On the Water Aboard the Commencement

Coming to Gig Harbor this Fall!

For several years now we have been lucky to have Destiny Harbor Tours taking visitors and locals out to enjoy Gig Harbor’s best feature – the water!  Additionally Gig Harbor Rent-a-Boat and Lee’s SUP have added some fun new options for people of all levels to find their place on the water.

Now, coming in September, something new is brewing.  Coastal Heritage Alliance, which will soon be working out of the Skansie Netshed, is “testing the waters” with a new program of on the water offerings aboard the Commencement.

F/V Commencement, CHA’s West Coast education and training vessel, is moored in Gig Harbor.  Built in 1926 by Skansie Brothers Shipbuilding and Transportation Company, Commencement was gifted to CHA in 2006 by Michael and Paula Vlahovich Family.

Coastal Heritage Alliance is a 501(c)(3) non-profit educational organization dedicated to preserving the vessels, skills and stories of a proud working waterfront culture.

SUP'n in the Harbor!

I had to give it a try!!!

Every body’s doing it. So of course I must try it too. Stand Up Paddle Boarding. It’s all the rage, and now I’m hooked.

I saw my first SUP (Stand Up Paddle Board) on Wollochet Bay about eight years ago. It looked like a surfboard that someone decided to stand up and paddle around. This one guy paddled by my house frequently, in every month of the year. I would watch him smoothly stroke the water and he made it look so effortless. Indeed it basically is a surfboard. Wikipedia says in the early 1960s, the beach boys of Waikiki would stand on their long boards, and paddle out with outrigger paddles to take pictures of the tourists learning to surf. This is where the term "beach boy surfing", another name for Stand Up Paddle Surfing, originates.

Over the past eight years, more and more SUP’s would paddle by my house, and then I began to see them in Gig Harbor bay as well. SUP’n was the in thing to do! I talked to several people who loved it, claimed it was a great work out, and said anyone could do it.