2011 Ranger Tug Rendezvous

The Boats… They’re Everywhere!

Sixty-eight Ranger Tugs and Cutwaters in one place, at one time. They were many sizes, from 21 to 29 feet. If set end to end they would have measured 1,768 feet or one-third of a mile long. A rainbow of colors was represented – yellow, dark red, fire engine red, blue, green, tan, and white with owners from as far away as Maine and New York, on the east coast, Michigan, Texas, California, Montana, Colorado, and Oregon. Most were from Washington State, many hailed from British Columbia, Canada.

With 68 boats present, Lisa and I had an opportunity to witness firsthand how these Tugnuts (Ranger Tug owners) equip their boats with dinghies, cockpit tables and chairs interior and exterior storage containers, anchors, and so on. With only two weeks of ownership behind us, these are all things that are of interest to us, being new Ranger Tug owners, so we were more than anxious to gather all this information. Although our boat was only two weeks old, there were new owners in attendance who had only owned their tug for a week.

Interesting enough, of the 68 boats in attendance all had uniquely different names from our Kismet to Shared Dream, Tug of My Heart, Willies Tug, Laxey, Nellie Too, Moondance, Karma, Red Ranger, Salish Rover, just to name a few.

Okay, we know that the boat (above-right) is not a Ranger Tug, but Anne and Lawrence Yeadon-Jones, showed up on their sailboat, Dreamspeaker to present their guidebooks to the Tugnut group. They have authored and published a whole collection of very popular guidebooks to the Pacific Northwest.