EP# 12 - The Fifth Member of the Family

In this episode of Beyond the Boat, Leroy Lewis talks with writer Lisa Nickel, who grew up aboard a 42-foot wooden tugboat in Tacoma, Washington. What began as a family boat soon became something much deeper — a place of work, adventure, pride, and belonging. 

Lisa shares what it was like to grow up as part of a working tugboat family: learning lines and dock duties, helping with meals during overnight tows, hauling out each summer for paint and repairs, and joining the close-knit community of wooden tugboat owners at Olympia Harbor Days. Along the way, she reflects on how the tug Teal became, in her words, a “fifth member” of the family.

The conversation also explores Lisa’s later path from teacher to writer, and how her book Tugboat Sandman became a way to preserve a disappearing part of Puget Sound history. Together, Leroy and Lisa talk about stewardship, memory, work, pride, and why some boats continue to live on long after they leave the water.

This is a warm and thoughtful conversation about wooden boats, family life, and the stories that keep maritime heritage alive.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:12

Some boats carry freight, some carry families, and sometimes, over enough years, they carry a whole way of life. My guest today is writer Lisa Nickel, who grew up aboard a wooden tugboat in Puget Sound. In this conversation, we talk about what it means when a boat becomes more than transportation, or even more than a project, when it becomes part of the emotional life of a family and part of the identity of a place. We also explore how memory itself can become a form of stewardship, especially as the boats, trays, and waterfront communities that shaped a region begin to fade from view. Here's my conversation with Lisa. And she later wrote the book Tugboat Sandman, preserving the stories of those boats and the people around them. Lisa, welcome to Be on the Boat.

SPEAKER_01 1:29

Hi Leroy. I'm glad to be here.

SPEAKER_00 1:31

Tell us a little bit about your background and how boats first entered your life.

SPEAKER_01 1:37

So my parents were wooden boat owners. They owned a 28-foot pleasure boat, cabin cruiser. It was a Trojan. And with my brother and I growing up in the 1970s, we were kids, they needed a bigger boat. And so my dad, who was a high school shop teacher, good with his hands, metal and wood and engines, started looking through magaz a magazine that was published called The Boat Trader. And he found tugboats for sale. And so we went to Bellingham and looked at one and ended up buying the teal. It was a built in 1949. It was designed by Ed Monk Sr. And that became our boat in 1978. We jumped right in and we became deckhands, painters, scrapers, bottom painters, galley cooks, and we steered, you name it, we we did it, whatever needed to be done. My dad also had his captain's license, and so we he had a side business on weekends and summers when he wasn't teaching. And we would tow logs, towed um docks, we towed oyster barges up and down South Puget Sound and just helped with that. We were just all in. So we also took it on vacations too. We'd spent a couple weeks every summer in the San Juans, and then we always went to the Olympia Harbor Days tugboat races in Olympia.

SPEAKER_00 2:57

What did it feel like stepping aboard as a kid?

SPEAKER_01 3:00

Oh, it was different because it was uh sturdier. What didn't rock when we got aboard like our pleasure boat did. It was just uh sturdy, it felt secure, it felt safe. And uh my brother and I had bunks down in the focusle, down a ladder, in the in the bow. My mom's stipulation was she needed a proper bathroom. And so my dad, that was the first thing he did was install a head in the boat. It did not have a head, it had a bucket, and then he took out a 1200-gallon fuel tank and installed a galley, so that was all downstairs under the water line, and that's where we lived. So it was small and cozy, but it felt it felt like our second home.

SPEAKER_00 3:41

And how big was it?

SPEAKER_01 3:42

The teal it was um 42 feet.

SPEAKER_00 3:46

What was the draft of that boat?

SPEAKER_01 3:48

It drew eight and a half feet of water, so it was short and deep. When we were down in the galley or down in the focusle, was we were probably about three feet underwater.

SPEAKER_00 3:58

When the teal came into your family, did you feel like your family life was a little different that than some of your friends?

SPEAKER_01 4:05

It did. In fact, I was in sixth grade in 1978, 79, and I went back to school and told my friends and my classmates that we bought a tugboat, and one of the kids did not believe we bought a tugboat for the longest time. He didn't believe we bought a tugboat, and we laugh about it now. But that was really fun to get to take our friends out. I would get to take a friend, and my brother got to take a friend, and we would go out for the day or spend the night. It was so that was that was really special. The friends that we did that got to go out, that was a highlight for them too. They remember that as well.

SPEAKER_00 4:38

That's really neat. So it was your mom, dad, you, and your brother. How did you all view the teal?

SPEAKER_01 4:46

The teal became kind of a fifth member of our family. We spent weekends down there cleaning or checking or um working on the boat. It was um a lot of our money went to fuel and um upkeep, that kind of thing. And it just came to be we just felt like the teal was a fifth member of our family.

SPEAKER_00 5:08

Sounds like everyone had a job to do. What were the jobs that you had?

SPEAKER_01 5:12

My jobs were to take care of the stern rope on the deck. So my brother would usually be the one that would jump to the dock with one end of the stern rope, and I would hold the other end of the stern rope on the on the deck. And another job I had was to take the fender because our our hull was black. We had black tires all along the boat, but we oftentimes would go to docks where there were boats that were white, or the dock was really nice. We didn't want to scrape anything, so I would hold the the fender over the top of the tire in case we would need that fender, but it was always there just in case. And my mom managed the bow line, so she would get off the boat, jump off, do the bow line. My brother did the stern. I also did uh work in the galley helping with meals and on tows that happened that we had to tow overnight. I remember my mom and I being on duty up in the pilot house, just going one knot, towing oyster barges, and just having a lot of deep conversations and talks with her during the night when it was just two of us up there.

SPEAKER_00 6:13

That sounds really great. You said something that was a little different for me. You said that when you came into dock, you wanted to make sure you didn't break something on the dock. Most of us, we don't want to break anything on our boat.

SPEAKER_01 6:26

Yeah, it my dad always went as slow as possible. We trusted him uh a hundred percent with his skills. But a tugboat could break a dock or damage a boat. Our our hull was black and the tire was left rubber marks, and so we were always just really, really careful. He was an excellent skipper, and a lot of times, especially when we were in the San Juans or going somewhere as a family for a vacation or a weekend and with other boats around, that was our pleasure boat at the time.

SPEAKER_00 6:55

Did it feel different to be part of a crew rather than just a passenger when you were younger?

SPEAKER_01 7:01

I think it did. We put in time and effort and we worked, and it wasn't just, hey, let's go and and you can enjoy this weekend. We knew that we'd put in the time and the effort and and the blood and the sweat and the tears and the you know, the painting and the scraping, and we were proud of our boat, and as many boat owners are. We all helped out, we all had a job, and we all knew our strengths, and they were all different, and we just helped whenever we could. And so, yeah, it was a sense of kind of accomplishment and a little bit of pride, maybe. It was, yeah, it felt different than to just be a guest.

SPEAKER_00 7:38

With a workboat like the teal, did your father refer to her as a her or a him, or how did he talk about the boat?

SPEAKER_01 7:46

That is a good question. The teal is a her. We always talk about the teal as a her, and my dad always said it was the old girl. And it's funny that you mentioned that because the engine in the teal is a caterpillar D343, and he thought the engine should be a boy. So he named it the engine Clancy. So he talked about the teal as a her, but then Clancy, the engine was referred to as a as a he, as a boy. So being the shop teacher that he was and knowing engines and everything, he worked on Clancy and kept Clancy up. His engine room was pristine and so well cared for, and as the whole boat was when we owned it. So Teal was a her. Clancy was a he.

SPEAKER_00 8:30

Where did you usually haul the boat out when you worked on it?

SPEAKER_01 8:33

Uh, Tacoma used to have a boatyard. It was called Cook's Marine, and it was just at the end of City Waterway. And it was a an old high school friend of my dad's that owned a boat yard, and all the all the tugboats would be hauled out there and every August. The August was paint and repair and haul out, and um we'd haul it out, and we did all the work ourselves as much as we could, and with the scraping and painting, the zincs and the polishing, then the propeller was almost five feet tall, or yeah, and the rudder was over five feet tall. And we we did all of all the work, all the work that we could ourselves, and it was just an old work yard, and we just painted back before the EPA had the regulations and things that they do now, and we just did it.

SPEAKER_00 9:17

Was that a railroad haul out?

SPEAKER_01 9:19

It was a railroad haul out, and um Mr. Cook would haul us, he would connect our boat to his gigantic winch and haul us up on his railways. And then when we were all done, one of my jobs was to be on board with my dad, and he would, when the tide was in, pull the pin and away we would go, and we would sail down that that railways and into the water. And what a feeling that was to be way up high and to be sailing down in the water. And we would get in the water, and then my dad would start the engine, and my brother and my mom would be on the deck dock with ropes, and we would tie. He had a dock right there, would throw the ropes to us and tie, tie up. And yeah, it was that was something that you don't see very often anymore, I don't think.

SPEAKER_00 10:04

Oh, no, that's a very traditional way to launch a boat from from a yard, so that must have been a great feeling, feeling yourself roll down.

SPEAKER_01 10:12

It was, and we always had our life jackets on, but nothing ever happened. It was always good.

SPEAKER_00 10:17

Now you told me you had another job where you had to kind of climb up high on the on the boat to do. What was that job?

SPEAKER_01 10:24

Yes, my other job, we had a metal bucket. It was a five-gallon metal bucket that we kept on the stack of the teal because however it was designed, rainwater went would go down if it wasn't covered and we didn't want water in the engine. So one of my jobs was to climb up on the the the fiddly and get the take off the the five-gallon bucket. And at the end, when we were docked and the engine was off and cooled down, then my job was to replace the bucket onto the the smokestack. And I every time my mom would say, Did you put this put the bucket on the stack as we were going home? And just to remember, yep, the bucket's on the stack. So yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:05

So now your dad you said your dad was a shop teacher at a school, and this was kind of a side gig to be towing. Tell me a little bit more about what you towed with a I I mean, I've I think of big tugboat companies, but the more I think about it, there must be lots of little things people need towing around. And I never thought that there would be small tugboats that would do that. So that I find this interesting. I didn't know much about it. What what kind of things did you find yourselves towing?

SPEAKER_01 11:34

So one thing we towed were oyster barges, and they were kind of a dock design, and the oysters would hang off of the docks in clumps, kind of bags and clumps. And they and this was in uh the main grower was in Purdy that needed us, and so we would connect to these barges, we call them oyster barges, and tow them to freshwater so that the oysters could be flushed and that um the water could circulate through them. So those had to be towed very, very slowly because they didn't want anything to happen to the oysters. The other thing we towed were boomsticks from to different log companies around the South Sound. There was a business in Tacoma that built little docks that people could purchase and put place outside in front of their beach homes or cabins. So my dad would tow those to the area where they were going to be attached. Let's see what oh, later he developed a buoy kind of system where he would take a large, super large tire and fill it with concrete and attach a chain. And he had a little barge and he would place the buoy, uh the the anchor. The tire became the anchor, and a chain went up with a buoy for people to tie their boats to out front of their cabins or homes. And we we towed boats that needed to be hauled out that were broken from one dock to another. We towed boat houses for people that needed to be moved, just anything in little that needed in a harbor situation.

SPEAKER_00 12:59

Yeah, your dad sounds very creative with the kind of things that he he helped do. We talked about the the oysters, and I'm thinking you're down in the South Sound. Where did you take it to get into freshwater? I'm just curious.

SPEAKER_01 13:11

Gosh, I'm trying to think. It wasn't too it was north, I would say north Vashon Island area. I can't exactly remember where. Sorry.

SPEAKER_00 13:20

So you mentioned that you like to go to a festival at Tacoma. What was that?

SPEAKER_01 13:26

We went to a festival in Olympia.

SPEAKER_00 13:27

Oh, Olympia.

SPEAKER_01 13:28

Olympia, Olympia Harbor Days, which is a festival, and tugboat races that started in the early 70s and it just grew and blossomed. And we started attending in 1979. We attended from 1979 till the mid-90s. Always went down with all the other tugboats. There were so many wooden tugboats back then. There are very few now today. Um, we would tie 30 or 40 tugboats in the tip end of Bud Inlet and just fill the whole inlet with tugboats, and people could come and board all of them and explore them and walk around them and in them and a on top of them and ask questions. And then we would have a race on Sunday, and the tugboat races were quite the quite the competition. They say they're not competitive, but they they really are. The tugboat captains would strategize and plan and try to win.

SPEAKER_00 14:23

What do you remember about uh those races?

SPEAKER_01 14:26

I remember being nervous and I remember always wearing my life jacket and sitting up behind the big tow, we had a huge tow bit. I would sit behind the tow bit uh behind there. It was always extremely exciting because the the tugboats are in the water. They're not fast, they're tugboats, so they're going maybe nine, ten knots, and they're pushing these great volumes of water. And we raced with up to probably 12 to 15 at a time in our class, and they're all vying for the best position. We had to start at a dead stop, which was another challenge because it's like kind of like a semi-truck it versus a hot rod or or a sports card. The semi-truck is gonna start slow. That's what tugboats did too. They start slow and they gain their speed, and having some of what went a little slower than others, and some took longer to gain speed, and so just to having to go across the huge wakes that they made, three, four, five foot wakes, and getting in the what we called a trough. You didn't want to get too close to another tugboat because they formed this trough on the side of the hull that would where the water went down and it you could get sucked in together in the trough. And we never that never happened, thank goodness. But we were always aware of that. And it was it was quite exciting. I hung on tight for during those races. It was 15 minutes of excitement, and yeah, we never won either. We the best we got in the teal was third place, so but that's okay. It was super fun.

SPEAKER_00 15:56

Did your dad have any tricks to try to get his boat to go faster?

SPEAKER_01 16:00

Yes, as all of them, all the tugboat captains did and still do. Some of the tricks he did. Well, we would always haul our boat in August, so we'd have a fresh coat of paint, uh, bottom paint. And then we would he would calculate the fuel so we wouldn't have a full tank of fuel. We'd only have what we needed to get down there and race and get back. So light on fuel. And then my brother, as he got older, was in charge of going down into the engine room and holding open the governor, which with a screwdriver. And so my dad would push the throttle forward in the wheelhouse, and then my gr brother would take the screwdriver and push the throttle a little bit farther, which was actually dangerous because um, if we ever needed to slow down, my brother would had the full control of that and wouldn't have been able. My dad had no control up in the wheelhouse for that, for that. So that was that was actually now that I think back on that, quite dangerous. But yeah, we all everybody did that.

SPEAKER_00 16:57

Yeah, yeah. That sounds like a lot of fun. Sounded like the whole family really enjoyed that.

SPEAKER_01 17:01

It really was. And we made some friends with the other tugboaters. We're just a common we shared a common bond of old wood boats and and workboats in general, and um economic status didn't matter. We're just we had that common bond of just preserving and taking care of these boats and a hard-working ethic to be to make them look and be and stay in as nice a shape as we could. It was a unique part of growing up.

SPEAKER_00 17:30

What kind of a relationship did you develop with the teal as you were growing up, you personally?

SPEAKER_01 17:36

I kind of felt like the teal was kind of alive to us. It just felt that it was a real person, or we put so much work and effort into the teal to make her look nice and to run well and smooth. And she gave us back probably tenfold what we put into her. She would be smiling as we were chugging down the bay, you know, and so hard to describe unless you've been chugging down the bay in an old wooden boat that you've put your time and effort into, and that the boat is just giving back to you what you put in ten times, and is just like she would be just smiling back at us while we were while we were doing that. She was a special place in my life.

SPEAKER_00 18:20

When you when you think about it, when did you feel that connection most strongly?

SPEAKER_01 18:25

Probably on Labor Day weekend, again at the Olympia Harbor Days, when people were coming on and admiring our boat and asking questions and just being in the group of other tugboaters and common camaraderie because during the year the tugboats are at work or far and few and far between. We had friends, but we didn't see them very much. And to all get together, there was just this common bond, made us all feel like family kind of.

SPEAKER_00 18:53

So when you when you say the boat felt like part of your family, one of the things we talk a lot about as family members is how we each care for each other. How did teal care for you?

SPEAKER_01 19:05

Well, teal, like I said, kept us safe, kept us moving. We never broke down in the teal. She was a steady workhouse. Clancy was a steady engine. I had a bunk, I had the bottom bunk, my brother had the top bunk. We had our little our special suitcases and that we were allowed to bring. It's a very small amount of luggage that we could bring on. And it was really fun to get to take friends out. I can remember going out, um, tying up to some old log booms on South Puget Sound outside of Olympia with no power or water or anything, and just sleeping outside with my brother and our friend and in our sleeping bags on the back deck and watching the shooting stars going by or seeing the the seals swim by and with a trail of phosphorus in the water at night. It was just a connection. We just we were connected.

SPEAKER_00 19:54

Yeah, sounds very magical.

SPEAKER_01 19:56

It was magical.

SPEAKER_00 19:57

Did you ever get caught in some heavy weather any times? And how'd the teal do?

SPEAKER_01 20:02

The teal had a lot of ballast down and below them. So she would roll a little rock up and down. I never did I not feel safe. One time we were coming back home north through the Narrows under Narrows Bridge, and it was stormy and it was blowing, and the we had green water coming over the bow. We were crashing through the waves, and the spray would go over the pilot house. And my dad, he was held the wheel, and he was we were just going, and I just knew that we would make it. I just had faith that we would just make it, but that was pretty, pretty rough. Another time we were going in pole pass up in San Juan Islands, I think it was Pole Pass, and and the thing that we had to watch out for more so than seemed rough water was the depth. The tide was going out at Pole Pass, and it's kind of a current in there. And our other friends went in with their tugboat, and it was our turn. And my dad knew that there were hidden rocks and things, and we we just had old-fashioned depth sounder charts and a compass. We didn't have any fancy things like they do today. But um, my dad made a decision. We started in and we were watching the depth sounder, and it was getting shallow, and my dad was struggling, and he just decided that nope, this wasn't going to be for us, and he pulled back the throttle, and we just stayed outside of pole pass and then figured out that we could go in around another way. He was making his own way that day and and just kind of decided that he needed to just make decisions for himself. I had full faith in him and that full faith faith in the boat. I never worried. I mean, I was nervous during the tugboat races, but that was probably the most harrowing things that we ever did. Just had full faith in the boat and the engine and my dad.

SPEAKER_00 21:43

Yeah, and the tugboat races was probably just because the other boats were so close to you.

SPEAKER_01 21:48

It was very close proximity in the channel. Yes, we had to stay within the channel, and there was a dog leg turn that we had to turn, and it was always strategy to get to the inside of the dog leg turn, and during the race and uh it was very close quarters with powerful powerful boats I can I can see that connection as uh Teal being part of the family she took care of you as well as you taking care of her I feel like she did and and in a way she had a soul to her and uh it's it's hard to explain but it it was almost as if she was alive and living and giving back to us.

SPEAKER_00 22:23

I think that's a common feeling with a lot of people. Do you boat much nowadays?

SPEAKER_01 22:29

My husband owns a a little boat that we take out on lakes. It's just a day boat for fishing but I do not own a boat. I I was a teacher for 30 years and taught fourth and fifth graders how to write and well everything else but writing was one of my favorite things to teach and I would always say to my students write what you know when they're given a prompt or given a topic write what you know and I would model that with them and I would say well this is what I know. It's kind of unusual but this is how I grew up and I would share stories with them and write about the things that I knew about. One of my students several years ago said Miss Nickle you should write a book about all of your tugboat adventures and I thought that stuck with me. That was the seed of an idea that hey when I retire maybe I'll try this writing thing and put what I've been teaching for 30 years into practice. And so when I retired in 2022, I interviewed my parents and I wrote down everything I remembered and I started to write up some stories and I sent them off to some local magazines, some maritime magazines and lo and behold some of them got accepted. And so um in getting asking permission for a photo to be used in an article I was writing about my parents I called a friend of the family his name's Chuck Fowler and I asked him permission if I could use this photo and he said yes. And then he said hey what do you think about writing a book with me about this tugboat sandman and we'd always known the sandman the sandman's always been an Olympia and so of course I said yes and so he helped me with contacts and names and places and and I just went with it and found all the pictures and wrote all the stories and I feel like I've was able to give back to the tugboat community that is unfortunately disappearing. I mean it's a history part of our lives that is going away and I was able to to preserve part of that with the with telling the sandman story.

SPEAKER_00 24:27

What's do you think's happening when these boats disappear?

SPEAKER_01 24:31

I think history is disappearing. This was a unique part of time in our history tugboats aren't always the center of attention. It's usually the thing that they're towing or pushing or guiding to the dock that gets the more attention. They go unnamed in photographs and now the actual boats are being torn apart, dismantled and because wood is so expensive and the price of keeping a boat up that's that's wood is extremely expensive. So I I feel like this massive piece of our history is just disappearing and I just feel like that's my calling to try and preserve as much of it as I can.

SPEAKER_00 25:08

This podcast I try to talk a lot about stewardship. Are you feeling that writing and preserving these stories is a type of stewardship for the boat community?

SPEAKER_01 25:19

You know I think it is there were people that I I would call and as soon as I told them what I was doing invited me to their homes and I sat at their kitchen tables and listened to their stories. I recorded them and and they let me scan their personal photos from their photo albums and I just feel like that's what's in the and that's what's in the book and I they were so glad and proud to get to have their stories preserved and even though these boats are disappearing at an alarming rate the story story will go on in the books. The legacy of these boats particularly Sandman in in my first book will be preserved for generations to read about and enjoy and remember and learn.

SPEAKER_00 26:00

One thing I've noticed with most everyone I've talked about is there is such a great sense of pride with either owning a wood boat or working around them or skippering one. Where where do you think that comes from?

SPEAKER_01 26:14

I think with our tugboat and the tugboat community and there's an association that we belonged to my parents belonged to at the time called the Retired Tug Association it's the unique aspect of it and it with any wood boat it's just it's unique. It's a slower pace different kind of care than any other type of boat. I asked my mom why was it so special? Hey do we have these feelings that are just so we are so linked to these boats and she said she said well we made it and I thought yeah we did make it we went out there and we were spontaneous we were adventuresome we had to think on our feet and we made we were friends I'm lifelong friends with some people that I had from childhood from the tugboat group and we knew our our own strength we knew how to be inventive think on our feet and so that's kind of how I feel about that.

SPEAKER_00 27:11

Other than pride as you sat down and talked with the different people were there other threads in their stories that that provide some connection for you?

SPEAKER_01 27:22

Yeah um some of them were commercial tugboat companies and the families would bring their boats down and others were retired. The boats were officially retired and they were pleasure boats and we we there were different sizes our boat was in the smaller end and so we tended to connect with the other tugboaters that were smaller. One of them was from Gig Harbor and and the owner was a sheriff and so he would come to our house when he would get off duty sometimes on Sunday mornings in Pierce County and he would come because he knew my mom always made waffles on Sunday morning and so he would come and he would always stop and whenever he could get off just off his duty off night shift and he would come and have waffles with us. So it just and we'd always say oh hey he's here and welcome him in and it was a real close knit family. My dad helped him and others that needed help and we helped and they helped us and it was just a just a helpful kind um community.

SPEAKER_00 28:23

So a lot of camaraderie along with the pride sounds like yes a lot. Yeah that's really great. Well what other kind of stories do you have associated with your life on a tugboat or the workboat world?

SPEAKER_01 28:36

Well there was the time that we had to make the opening for the galley that my dad was making in the the teal he had taken out the 1200 gallon fuel tank and that space was going to be the galley but he needed a doorway and there was to to cut through to make and so there was this old Neptune diesel stove and we say the stove had to go and so the day came and that we had to remove that stove and they my dad took it apart piece by piece and would hand it up through the ladder hole that we had used to get down into the bunk area and the focusle and my brother and I would take piece by piece out onto the stern to later be taken up to the dock and it got down to where the soot was in the the stove and we thought okay how can we get this taken care of and my dad was thinking on his feet and thought I just got a new shop vac. And so he said just a minute so he went and got his brand new shop vac and brought it back down into the foc'sle and the shop vac was kind of a new thing back then and he started sucking the soot out of the hole inside of the the stove and we were all eyes on the shop vac and it was just disappearing into the shop vac. And he got it all cleaned out and turned it off and him and my mom looked at each other and my brother and I looked at them and we were covered in soot. All the soot went up and out through the filter it was too fine and it covered our new paint that we had just painted the ceiling of the and the walls and it was all over us and it was was a mess. And so we had to clean that and we learned that pine saw is about the only thing that took that soot off just straight pine saw and we had we cleaned and cleaned and cleaned. So yeah that was another little adventure that turned into a mishap.

SPEAKER_00 30:32

What do you think the wooden tugboats still teach us today?

SPEAKER_01 30:36

I think grit, determination kind of a silent power that they're not powerful unless they're you know until they're needed and then they are always on standby grit strength. They're they're the powerhouses of the towns and cities and they're just always there ready to be needed.

SPEAKER_00 30:53

Why do s people still ask where is Sandman do you think?

SPEAKER_01 30:57

Sandman was known I heard over and over and over Sandman was known as Olympia's tugboat and when I'm at festivals and or speaking or signing books always it always comes up where is sandman? And they ask that as if Sandman were a person where is the sandman and I always have to tell them where the sandman is. The Sandman is currently out of the water it's been out of the water for close to three years and it's at Swantown Marina in Olympia out of the water. And it's always so saddening to them to hear that. And then they say well what's going to happen to Sandman and then I have to tell them that we honestly don't know right now what will be happening to Sandman. But they yeah they they're always concerned and about Sandman because it's not in the water anymore at Percival Landing and they're did they genuinely care and again it's like a another person. They talk about the boat as if it were another person.

SPEAKER_00 31:54

Right. Well I think since we've met and talked I I definitely have been thinking more about how the writing you're doing is helping preserve the boats and I think that's really neat. How about for you? What how are you thinking about it? Do you feel a sense of either responsibility or do you feel a sense of of a great accomplishment? How does that strike you?

SPEAKER_01 32:18

I do feel that it's um responsibility in a way right when I was retiring from teaching I met an author and I asked her before I started writing I told her what I wanted to do and sh heard the advice she gave me was it's the story that has to be told and I've always held on to that it's the story that has to be told and I feel I truly feel that these stories my story the sandman's story other tugboaters stories from the the past and the present too they're the stories that need to be told they're part of our Puget Sound history.

SPEAKER_00 32:52

That's really great and I think it's a great thing you're doing to help preserve that.

SPEAKER_01 32:56

Thank you. Well before we bring all this to a close anything else you just want to add or comment on I think it's just a a a pleasure it's been a pleasure to get to be on your podcast today and share my deep love and concern for keeping these stories alive and for sharing um a unique part of Puget Sound that a lot of people don't know or think about.

SPEAKER_00 33:21

Well sometimes the boats will disappear but the stories you're writing will help keep them afloat.

SPEAKER_01 33:27

Thank you. Yeah it's for it's a legacy I I hope to leave a legacy of these stories that that future generations can enjoy.

SPEAKER_00 33:34

Well Lisa thank you so much for coming and sharing this with me. I really appreciate it. Thank you it's been my pleasure thanks for listening to Beyond the Boat. If you enjoyed this episode follow the show on Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcast and share it with a friend so they can come aboard too. If you believe these voices matter and you want to help keep the show afloat you can support an episode or set up a small monthly contribution via the Buy Me Coffee link in the episode description. If something in this episode resonated with you I'd love to hear from you. These stories grow stronger when they're shared send your comments and feedback to Btboatpodcast at gmail dot com that's bt boatpodcast at gmail dot com I'm Leroy Lewis. See you next time