Historical Seaport staff, volunteers sprucing up for Winterfest

South Aberdeen site will serve as the ‘South Pole’ Dec. 2

By Dan Hammock • November 27, 2017 7:00 pm
DAN HAMMOCK | THE DAILY WORLD The Grays Harbor Historical Seaport will open its new gift shop to the public at 2 p.m. Dec. 2 as part of the 2017 Aberdeen Winterfest. Seaport Executive Director Brandi Bogdanovich is shown here with some of the shelves where patrons can purchase T-shirts, prints and other items.
DAN HAMMOCK | THE DAILY WORLD The Grays Harbor Historical Seaport will open its new gift shop to the public at 2 p.m. Dec. 2 as part of the 2017 Aberdeen Winterfest. Seaport Executive Director Brandi Bogdanovich is shown here with some of the shelves where patrons can purchase T-shirts, prints and other items.

It’s Winterfest this weekend in Aberdeen and the Grays Harbor Historical Seaport will host some of the activities, opening its doors to the public for Saturday at 2 p.m., where visitors can check out the brand new gift shop and take a tour of the of the Spar Shop, where a huge lathe will soon be turning out masts and other wooden items.

Seaport executive director Brandi Bednarik and her staff are busily readying the site for the festivities, which will include a tree lighting ceremony on the dock and crafts for the kids.

The new gift shop is located in the Seaport’s main office at 500 N. Custer St. on the banks of the Chehalis River in South Aberdeen. The Dennis Company is donating a display case, and there are shelves of shirts and other merchandise available for purchase.

Winterfest officially begins Friday, Dec. 1 at Zelasko Park in downtown Aberdeen. Mayor Erik Larson will kick things off at 5:30 p.m., followed by Santa’s arrival and a tree lighting ceremony. About 30 local businesses will be open, and each is offering a drawing item. Tickets are free for the drawing.

Breakfast with Santa will happen at the D&R Events Center starting at 9 a.m. Saturday. Shoppers can go back to the businesses they visited Friday evening and put in another entry for their raffle items until 2:30 p.m.; the drawing will be held at 3 p.m. And from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. there will be more than 40 vendors at a holiday market in the old Goldberg’s Furniture Store at 117 W. Wishkah.

The Seaport’s Winterfest activities will center in what was a temporary wood shop but is now used as an events center, just north of Seaport headquarters. There is a small stage and plenty of tall ship-related accouterments. From 2-5:45 p.m., tours of the Spar Shop will be offered, the gift shop opens and there will be crafts and pictures with pets courtesy of Grays Harbor Paws, and Captain Kringle will appear. He will read a maritime story at 3:30 p.m.

At 4:45 p.m. there will be an open house welcoming presentation given by Bednarik and board president Dave Douglass. The tree will be lit at 5:30 p.m., and the event wraps with a final open house presentation at 5:45 p.m. Throughout the event there will be free cookies and drinks, and pizza and hot dogs available for sale. There will also be a coloring contest with a prize going to the first place winner, which will be presented at 5:45 p.m. The Seaport is also collecting warm clothes, coats and blankets for the Salvation Army. There will be music throughout, though at this time Bednarik wasn’t sure who would be performing. If no live act can be pinned down there will be music provided by a DJ.

As for the tall ships themselves, they will not be at Winterfest this year, or next, “but in 2019 we will definitely have the Lady Washington here for Splash (on the Fourth of July), Haunted Seaport at Halloween time, and Winterfest,” said Bednarik.

Visitors can also take a tour of the large building that will house the Spar Shop. It will feature what is thought to be the largest lathe in North America, used mostly for making ship masts. It can handle logs up to 126 feet in length and 40 inches in diameter. According to Seaport woodworker Scott Rubey, the largest they’ve done to date is 117 feet. This unique facility will be moved to the Seaport “hopefully by mid-winter,” said Rubey.

Along with producing masts for tall ships, the Spar Shop also does custom order work for museums and the film industry. Their work has been featured in films like “Water for Elephants,” Star Trek movies and three Pirates of the Caribbean movies.

Bednarik said the building that will house the woodworking shop will include a gallery, an exhibit of the types of products that can be made at the facility, which will eventually feature furniture and other custom pieces for the home.

The foundation of the lathe has been completed, but there is still a lot of work to be done. The west wall of the building will come down and feature a large drive-thru door so trucks can drop off the large materials the shop uses. The east wall will come down and that space will become a wood shop with a sail loft above.

You can find the Seaport’s Winterfest schedule on its Facebook page or web site, historicalseaport.org.