Boat School Announcements
Enter your email here

Board of Directors

We are governed by a volunteer board of directors. Our board represents a range of expertise, knowledge and skills. All of our directors are committed to furthering the school, and ensure we fulfill our mission. Our Board is instrumental to the continuation of the work we do.

Bill Brock, president
Geologist (retired); NWSWB graduate 2000
Bill received his Bachelors degree in geology from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio in 1970. He then went to graduate school at Texas A&M where he received a Masters in geology in 1973. After 25 years in the oil exploration business with Amoco Production Company, Bill took early retirement and came to Port Townsend to attend the Boat School. He graduated with an Associate Degree in June of 2000 and has been volunteering at the school since then. He has been on the Board of Directors since January, 2001.
J. Michael Delagarza, vice president
NWSWB graduate 2004
Michael brings to the board a valuable and broad spectrum of business knowledge, including small market television production as well as restaurant, retail and corporate management experience. Prior to attending the boat school, Michael served as Director of Inventory Management Services for Henry Schein, Inc., the world’s largest distributor of healthcare products to office based practitioners, based in Long Island, New York. A life-long sailor, Mr. Delagarza sailed small boats at the New Jersey shore as a child and cruised the Pacific Northwest during the 1980’s. A musician since the garage band days of the late 60’s, Michael still plays guitar, bass and harmonica. He is involved with computer information systems and software conversions at the boat school and hopes to participate in education and maritime community initiatives. Currently he is working on the restoration of a 51-foot wooden schooner and developing independent business opportunities in the Port Townsend area.
Roger McPherson, secretary and past president
Captain, United States Navy (retired); NWSWB graduate 1995
Born in California in 1935 Captain McPherson graduated from the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, MD in 1957 and served on active duty with the Navy for 31 years. Upon retirement from the Navy, Captain McPherson attended a variety of woodworking courses and started a small furniture repair business before fully retiring and going cruising with his wife on their sailboat. Combining his interest in sailing and woodworking, he attended NWSWB in 1995. He became an active supporter of the School and has been a leader and major participant in the expansion of the School's facilities and curriculum. He has served on the Board since 2000. He and his wife, Cameron, own and sail one of the Truants built by the School's students.
Bill Tolf, treasurer
John Bodger, member
Attorney (retired)
John graduated from California State Long Beach (now University California) in 1967 with a BA degree and from the Nevada School of Law in 1986 with a JD degree. He spent 20 years in youth services and school teaching and had a private practice of law from 1986 to 2001. John served as a court appointed special master (child support enforcement and paternity establishment) from 1990 to 2000 and retired to Port Townsend in 2001. He's a life long sailor, volunteer and a board member of the NWSWB since August 2004.
John Doney, member
President/broker, Townsend Bay Property Management, Inc.; founder, Vietnam Wooden Boat Foundation
John was born in Seattle and grew up around salt water including his high school years in Puerto Rico. He attended the University of Washington from 1959-1963, commissioned in the Navy in 1963 and retired as CDR in 1983. John and his wife Donna own and operate a property management company established in Port Townsend in 1993. In 2002 John formed the Vietnam Wooden Boat Foundation (www.vietnamboats.org), a nonprofit organization to help preserve the maritime heritage of Vietnam. In 2004 John worked under the Foundation to build a "sewn plank" in central Vietnam, a boat unique to the area and likely never to be built again. Preserving the art of wooden boatbuilding is vitally important.
James Gormly, member
Petroleum Geochemist (retired); NWSWB graduate, September 2005
Jim received his PhD in oceanography from Texas A&M University in 1975, and subsequently moved about as far from the ocean as one can get when he took a research position studying ground water quality in Nebraska (Oceanography jobs were not plentiful at the time). After 4 years working in Nebraska and 4 years in a research institute in Germany, he joined Mobil Research where he was employed as a petroleum geochemist for more than 20 years, with stints in Dallas, Stavanger, Norway and Houston. It was in Stavanger where he and his wife, Margie, were exposed to a cool temperate climate, fjords, mountains and beautiful wooden boats. A seed was planted in that experience. When he retired in 2004, he and Margie left the heat of Houston and headed to the Olympic Peninsula so that Jim could attend the Boat School, where he was a member of the first 12-month program in 2004-2005. “It was a super year in which I learned considerable craftsmanship from excellent instructors”. He joined the board in early 2006 and is an active volunteer on maintenance and expansion of the School’s facilities.
John Lynch, member
John (Jack) Stechman, member
Retired
Jack has worked in the engineering profession his entire career, starting as a Jr. Test Engineer in Sears, Roebuck and Co.’s Test and Development Laboratories. Forty years later he retired as a Sr. Systems Engineer from Ball Aerospace Corp., where his final project was leading the team who designed and built several of the ‘photon counting cameras’ currently flying on the Hubble Space Telescope. Now living in Port Townsend with wife and two cats, he enjoys designing, building and using Ham radio gear, restoring his 1974 classic GMC Motorhome, and mucking about with wooden boats.
Paul Martin Siefried, member
Classic Bow Artist and Designer
Paul Martin Siefried tentatively pursued a commercial art career before following an early desire to study violin making. Working in a violin shop in San Francisco in the early 1970’s sparked an unexpected interest in bows of the violin family. A move to Los Angeles in 1974 to study with the violin maker-master, Hans Weisshaar, resulted in a ten year stay in his shop. Concentrating on bow making and restoration, he also studied many bows of historical significance and photographed thousands of objects for the shop archives. In 1985 he established his own shop, continuing bow making and restoration services for the discriminating professional musicians. The shop relocated to Port Townsend in 1990. Paul has built wooden kayaks and is currently building a 19’ Pete Culler designed lapstrake, gaff rigged sloop. He shares the jobs of sailing and maintenance on "Sumatra", a 40’ Concordia Yawl.

Program Advisory Committee

Ernie Baird - Owner, The Baird Boat Company
Franz Witte - Partner, Rainshadow Marine
Jim Lyons - Co-founder, Port Townsend Shipwrights Co-op
Jim Franken - Designer/Builder
Michael Hoskins - Cabinetmaker