This man traveled across the world to build a boat that holds 2 men and a lot of sardines
A Gig Harbor group started building a wooden Croatian fishing boat, called the Batana, July 4.
“The Batana Project” is taking place at the Gig Harbor Boat Shop.
Anthony Michael Vlahovich, 72, who goes by Mike, is the director of the project. He lives in the Croatian village of Sumartin and traveled here for the project. He is vice president of the Maritime Education Association, a nonprofit that’s partnering with the Boat Shop to make the project happen.
Once the boat is complete, the Boat Shop will host an event to reveal it Sept. 3. They are predicting a few hundred attend to hear guest speakers, presentations, and a Croatian band from Vashon Island.
But the work doesn’t stop Sept. 3. After the event, the boat will be transported via trailer to Port Townsend. Vlahovich will take 5-6 days to set up an exhibit about the boat with photos of a shipyard in Sumartin, just in time for the 2022 Port Townsend Wooden Boat Festival.
The exhibit at the festival will showcase the family ties that the village has to Gig Harbor’s boat building history and the style of boat that originated in Croatia.
The festival returns in-person this year Sept. 9 to 11, after two years of the event happening virtually.
Planning for this project started almost three years ago. The boat was originally planned to be made for the festival in 2020 before the pandemic hit.
At the festival, members from Maritime Education Association will tell the story of the Batana. They will also educate people about the type of charity work they do in Croatia. Some of their work in Croatia includes restoring wooden boats, youth and young adult maritime education programs, and maritime festival exhibits.
Vlahovich is hosting an open house every Sunday from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Boat Shop for the public to come look at the progress of the boat.
Building at the Boat Shop
There are a few reasons the Gig Harbor Boat Shop is the destination for this project.
Originally the Batana was going to be built in Port Townsend where the festival is, but those plans fell through.
Guy Hoppen, president and founder of the Gig Harbor Boat Shop, learned Vlahovich was scrambling to find a place to build the Batana. Hoppen offered the Boat Shop.
He and Vlahovich had been friends for many years and stayed connected once Vlahovich moved to Croatia.
“It ended up being a great mutual collaboration, because I don’t have any tools here, a shop or a ready team of volunteers,” Vlahovich said.
The Gig Harbor Boat Shop already owns a Croatian fishing boat that is almost 100 years old. It’s called the Veteran and was built by the Skansie family. The Boat Shop will take the Veteran to Port Townsend this year for the festival, too.
Vlahovich said they might use the deck of the Veteran to tell stories and play Croatian music at the festival, among other things.
Purpose of the project
“Were trying to tell a story and educate people about the Croatian heritage in Gig Harbor in the past,” Vlahovich said. “A lot of these skills have been lost over one generation.”
Vlahovich said maritime traditions have not been passed down in many families.
“Grandchildren are coming to me saying: ‘I had an opportunity to learn from my grandfather but I never did,’” Vlahovich said.
Jonathan Cunningham is the grandson of a Tacoma fisherman. His grandfather owned a boat that was built by the Skansie family. Cunningham is Vlahovich’s right-hand man during the project.
“Jonathan is here every day and knows what he is doing which is fantastic,” Vlahovich said. “It’s people like him and others that make me confident we will get the boat done in time. I am trying to help the visitors that know nothing about Croatians in Gig Harbor and bridge that gap. The boat has its own story and long history. The design has been in Croatia since around 1750.”
The Batana is a 16-foot boat, made for two men and a lot of sardines, according to Vlahovich. It will be propelled by oars and a sail. Batana is what they named the boat and also what the style of boat is called.
The boat is being built entirely by volunteers, including Vlahovich. Other volunteers include staff members of the Boat Shop and residents of Gig Harbor who want to participate.
Locals can sign up to volunteer on the project Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Each day has two volunteers who help for a half-day shift each. One volunteer comes in the morning and another in the afternoon.
The boat is still taking shape. It can be hard for the public to get enthusiastic about the boat just from drawings and words, Vlahovich said.
As of now, the team is unsure what will happen to the boat once it’s done being built and the festival ends. Once the public sees the boat coming together, Vlahovich is certain the right home for the Batana will show itself.
“Some people have suggested selling it,” Vlahovich said. “That’s the last thing I want to do. I would be happy to donate it to an organization or museum, whose mission includes the story of Croatian maritime influence or organizations that do maritime youth education. We want to find the proper home for it which is hard to determine before people see the finished boat.”
More than one reason for Vlahovich’s return
Vlahovich said part of his visit is to build the boat, but also to demonstrate that cultural exchanges can happen between cities, even prior to a sister city agreement between governments.
A couple years ago Vlahovich started connecting with the Gig Harbor Rotary Club because Gig Harbor has an interest in becoming a sister city to Sumartin.
“Since I am living in Croatia right now, I have been helping as much as I can on the Croatian end. As of now we have not been able to get a city mayor to embrace the idea in Croatia,” Vlahovich said.
Vlahovich believes Croatian mayors are afraid a sister city agreement will cost the city money.
“We haven’t been able to accomplish this yet, but we are not giving up,” he said.
Vlahovich hopes residents of Gig Harbor can visit Croatia next, to learn about what Croatians and the nonprofit are doing to pass on maritime skills.
Vlahovich’s story
Vlahovich was born and raised in Tacoma and has worked as a boatman and a fisherman his whole life, including in the South Sound.
Vlahovich went to Croatia in 2016 to do his masters thesis in the village where his father was born, Sumartin. Vlahovich received a master’s degree in cultural sustainability from Goucher College of Towson, Maryland.
Now Vlahovich does cultural exchanges for visitors ages 18 to 29 who are funded by the Maritime Education Association to come to Croatia. The nonprofit hosts them and they help Vlahovich restore historic wooden boats.
Project funding
The majority of materials for the project have been donated, Vlahovich said.
“That’s the way I wanted it to be. It allowed us to solicit enthusiasm and support from the community as well,” Vlahovich said.
All the lumber, worth $8,000-$9,000, was donated by Pacific Northwest Timbers. One of the owners is an acquaintance of Vlahovich, and the other owner’s mother is Croatian.
All of the lumber used in the project is reclaimed. That means it came from old timber warehouses around the Pacific Northwest, has been re-sawed and had all the nails pulled out.
“That’s what I wanted. Because of the age of the wood, there is a good chance that lumber was still in tree form when the first Croatians came to Gig Harbor. Cut and used for over 100 years,” Vlahovich said.
The Maritime Education Association paid to send Vlahovich here for the project, and is sending four more Croatians to help. They’ll arrive next month.
Youth Skills Day
Two of the Croatian visitors coming are girls ages 8 and 12.
Vlahovich is trying to plan a youth day with the Boat Shop focused on the Batana. A date hasn’t been finalized. He wants to wait until the girls arrive, since they have participated in festival demonstrations back in Croatia. They can showcase their maritime skills at this event and help educate other kids. Vlahovich hopes the girls will meet some friends to stay in contact with.
At the youth day, Vlahovich wants to establish skills stations around the Batana with skills and tools that children can learn. The kids won’t be working on the actual boat.
Examples of what they might learn include:
- Turning a square wood piece into a round one
- Driving cotton into the seams of a wooden boat to keep the water out
- How to cut a board with a hand saw
The Maritime Education Association does something similar in Croatia at elementary schools.
Croatian background in Gig Harbor
The Skansie family and others started ship building in Gig Harbor about 100 years ago, Vlahovich said.
Ancestors of those families were born in Sumartin and learned boat building skills there.
Vlahovich believes Sumartin would be a good sister city for Gig Harbor, because of the family ties and wooden boat and fishing traditions that existed in Croatia and came here.
Croatian fishing families originally came to Gig Harbor to be near old growth Douglas firs, Vlahovich said. The natural resources were plentiful. They didn’t have to go far to find salmon and to get the trees they needed to build boats like the Batana.
“We hope the boat has a very long, meaningful life that will carry on the story of the heritage and entice people to help us develop a cultural exchange between Sumartin and Gig Harbor,” Vlahovich said.
This story was originally published July 26, 2022 at 5:00 AM.
