Historic schooner Suva returns to Coupeville Wharf for sailing season
Suva is back at Coupeville Wharf, drawing visitors to Penn Cove sailings and testing whether heritage can still drive foot traffic and tourism in Coupeville.
A 101-year-old schooner has put Coupeville Wharf back in motion, turning a familiar landmark into a working attraction again for the spring and summer season. Suva returned to the dock as both a tourism draw and a visible piece of Island County’s maritime identity, with two-hour cruises in Penn Cove already underway from the Coupeville dock.
The sailing season reopened May 2, and the boat is offering trips on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays through October. Tickets are set at $75 for adults 13 and older, $50 for youth ages 3 to 12, and free for children younger than 3. Private charters are also available, giving the Whidbey Island Maritime Heritage Foundation a chance to keep the vessel active while bringing more people to the waterfront.
A media sail May 14 showed why Suva still pulls in a crowd. Crew members raised the sails by hand, and passengers took part as captain Brian Vick described the schooner as a living, breathing organism. The appeal is not only the ride itself, but the tactile experience of a wooden boat, the kind of craftsmanship that modern materials do not replicate. At Coupeville Wharf, that matters as much for the town’s foot traffic as it does for the boat’s legacy.
Suva’s history reaches back to 1925, when it was built in Hong Kong at Quan Lee Shipyard from old-growth Burmese teak for Frank Pratt, a Massachusetts lawyer who moved to Whidbey Island in 1901. The schooner was anchored in Penn Cove from 1925 to 1940, and the Whidbey Island Maritime Heritage Foundation became its sixth owner when it bought the boat in May 2015. Its original Lawson-Scott gas engine was later replaced by a 140-horsepower diesel Detroit 45, but its design has remained largely intact.
The vessel’s preservation now has new urgency. Suva’s addition to the National Register of Historic Places in December made it newly eligible for federal, state and private grants for maintenance. That is critical for a working schooner that still needs major repairs, including a new teak deck estimated at a couple hundred thousand dollars and a new engine estimated at about $35,000. For Coupeville, the stakes are practical as well as historical: keeping Suva sailing keeps maritime history visible, active and tied to the economy at one of Whidbey Island’s best-known waterfronts.
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