The Madisonville Wooden Boat Festival returns to the banks of the Tchefuncte River this month, and with it comes a flood of poignant memories for some festival-goers and a weekend full of activities, live entertainment, festive food and even a sight of maritime history for everyone. .
“It’s always been exciting for me to come to this event and bring these magnificent hand built or restored wooden boats. It gives people an appreciation for something that’s been lost today,” said Alex Ellsworth, who has been a collector and restorer of wooden boats since the early 1990s and has his Captain’s Steamcutter represented as the featured ship on the festival’s 2022 line-up.
“My father had a wooden boat that he worked on, and then he and I worked on one together as partners. Since then, I’ve been collecting and have been a regular at the Madisonville show since it started,” he said.
The festival is scheduled for 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Oct. 15-16 and will stretch several blocks along Water Street to Madisonville Park outside the Maritime Museum of the Lake Pontchartrain Basin. The event combines a traditional party with live entertainment, children’s activities and a craft fair with a boat show of around 100 classic and wooden boats, some dating back to the early 1900s, lining the river.
Ellsworth said he typically brings about 10 boats to the festival ranging from 40 feet to canoes and kayaks, an undertaking that requires months of preparation and planning.
“Logistically, it’s very complicated,” he said. “But people never get to see these hand-built boats. They just marvel at the varnish work. Some boats have up to 30 layers of varnish. They look like they’ve been dipped in glass.”
Among those he will bring to the 2022 festival is the headline ship, the steam cutter USS New Jersey Captain No. 873, named for her position on the battleship USS New Jersey. It took Ellsworth more than nine years to restore the boat, which he calls “a showstopper.”
To complete the restoration, he said he used a master shipwright and employed three machine shops to produce parts; Ellsworth said he meticulously followed the specifications of the original Navy drawings.
He said the drawings did more than provide a blueprint for the restoration — they showed the U.S. Navy used wooden steam cutters until they converted to gasoline and diesel engines.
“Most people think the Navy never had cutters, that only the Coast Guard did,” Ellsworth said. “I even had a naval admiral correct me once.” But Ellsworth said he sent the admiral copies of the drawings and received a reply confirming the naval history of the steam cutters.
Lori Marcus, public events coordinator for the Louisiana Maritime Museum and festival organizer, said her three oldest sons will return to the festival and compete in the Quick and Dirty Boat contest.
“I have shelves and shelves of the little boats they made as participants in the competition. This festival is very special to our family and one of the reasons we chose to live here and raise our family here,” she said. “I’m personally working to make this the best year yet.”
Marcus, who lives in downtown Madisonville, has used the time during the festival’s shutdown due to COVID-19 to gather community feedback on the show’s format and layout. Based on this input, festival organizers added more local artists and artisans and moved the live entertainment to the riverfront and away from the park area where it had been the previous two years.
Another novelty will be a parade from the park, where the Children’s Village is, to the riverside. It will be led by The Imagination Movers, who will be performing at noon in the Children’s Village, which includes bounce houses, games, an obstacle course and STEAM-based activity areas and demonstrations.
The parade will end when, and where, the Fast and Dirty Boat Building Contest begins.
At the heart of this competition, a festival favorite, participants choose a theme and then have 14 hours to build a boat using the materials provided. Boats must then complete a 100-yard course to prove their seaworthiness. The Quick and Dirty boats, along with the “Anchors Away” Cardboard Race, will hit the water on Sunday at 3 p.m.
Marcus said the event has a surge of new volunteers who “bring new energy and are excited to help.” Many are avid supporters of the Lake Pontchartrain Basin Maritime Museum, the state’s only maritime museum, which hosts the event as a major fundraiser.
Museum executive director Jim MacPherson said going two years without it has taken its toll. Proceeds from the festival will go to various projects, including a partnership with the parish of St. Tammany to help remove abandoned boats and debris from the parish’s waterways and continued restoration efforts at the Madisonville Lighthouse, which has been destroyed by several years of storms, including 2021’s Hurricane Ida. the pier around the structure.
Maritime Mania, the festival’s kickoff party, will be held from 7:30 to 10:30 p.m. on October 14 at the museum, 133 Mable Drive. Tickets are $75 for individuals or $125 for couples.
Admission to the festival each day is $10 for adults and $5 for seniors 65 and older. There is no admission fee for children under 12 years of age and active military personnel. There will be a shuttle service. For information, visit lpbmm.org/wooden-boat-festival.
