The 2024 Maritime Person of the Year is
Betsy Davis
Read more about her below.
Betsy was originally nominated as our Maritime Person of the Year for 2020 and then Covid came along. We could not have the Wooden Boat Fair in 2020, 2021 nor 2022.
A lifelong resident of the Northwest, Betsy Davis serves as the Executive Director of the Northwest School of Wooden Boatbuilding, a post-secondary trade school that teaches craftsmanship through boatbuilding and marine systems. The school is located on the south end of Port Townsend Bay and welcomes the community for free tours the first Friday of each month at 3:30. (www.nwswb.edu)
Following graduation from Stanford University and 14 years at Microsoft, Betsy acquired a century-old wooden boat named GLORYBE, attended Seattle Central College’s boatbuilding program, then served for more than a decade as Executive Director of The Center for Wooden Boats, a regional hands-on maritime museum with campuses in Seattle and on Camano Island.
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Betsy is the current steward of GLORYBE, a 36’ double-ender that was built in 1914 in the Taylor-Grandy yard on Vashon Island, just west of Seattle. The boat-of-nine-lives survived a severe storm in 1917, crossed the straits on her own shortly thereafter, and burned and sank in a devastating marina fire in 2002. She was rebuilt by students at Seattle Central’s marine carpentry program and relaunched in 2005. Now over a century old, GLORYBE is a testament to the skilled marine trades people of the Northwest.
Here are links to a few videos about Glorybe
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cq95NreP1Qc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjJH4OrsG6k&feature=youtu.be&list=UUyddKlRAFc4ZNE-NA0mX-_g