The Center for Wooden Boats

This guide to The Center for Wooden Boats in Seattle opens in 1957, when Dick Wagner stopped to help a stranger rig a sail under the Fremont Bridge, a small favor that led him toward the waterfront. It follows a dinner conversation with his wife Colleen about the wooden boats piling up around their floating home, and how the couple began renting them from their own dock until it became, by 1976, a living museum. Climb into one of the more than 170 vessels still moored on Lake Union, and think about why Wagner insisted visitors hold the tiller instead of standing behind glass.