Maritime Heritage Festival

August 15, 16, 17, 2014

Port Washington, WI

Featured Vessels

The Tall Ship Peacemaker

The Peacemaker was built on a riverbank in southern Brazil using traditional methods and the finest tropical hardwoods. The ship was first launched in 1989 as the Avany, a name chosen by her designer and owner, Frank Walker, a Brazilian industrialist. He planned to spend some time traveling aboard with his family, and then operate it as a charter vessel in the Caribbean.

After an initial voyage in the southern Atlantic, they brought the ship up through the Caribbean to Savannah, Georgia, where they intended to rig her as a three-masted staysail schooner. Other demands captured the attention of the Walker family for many years, and during the summer of 2000 she was waiting in the Palmer- Johnson boatyard, her beautiful bright work bleached by the sun, and her bottom heavily encrusted with marine life, but otherwise sound.

By the time contact was made with Mr. Walker, he was looking for a buyer, and liking Peacemaker Marine and their vision for the ship, he gave them a good price. After considerable effort to put her mechanical systems in order, and to scrape and paint her bottom and topsides, she motored out of the boatyard in September, 2000, looking for a home port.

Most of the following eight or nine months were spent at anchor in various harbors along the southeast Atlantic coast from Beaufort South Carolina, to Palm Beach, Florida, until the ship finally settled down in Brunswick, Georgia, in the spring of 2001. Since then the group worked hard at upgrading her mechanical and electrical systems, as well as designing a practical and aesthetically pleasing barquentine rig.
In the summer of 2006, Peacemaker Marine assembled a rigging and sail-making crew, under the direction of Wayne Chimenti, an expert rigger of tall ships. The tall ship set sail for the first time in the spring of 2007, under the name Peacemaker, which expresses in a word their vocation as a people: bringing people into peace with their Creator and with one another.

The vision for the ship is to be a seagoing representation of the life of peace and unity that the twelve tribes are living on land in their many communities around the world. It will also provide apprenticeship opportunities for youth to learn many valuable and practical skills, not only in rigging, sail-making, sailing, navigation, marine mechanics and carpentry, but also in living and working together in tight quarters, as well as many cross-cultural experiences traveling from port to port.

Lakeside Spirit

The Lakeside Spirit is a bi-level vessel with an open air top level that can accommodate up to 50 passengers. A boat in the family of the Milwaukee River Boat Cruise Line of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, we invite to cruise while participating in an exciting and informative guided tour. Shipwrecks, fires, historical yarns all woven into an interactive tour. You'll learn all about Port Washington... from her other front door!

U.S. Coast Guard Rescue

The new 45-foot Response Boat-Medium (RB-M) boasts an improved design, new ergonomics, and enhanced safety features, making boat crews more effective in performing their multiple missions. The RB-M is part of the Coast Guard’s plan to standardize and revitalize its shore-based boat fleet. The RB-M replaces the aging 41-foot and other non-standard utility boats (UTB). The 41-foot UTBs are at the end of their 25-year economic service life and are experiencing escalating maintenance costs and reduced operational availability. The new platforms bring improvements in performance, efficiency and reliability. Having worked closely with operational commanders to develop a more capable response boat, the RB-M project has delivered a new boat with significantly increased speed and performance, improving response time and agility for missions. The boats’ also are designed with human factors systems engineering concepts in mind, decreasing crew fatigue on extended patrols.