Harbor Days Festival returns without familiar captain

Longtime Harbor Days Festival-goers might notice something missing from the 39th installment this weekend in downtown Olympia.

Jon Robin Paterson, a fixture at the festival since 1975, died in June. But his legacy lives on.

“He not only loved maritime history, he lived and helped make it,” longtime friend and fellow maritime historian Chuck Fowler said at Paterson’s memorial service last month.

Fowler and other tugboat captains are seeking a way to memorialize Paterson’s many contributions, with details to be announced at the traditional captains and crews dinner Saturday night.

For landlubbers, this year’s festival, a project of the Kiwanis Club of Olympia, provides the usual opportunity to see and tour historic tugboats and learn about maritime history. But expect to see more activities for children than previous years, organizers say. And the festival will host the MV Lotus, a National Historic Landmark yacht.

“We’re going to have a great festival, and it looks like the weatherman is going to cooperate with us,” said Bob Peck, the harbormaster. Peck is the president of the South Sound Maritime Association, which ran the festival until last year and this year is advising the Kiwanis Club.

About 20 tugs are expected, Peck said.

“The largest one will be 143 feet long, and the smallest one will be 10 feet long,” he said. “The smallest one will be one I built, called the Smitty J.”

Also on the water will be the steamship Virginia V, which will be open for tours and cruises.

A new visitor to Harbor Days, the Lotus was the largest power yacht on the West Coast when it was launched in 1909, the M.V. Lotus Heritage Foundation says. The Lotus will be open only for tours.

The Lotus was built in the Craftsman style and has Douglas fir floors, mahogany inlays, a chandelier and two clawfoot tubs.

The Port ­Townsend-based boat has been featured on a historic home tour and in American Bungalow magazine.

On land, the festival has musical entertainment, a wide array of vendor booths selling jewelry, clothing, birdhouses and much more – and of course, plenty of food options.

“Our food section is really an international delight this year,” festival director Shelly Lively said. “We have everything you can imagine from Greek to Italian to Thai to barbecue.”

Among the sweet offerings will be caramel apples being sold as a fundraiser by the South Sound Alzheimer’s Council.

But Lively might be most excited about the offerings for children.

Kids can explore robotics, ride camels and visit Student Orchestras of Greater Olympia’s instrument petting zoo. They can learn about the maritime association’s family boat-building program, drive remote-control model tugs and build their own wooden boat or car.

“We’ll also have a giant purple slide,” Lively said. “It’s one of the old-fashioned hard slides.”

For those who own the historic tugboats, the festival is a sort of family reunion, as well as a chance to enjoy downtown Olympia. But this year’s gathering will be different without Paterson.

“We want to honor him and his 1942 wooden tugboat Joe,” said Fowler, past president of the South Sound Maritime Association and co-author of “Tugboats of Puget Sound,” about Paterson.

The Joe was the last of four vintage tugboats that Paterson and wife Kae Paterson restored and raced.

Known as Rob to friends, Paterson was the longtime president of the International Retired Tugboat Association.

He was named South Sound Maritime Association’s Maritime Person of the Year in 2002 and given its lifetime service award in 2007.

The Joe was Harbor Days’ logo tug in 2010. Aboard the Joe, the Patersons won more than one of the event’s tugboat races.

And from the time he began attending Harbor Days, Paterson never missed a year.

“We made it once without a boat, but we’ve never missed it,” he told The Olympian in 2010. “It’s marvelous, that’s what it is.”