Port of Hoodsport tackles the matter of its dock

Kirk Boxleitner | Jan 05, 20230

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The Port of Hoodsport dock.

The Port of Hoodsport closed out 2022 by discussing the state of its dock going into 2023.

When Katherine Yackel, operations manager of the YSS Dive Shop in Hoodsport, asked whether donations or fundraisers could be organized for the dock, Port Commissioner Cody Morris said the port is working with attorneys to establish an account for funding any dock work.

After a recent dock inspection, Morris said the dock was in "much rougher shape" than he'd realized, so dock work will be emphasized, but at the same time, all the port's spending projects must be compartmentalized.

Once the port creates an account for its dock, it must collect outside donations specifically intended to go toward the dock. Morris said he hoped the port "will get that rolling within the next month or two."

Morris said YSS Dive is among several local entities interested in helping fund the dock, so he recommended developing a short-term plan for dock repairs, to offset "general wear and tear," and what he deemed "a more grandiose plan," to mitigate the amount of serious damage that the dock sustains every year.

"In a dream world, we'd be getting a breakwater system going to cut down on" that damage, Morris said, before reporting he'd spoken to either hydraulicists or aquatic engineers - he said he was unsure which - who'd told him a significant issue is "the actual direction of how the dock faces, and its relationships to the tide and the wind."

Morris said the dock work would be a "massive project" regardless, requiring not only permission from the state Department of Natural Resources, but also "lots of money, in both the engineering and the buildout."

Fortunately for the port, Morris cited "quite a few parties who have a mutual interest in seeing this happen," including boaters, as well as Alderbrook Resort & Spa.

Yackel asked the port inform her when it's ready to receive donations, because "we've poked around in the diving community, touching on doing a fundraiser for the port, and they're interested in helping."

Yackel volunteered to submit "some fun ideas" for fundraisers, developed by the diving community, including a possible "dive around the clock" event to benefit the dock, which would invite divers to go into the water for a 24-hour-period to raise money, an idea met with a positive reaction from all the commissioners.

Commissioner Terry Brazil offered to put the port in contact with a representative of the Everett-based Reid Middleton engineers, whom he met twice at the commissioners' most recent meeting in Tacoma.

According to Brazil, the representative said his people would be willing to give the port a report on what it needs to do by scheduling an appointment for a Reid Middleton crew to conduct an on-site analysis.

Kincannon said she'd also met an engineer at that same Tacoma meeting, "last name Anderson," whose contact information and email correspondence with her she'd already forwarded to Port of Hoodsport Operations Manager Kathleen Wyatt.

"We should get a couple of different people to look at it, and do some comparisons," said Kincannon, who concurred with Morris on the need for short-, medium- and long-range plans for the work on the dock.

Brazile likewise recommended such work be conducted in phases.

Brazil additionally pointed out that Reid Middleton "knows how to write grants, where to get grants, and all the angles of which different organizations have the money for grants," such as boating organizations and shoreline management, which is why he said the group "gets a lot of grants, in a lot of states," that can be used to fund repairs, rebuilds and additions.

"I'm glad you're working on this," Yackel said. "That's really exciting news. The dock is key to commerce, along with boaters in the summer. We get so much tourism coming in from them, but we could get even more of it."

Hardware Distillery owner Jan Morris predicted she could "get practically every business (in Hoodsport) involved in a fundraiser," as she similarly considered the dock "good economic development for businesses," as "boaters come in and shop at Hoodsport."