A lifetime in the making: Lopez Island boatbuilder launches handcrafted sailboat Wren
Published 1:30 am Monday, April 27, 2026
On the morning of April 18, with the tides at last in his favor, Steven Brouwer stood at the water’s edge on Lopez Island and watched a dream finally float. After nearly two decades of intermittent labor, interrupted by the demands of earning a living and the slow, deliberate rhythms of fine craftsmanship, his hand-built 32-foot sailing cutter — christened Wren — slipped into the water for the first time.
It was, by any measure, a long time coming.
Brouwer, who has lived on Lopez Island since 1983, is no stranger to the patience that wooden boatbuilding demands. His career began in 1974 at The Apprenticeshop in Bath, Maine, where, armed with an engineering degree and several years of house carpentry behind him, he took his first steps as a professional boatbuilder. Two years there were followed by six more years of boatyard hopping along the Maine coast before he and his wife, Molly, packed up their young family and headed west to the Pacific Northwest.
Lopez Island became home. There, Brouwer established Hunter Bay Woodworking Co., building boats and taking on fine woodworking projects across the decades. The island offered a quieter pace, a small farm, and a community. It offered fewer large boat commissions than the boatyards of Maine, but Brouwer kept at it — rowing boats, small sailing vessels, repair work — and never lost the ambition to build something larger.
That ambition found its shape roughly 18 years ago, when Brouwer acquired parts of an unfinished boat originally started by an older man and his son down in Everett. He brought the materials north to Lopez and began what would become one of the defining projects of his life.
The vessel is a Hess/Smaalders 32 — a design Brouwer evolved with the help of local yacht designer Mark Smaalders, who reworked the interior layout and cabin structure to better suit Brouwer’s vision. He was never satisfied with the original Hess interior, though he admired the hull design. The collaboration with Smaalders gave the boat a new identity and eventually gave Brouwer a reason to finish it for himself rather than wait for a buyer who never came.
“The hull sat for about two years all by itself,” Brouwer told the Islands’ Weekly. “I was working on other things, hoping to find a buyer. Well, that didn’t happen.” It was the turning point — the moment he decided the boat was worth completing on its own terms.
Progress came in fits and starts. Brouwer would work on the boat and then step away to earn money through other projects. Eventually, he brought in a young craftsman named Cedar Charlie, a skilled woodworker who, though short on boat experience, proved a capable and valuable hand. For a year or more, the two worked side by side — Charlie building much of the interior while Brouwer guided the vision, the two of them making design decisions in real time, problem-solving on the fly, the way custom boatbuilding always demands.
“You still have to do a lot of design in place,” Brouwer said. “Every piece of the boat has to be made. The process is still pretty deliberative. You still have to figure out how to do it and make it yourself.”
The final push was intense. The past two years saw the work accelerate dramatically, and the last six months were a full-on sprint. Launching on Lopez is not a simple matter — the boat requires 7 feet of water, the tides must cooperate and a travel lift operator must be available. The date was set in the middle of winter: April 18. As the date drew closer, the pressure mounted.
“It got to be like two months, and I thought, oh,” Brouwer said in remarks to those gathered at the launch, captured on video by Ken Kortge, who attended the christening. “And then it got to be one month, and I was in full panic mode.”
But the community showed up. Friends, neighbors, family — a cross-section of Lopez Island people who came to witness something being made by hand, over years, with care. Brouwer’s siblings traveled from the East Coast. Molly’s family came from Oregon and California. Sons, spouses, grandchildren, old friends — all gathered at the water.
The christening was anything but subdued. Before Molly raised a bottle of champagne and brought it crashing against the stem of the boat, Brouwer addressed the crowd in a speech that was equal parts gratitude and wonder.
“I stand here with an open heart and great humility,” he told those gathered. “I am in awe of the beauty and the creation that surrounds me. I am deeply thankful to my family and friends who have helped me along the way. And particularly my ancestors who have come before and made my life so much easier.”
He looked toward his wife. “Without these people, and this woman right here.”
Of the boat’s future, he was equally heartfelt. “I want this boat to live a long time. I want her to have interesting skippers and owners who are willing to take children on adventures that are beyond their dreams.”
He closed with words that drew the crowd together: “May our spirits dance in the space between us. And let love be the force that binds us.”
Then the champagne flew. The crowd cheered. Wren — named for the small birds that had long nested in the rafters of Brouwer’s shop, sometimes landing on his bandsaw or perching in the cabin of whatever boat was in progress.
Now comes the easier, better part. Brouwer plans some local summer cruising, a run up into the Gulf Islands and a trip to the Wooden Boat Festival in Port Townsend in September, where Wren will have a chance to be seen by those who love what hands can still make.
For Brouwer, the deeper point has always been the making itself.
“Anybody can go sailing,” he said. “There’s lots of ways to go sailing. But building the boat — that’s what is of high value to me. It’s a really focused process. You learn a lot. You have to be creative in your implementation. It requires a lot of thought. More people should participate in building something themselves.”
Wren is 32 feet on deck, rigged as a cutter with twin headsails. Her sails are being finished in Port Townsend.
Thank you to Lopez Island videographer, Ken Kortge, who provided a video interview of the christening ceremony, as well as still video clips of the event used in this story.
