SHELTER FROM THE STORM

So welcome back to Love Someone with Delilah, our podcast that we've been doing for the last couple of years talking to people who are changing the world one heart at a time. We've talked to educators, We've talked to people in all different walks of life who are using their gifts, their talents, their skills to impact the world for good. And with me in the studio right now

A lot of people look at that have the same response. I got to have it, and then you know, the next day, reason comes into it.

Yeah, okay, Well I was one of those people that thought I had to have it, but I was I was fascinated with the craftsmanship of this little tiny house and it looks like a gypsy caravan. It was very colorful and very pretty. And you wrote to me and you explained who had built the tiny house. So tell us how the tiny houses came to be, because that's not really a boat, but how that came to be part of the Community Boat Project.

Yeah, I think that our name Community Boat Project has now become sort of a misnomer because we build everything. In fact, I was thinking that maybe we should just switch it from Community Boat Project to just community builders. And we have high school students that come in and

WHOA, I did not know that.

You would not know that.

So it's actually the Community Boat Project of Port Hadlock is the right is the title, And you're in the Pacific Northwest? And how long? How many years has your project been going?

This project started in nineteen ninety f so we've been running programs for twenty six years. Originally I was stopped on the side of the road. I was a tall ship captain at that time, but I was stopped on the side.

Of the road.

Wait wait, wait, wait wait, you just can't throw that out there, Wayne, I was a tall ship captain at the time. You are very tall. You're like six two six three sixty four. But you're not talking about you were a ship captain who was tall. You were talking about the tall ships that go into ports that tour the world, right.

Yeah, if you're thinking about traditional square riggers or schooners, very large sailing vessels. That was my life for thirty five years.

So when I went to Boston Harbor and they had the tall ships that came in for the Fourth of July, and these beautiful ships came through the fog at five six o'clock in the morning as the sun was just beginning to pierce through, you would have been on one of those beautiful, majestic tall ships.

Yes. In fact, I did theeteen eighty one of the very first Boston tall Ship Festivals in nineteen eighty which then left and we went to Europe afterwards.

So I was there in nineteen ninety and ninety one on a boat in the harbor and I get seasick, but I didn't care because I wanted to see the tall ships come in.

There's something about ships or boats in general that just touch every human's romantic soul. So even though you are not near the water, though you may live in the Midwest and maybe a corn farmer. You see a boat, suddenly there's something that touches you deeply, and that's just something about their their beauty and yet practical. And there's something deeply, deeply in our human psyche that responds to boats.

So you were a tall ship captain, where were you at when you transition to blessing the community and enabling and inspiring dozens of kids?

So in nineteen ninety three, I was running the schooner Adventurous, which is a Puget Sounds local tall ship. It's the environmental, over one hundred year old vessel, just absolutely gorgeous, and I did that for thirteen years. So I was running the Adventuress when I first got involved with Marcy van Cleef, who wanted to just give public school kids free, high quality experiential experiences. So her thing was, I'm tired of

I was just gonna say, you stole my line. I was going to get hold of the Pope see if we could get a sainthood for this person for her insight and her vision.

Yeah, because we are only one branch of this incredible program called the Pie program where kids learn to repair bikes. There's another one that just as a whole orchestra Water to you name it is going on through this Pie program. It's just about kids following their passion rather than the set high school curriculum.

And is it only in your area or has it has it spread to other communities, because I know in the town I live in, we don't have any of that.

Right When they started the Pie program, it was one of the very first alternative programs in the public school system in the state of Washington.

For US.

It is also spread up to the Poor Townshend School District in another program which is very parallel called Oceans. So of course Jefferson County, Poor Townshend School District, Chimicum School District, and Quilsene School District.

So twenty six years ago this was birthed.

Right, and so I helped Marcy when I was off the ship. I had a you know, I had like a two week on, two week off schedule with the Adventuress, and I could help Marcy when I was off the ship. Finally, I decided to give up the Adventurous job at one stage, and that coincided with me. I was helping Marcy on one of the spring journey. There was myself, her another captain, Captain Mary Beth Armstrong. We had a very bad day

With kids, learning to use hand tools, learning to do woodworking. How many kids were in your first program, Well.

I think probably about ten kids that came in.

What did you see happen in their lives, in their personalities, in their character when they started working with you, working with each other, working with the community building boats.

Well, I think one thing is that everybody has to go to school at the high school level, and the curriculum is very narrow about what they offer you. They say the humans have at least seven different types of intelligence, and we are catering to one. So if you are a great artist, if you're great with your hands, if you're a great kind of engineering problem solver. You probably are not going to be a great sit down at

So I want to talk to Polly and Roz. Roz, how long have you been with the program?

So I started hanging out at the Community Boat Project when I was fourteen, when I was a freshman in high school. And I'm twenty two now, so that's eight years.

So when you started what attracted you? What drew you to the Community Boat Project?

I was told that I could get math credits without going to math class.

That's a beautiful thing. You got math credits, but you have to use math, and building a boat you have to use a lot of math.

Yeah, I mean, I think so much of it is like so many of the things that kind of fit into the math skill set are like so different than like curriculum, I mean that are so different than like arithmetic or other things that you see repeated in like math curriculums, you know, like spatial thinking and reading a tape measure.

And what is your favorite thing about the Boat Building Project? What is your area of passion?

I mean, so I think for me, I do love to build things. You know, I've built a lot of stuff in my life. I've built some other boats outside of the Community Boat Project too. What I'm really interested in is I'm interested in problem solving, and I'm interested

And how many kids have you worked with over the last eight years that you've seen them, like Wayne said, just blossom when they discover that they're so incredibly talented and gifted.

Oh a whole bunch, like a lot of them. I don't have a number for you, five, ten, fifteen, twelve. More than that. More than that, I've done some other youth work. I've definitely worked with kind of a lot of kids at this point.

And is this the trajectory you're thinking? Are are you thinking your life is going to be your life work involved with boats or your life work involved with kids. I'm going to do it all, do it all. Yeah, And Pollie, how long have you been with the program?

I started in June, like this June.

Oh, so you're a newbie.

Yeah, definitely.

What attracted you to the program? How did you find your way?

Well, college kind of wasn't something that like really excited me, and I did some running start in high school, and it was just for me. It was just really stressful, and it just wasn't something that I could just picture myself doing to get where I wanted to be in life, and that was like just be able to live, like have money and be able to live and just do things like.

Travel and stuff.

So one day I was sitting in class in my art teacher's room, which I stayed like all my senior year pretty much, and he met Wayne somehow and he was like, hey, you should do this program. And I was like, Okay, I've never built anything before, let's do it. And so then I talked to Wayne and I had like a little interview thing and the first time that I ever met him, he had me go down in one of the boats and bail it out with water

So he was mister Miagi. Yeah, and instead of wax on, wax off, he was water out, water out.

Exactly.

Did he give you like a big bucket to bail or something?

I think an old milk carton an.

Where you cut it open but you use the handle exactly? Wow, you're tough, Wayne. And if she passed the boat bailing, were you didn't get a letter in the program? Was this a test to see just how committed she was?

Yeah?

I mean life is not all dreamy projects. You don't get to a great place without doing a lot of grunt work. And so for us that you know, sometimes you're doing an absolutely gorgeous you know, joint or wood carving, but sometimes you just got to sand and paint the boat and that's that's life.

Hold on for just a second, folks. We're going to talk about your projects a whole lot more here, but I need to pause just for a moment for this very important message back with Wayne and a couple of interns from the Community Boat Project, Ros and Polly talking about the incredible work that they are involved with.

Can I just tell quick Roz story?

Yes? Please?

So you know you did to bring in this kit.

Can I tell the Quick Ross story?

Oh?

Gay, go ahead?

Okay.

So when I was fourteen, So wait a second, Wait a second, it takes me a minute.

You know it's the story I'm going to tell.

Yeah, I do know the story you're going to tell. So when I was fourteen, I was one of the most socially awkward people you had ever laid your eyes on. It made people physically uncomfortable to look at. Yeah. I was so uncomfortable, a lot of anxiety, a lot of like trauma in the home.

Didn't know how to relate to people.

Yeah.

And so my motto was, if you can't make friends, make cheesecake.

That's a good motto. My daughter blessing hers as, if you can't make friends, make brownies. She bakes brownies at least two or three times a week.

Yeah, I mean, it's a great way to go. So I was baking a cheesecake every Thursday to bring to the shop so that everyone would like me and want.

To be my friend.

And so I was, you know, kind of slowly amassing some social capital at the Community Boat Project, all through baked goods.

Is a great plan, Rose, great plan. Yeah, Like did you do flavored cheesecakes? All kinds of weird stuff? You are my girlfriend? I love this.

Yeah. So I had kind of like amassed this sort of social capital. I was quickly like you know, insinuating myself into this program. And Wayne decided that he wanted me to be on like the team that was going to be lofting and building new boat for that year, the Epic. It's still the boat we use for the on the water programs. And I was a special ed kid all my life. And I told Wayne that I couldn't be on that team. I didn't have the confidence

So you know there's roses is I will not do math. Heard, it's her line, sand I'm not going to do math. And we're talking about now lofting, which is taking from a set of plans, a small set of plans, and blowing that set of plans up to full size. And

Clearly mad math skills, Absolutely amazing math skills. You just can't tell her that. It's never say the word, never say the M word. Call it cheesecake baking.

Yeah, no four letter words to start with them.

Wow, I'm setting here. I can't even talk. I'm so blessed by that story. Well, you certainly overcame all that social awkwardness because you are delightful and definitely comfortable in your own power and strength. And I love that. I also love the fact Wayne that all the students who brought to my farm to are all women.

So yeah, this year we had paid internship, of which Polly was the first one to step up to. Every one of those people were female. But I'm just going to have to say that our thing is not about men or women genderless love that, and so we're actually, you know, it's just kind of an interesting phase where everything was about a women's empowerment, woman's empowerment, and now we're like, yeah, it's just about people who have traditionally

I told you earlier. I was raised on the Oregon coast and one summer I worked at a fish canning plant and we'd go in really early in the morning, and my brother worked there and his job was cutting the fish. So if you were a sports fisherman and you would go catch to salmon, you would tag them, bring them in. My brother would cut them with this machine that had these razor sharp knives that came down

Girl.

So I was a cannery girl, and at lunch time we would go out on the docks and talk to all the fishermen that were lifelong fishermen, all of them old white men. I don't think there was a single guy there under the age of fifty. And there was nobody of any any ethnicity outside of Caucasian. And so you know, that is the image in my mind of somebody who's building a boat or working on a boat, and I love that. You're just blown that out of the water. So, how many boats have you built?

I think like from the ground up, we've built four new constructions and we've had some other rebuilds and restoration projects.

Yeah, it's kind of hard to say, and we say how many boats that we build because we in this specific thing that we want. I mean, you only you don't need a lot of boats. We really need want one or two boats for our program. So we're constantly refining that design. We're on our fourth iteration of that. It's sailing right now, and I think we're there as far as like the perfect boat. But people bring us dinghies and things all the time to fix up, and so we always try to pick a project that we

Now, tell me about the tiny houses. We started to talk about that because that's how I found my way to you, and you're working on one now that's going to be Polly's m Tell me about that, Polly.

So with tiny houses, I've always kind of like looked at them, and I've always my family we've gone camping so many times that it's like living inside of a tent trailer is what we would do. Is like that just seemed like it never really felt too small for me leaving with five people in there, it was like,

About building a tiny house for one of the interns you're.

The only Yeah, but well I think what I first asked was if this next tiny house we belt, could I buy it?

And he was like, yeah, you could buy it.

And then it was like, why not just make one for you that like it's accustomed to you and like what you would like. And for me that was just life changing or I was so happy.

So you get to design it the way that you would envision, exact things in it that will make you happy. So, yeah, were you involved with the tiny house that I saw online, the low one that looked like a gypsy caravan? Were you ors? That depends on which one it was and how many of those did you sell? Because it was a fundraiser to fund the program, right right?

Well, see tiny houses well also will have to include school buses, in houseboats and some other things like that that we throw in that tiny house category. But you know, the key is that we work with recycled materials. So what we call upcycling. We try to keep what we actually buy at the hardware stord to an absolute minimum. So we have people who build boats give us tons of wood. We have the lumber yards at something slightly damaged.

It is living art. The one that I saw that I wrote to you about was living art and it was I know, it's made somebody very, very very happy because it was just it was joy on wheels.

That's right.

So she has a home, a safe, comfortable, beautiful, colorful home to live in and to start a business out of. And all those students got all those skills and it built community. I love this.

That's why it's so it's so easy to like the Shelter from the Storm Program.

So tell me, Polly, tell me about the Shelter from the Storm Program. Is that what your internship is with?

Yes, that's what me.

Roz and then another person, Felix, and then Sarah. We are all part of the Shelters from the Storm Program. And that's interns building tiny houses people in the community, along with kids that come on Thursdays for their class. And that's like, I don't know, are like, how many kids do we have this year at eighteen? And they come and they do tons of different things, Like there's

So you were talking Wayne about the homeless situation in your community. I just saw a pretty in depth story online about the homeless situation in San Diego, California that like one out of four students at one high school are currently homeless.

Well, those different things that go on in different communities. So there's some things that are just national international trends, and that's wealth distribution. So you know, wages have not raised for the working man as fast as the economy has grown. And add to that, the Northwest is a very popular place to come to right now, so gentrification is throughout the Northwest. Suddenly a lot of the housing is just bought up by people who are retiring from

Well, we can't fix everything, but we can build tiny houses.

Right, We are not going to fix these big trends, but we can do the little thing that we can do. You know, where does your skill set intersect with the greatest need of the world, And at this place is like, oh, if you know how to build something there and you can in some little way help in some small thing about homelessness, that's that's all you can do.

If everybody would do that, that's enough.

I know it would be cured.

And that that was why I wrote my book One Heart at a Time, because I think we're all waiting for something outside of us to shift to fix it, and we're getting frustrated because not only is it not happening, it's getting worse. And so we're looking with anticipation to something outside to fix it. But what you're doing? What the community boat project, what the tiny house project? How many projects are there under the umbrella now?

So we have four programs and we are dealing with about fifty kids a year in deep programs.

So you're helping them, You're helping them get through school, you're helping them find their passion, give them life skills. More importantly, you're helping them build community and feel comfortable in their own skin and connect with people and get over like Ros said that social awkwardness. And you're helping the environment. You're recycling everything and salvaging everything. Do dumpster dive like I do, because I love to dumpster dive for goods.

Yeah. Absolutely, there is so much to live at the benthic level is so wonderful because you have you know, people come in, they gut houses, they throw all this great stuff right out. Well that's that's where it can float right on down to us.

And then you turn it into beautiful works of art.

Yep. Polly goes out about once a week just to hit the different places looking for her windows and you know, little bits and pieces.

Polly, we need to talk. I've got some INDs with some places. Yeah, okay, yeah, yeah, we'll talk dimensions. Yeah.

We Actually one of the cool details about Polly's tiny house was we were able to pick up like the glass top of a coffee table and we framed it up as a window. So now we have this giant oval window sitting in the sleeping loft.

That came off a coffee table. Yeah.

It was super colimmer.

Like Wayne, I think he emailed me because we were just like just email back and forth, but like things we can pick up and stuff, and he was like, hey, I found this giant like oval coffee table top and let's use it out a window. And I was like, okay, let's do it, like not really knowing because I've never built anything in my life other than my back porch, which is like four by four back porch.

And so we get there and this thing is so heavy.

So it's tempered glass safety glass.

And we framed it and stuff, and then I panted the inside like a nice hot pink color because I love pink, and so you can see it from the inside. And I think last Thursday we put it up and it was one of the most terrifying experiences I think I've had with my tiny house because it's so heavy.

Sure holding it up so it doesn't fall through.

But we also Steve and I made it so that we put too like braces around the corner so like it really couldn't fall through, and then I screwed it all in.

It was fun. It was terrifying for me, but it was fun.

But you overcame face and you got to see, yeah, an amazing thing come to life. How did you how did you frame around the oval?

We can't tell you.

Trade sea beards.

We are working on Poly's sense of color, so maybe by the end of the nine months that will Oh it's.

Going to be the running gag here is. Wayne's sense of color has always been safety orange.

I painted my roof beams like you can see from the inside like this nice like Robin's egg blue. And Wayne just couldn't even believe that that was going to be inside my house.

Oh it sounds beautiful. Thank you beautiful. Yeah, well, thank you for coming and talking to me today. If somebody wants to get involved, how can they find you?

So all our programs are free and accredited, and we don't really sell anything, so of course we just live on grants in individual donations and you can find us on the web. So go for Community Boat Project and Port Hadlock. And one thing that Polly is doing right now as part of our internship is she is making sure there's Facebook posts up every week that'll show you the progress of this great new tiny house.

Community about project that you can follow the building projects. Wayne. If somebody is listening, who's a teacher and educator? A school principle and they go, oh my gosh, we need to have something like this, Maybe not boats, maybe not even tiny houses, but something like this where kids can do hands on learning and get out of the classroom and into real life. Could they contact you to pick your brain on how to get that going.

They could definitely contact me. There's not much of a brain to pick, but we can definitely hear them in the right direction. It's like a salmon try to go through a dam when you work up against the school system as it now stands. But that doesn't mean that it can't be done.

Clearly, it can be done because you did it and it's being done, so it can be done. If one person has done it, it can be done. If one person has started this community boat project and you've been in in existence for almost thirty years, it can be done. We just got to find people who are willing to be the salmon swimming up the stream.

Yeah, and I think every community is different. You know, we are a maritime community. We started with boats. As we started building our program, we kept looking where the community needs and we have followed those. So it's boats, it's tiny houses. Every community is going to be different.

One thing about the kids.

One thing I heard I don't know if this is like fully true, but I did hear this is that their school had like a school shooting at it. And so they wanted when you researched their school not to come up as the school that got shot up, but as a school that these kids went and participated in this growing thing. And so they wanted that to be what comes up, not stuff about their school.

Yeah, and we actually had a little bit of that. Chimmickham is a pretty good school district, but they've been losing enrollment and so they've been having budget struggles. And last year the Chimmicam teachers came to us and said,

Wow, I'm so proud of you. I'm so proud of you kids. And you're young adults. But to meet your kids and the heart that you have and the way you're transforming communities and transforming lives and transformed your own lives, it's awesome.

I want to put in also for people that are, you know, trying to enact change in their community. Marcy Vancleeve is certainly a force of nature, but she founded the pipe program with four other teachers. You know, you can't do it alone, so you got to find the people who will help you out.

Thank you, thank you for being here today.

Well, thank you for reaching out to us and let us tell our story and for the work you're doing. It's just amazing to get the good news out there for a change.

Amen. We need good news right now and we need to change the world one heart at a time. And we can't wait. We can't wait for someone out there or something out there to happen. We have to be the change we want to see. So thank you, thank you, Delilah, be the change you want to see in the world. That pretty much sums up the message I want to convey to you with this podcast series. Wayne puts it this way. Find where your skill set intersects with the