First, I am very pleased to announce that Ed & Carole Kim, of Laguna Beach, California have just joined the Pocock Eight crew. You will read more in the upcoming Northwest Maritime Center newsletter but, briefly, they visited the Point Hudson Boat Shop during Wooden boat Festival and decided to support the project. Dr. Kim is a lifelong sculler and they have a summer home on Sequim Bay. Dr Kim recently wrote: "I would like to request 'seat 2' in the Pocock 8 as that was the seat my son rowed in during college." Only seat 3 remains unoccupied, so please let me know soon of anyone who may be interested - now that we have the entire west coast represented, it would be great to add someone from another part of the country. (It is a curious, and perhaps telling, coincidence that every member of the crew so far has a home address with some body of water in the name.)

Second, Steve Chapin and Jim Kellogg are transitioning into the next phase of the Pocock Classics business plan, which is to develop production methods that will lead to the long-term marketing of cedar singles at a price that will return a profit to the Northwest Maritime Center to support the organization's educational programs. It is anticipated that, once the second shell is completed (it is almost done), Steve and Jim will be working on several shells concurrently over the coming months rather than building the next six sequentially. This will permit efficient use of space, tools, materials and labor, and will allow us to determine real production costs for the future. It does mean, however, that your cedar singles will not necessarily be completed in the order your pledges were received - for example, the two "heavyweight" models will very likely be built together, rather than along with the standard models - and there will be several shells in various stages of completion at any given time. As production ramps up, I will send you occasional progress updates and you are, of course, welcome to call me or visit the shop any time you have questions.

We're quite excited about the success of this project so far, and expect that it will be one of the highlights of the new facility. Thank you, as always, for making it happen!

Warm regards,
Dianne