It's that time of year already — time to start preparing for the annual Waterfront Festival! The festival takes place near the marina the first weekend of June, and each year, Fidalgo Island Rotary runs the FREE Kids Boat Building booth. 
Each year, hundreds of children and their parents flock to the book, where they can pick out a hull, add a sail, deck the boat with corks, wood, twine and more, and even "sail" it around a pond in the parking lot! It's a great tradition that spans generations, and we always have a BLAST during the event. But before we even set up our booth, we're preparing by building the boat hulls, gathering corks and creating sails. It's always heart-warming to see parents and grandparents build boats together and watch as the dad takes over and make the coolest boats. (Insert giggle here.). Some kids have boats from previous years and start to rack up a whole armada.
For the next few weeks, Rotarians will gather at La Conner High School to cut wood, donated by Sierra Pacific, into decorative boat hulls.  
Click to see more photos and learn more about our goals for this year! 
 
In previous years, we'd brought nearly 1,000 boat hulls to the festival. Last year, we even over-prepared and brought 1,200 boat hulls — but that wasn't enough! On Sunday morning of the 2019 festival, we ran out of boat hulls! (Don't be fooled; those creative kids couldn't be stopped, and ended up building boats out of any scraps we had left. Check out this Anacortes American article for more!) So this year, our goal is even higher — 2,000 boats! It's going to take a lot of Rotarian-power, but we have faith that we can create even more boats this year, and even more fun! 
 
 
If you're interested in helping build boats, contact Heath Treichel at Heath.Treichel@wellsfargo.com to find out the next opportunity to build. Can't make it to a hull-building session? You can always donate corks or help create sails at a FIR morning meeting!