  We admired the beauty and workmanship in the large wooden boats on display at Port Townsend, marveled at the grace and motion of sailboats heeling on the breeze just offshore. But my admiration and appreciation for those large boats was more cerebral than emotional. Boats of that sort require dedication and commitment beyond what I’m willing or able to give. 
  It was the little boats that captured me, small sails flitting among larger ones like kittens playing at the feet of their mothers. 
  I haven’t replaced my heavy fishing boat with a small one because salmon fishing seemed on the way to extinction, but I bought plans for a small sailing dinghy five years ago. 
  Building a boat in the garage would be a good winter project. I haven’t got around to building it yet, though. Other things have kept me busy. 
  I remembered those boat plans as I watched the little boats play with the breeze. 
 My garage is usually too cluttered to build anything in, but space is being created. I’ve been making things disappear. 
  There is a rule that says, if you haven’t used something in the past six months, you don’t need it. I stretch that back to ten years, and even so, trashcans fill fast. There is actually room enough to build a small boat in my garage now. 
  I bought the plans after picking up a library book detailing how to build that particular boat. The book was old, but the address for ordering plans from the designers was still good. 
  The library still has the book. I checked it out again this week to refresh my memory, to see if doing a proper job of building the little boat is something I’ll really have time for. I tend to kid myself about such things. 
  The boat is too small for anything but play and perhaps hauling a crab pot in good weather. It’s a kid-sized boat that will suit my grandsons when they come to visit. 
  I have most of the tools I’ll need, but I have only half a dozen large clamps. I’ll need many more. That’s good, though. 
  I often need more clamps than I have on hand, but I’ve always struggled to make do with the few I do have. Building the boat will be a good excuse to buy more, just as building my house gave me license to buy expensive power tools I’d not have acquired otherwise. 
  Meanwhile, summer has finally arrived. Afraid of wasting it, and spurred by the pleasure of attending the Wooden Boat Festival, we’ve put our canoe on the water more times in the past few days than in the previous few months. 
  As we paddle in the salt water of Sequim Bay and off Port Williams on these windless days, I imagine a light breeze and myself at the tiller of my sailing dinghy, the one I haven’t built yet. 
  I was clearing the garage so my truck could spend the winter inside, but I think it will survive nicely in the driveway again this year. After all, one must have his priorities in order. 
  Now all I have to do is remember where I put those sailboat plans...