(birds cawing) - [Narrator] Down at the docks in Olympia, Washington, a handful of skippers have gathered from across the Pacific Northwest.

- [Dave] You know, you've got boaters in general and then you've got wood boaters, and then you've got knuckleheads that are the classic wooden work boat guys.

(boat horns blaring) - [Narrator] It's time once again for the annual Olympia Harbor days, which hosts the only remaining tugboat race in the northwest.

- The hallmark of what we do with Harbor Days is we have a tug race.

You know, I'd love to say that no one takes it very seriously, but everyone does take it seriously, even though tugs are very, very slow boats.

- And I tell people when I hit the throttle I say, "Hang on, 'cause we're going to go from zero to 12 miles an hour in maybe a minute."

(boat horn honking) - [Narrator] The Chippewa has fired up its engine and heads to the starting line.

At the wheel is John Bainter.

- It's like riding a bike.

- [Narrator] His family once owned the Chippewa in the 1970s and '80s.

(water rushing) He's now been invited by the new owner, Jeff, to take the wheel once again, and they hope, steer the Chippewa to victory.

The tugs motor out to the open water of Budd Inlet.

- I got to go over here and get in position.

- [Narrator] And line up at the starting buoy.

Because the race happens on the open waters of the Inlet, there are no grandstands.

Spectators have to be on boats.

Friends, family, and supporters watch the race from the tugs themselves.

And on the RW Confer, Skipper Jeff gets some starting line advice from his mom.

- You could cut in front of Creosote.

He's got to back off because you got rights.

- No, you don't.

Mom, Mom, this isn't sailing.

No you don't.

- [Race Official] 10, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one.

- Fire in the hole!

- Zero!

(audience cheers) - [Narrator] And they're off.

Some tugs seem to gracefully roll the water behind them, like the Creosote.

And some seem to plow through it, like the burly RW Confer.

- Here we go!

(group cheers) - [Jeff] Instead of having a big sleek boat that goes fast.

- Whoa!

- I want something slow and steady and it's got the power when you need it, but also something that has some history to it and some stories to tell.

(soft music) If you look around, there's still dents and dings and ripped steel and you know, each dent and each ripped piece of steel has a story to it.

That's part of the personality and the charm of this boat.

- [Narrator] The Confer was built in Portland's Albina Shipyards in 1930, a time when America had fallen into the Great Depression.

And it turns out that one visitor to Harbor Days has a special connection to this tug.

- This boat was named after my grandfather.

That's my mother, Roma Maxine Confer.

She was 18 at the time in 1930 when it was built.

- [Narrator] The oldest boat at Harbor Days is the Lillian S. It was built in Astoria, Oregon in 1912, which was also the same year that the Titanic sank.

It had a long career, especially in Alaska as a salmon tender, and was even part of the cleanup efforts for the Exxon Valdez Oil spill in 1989.

It now belongs to Dave, who has taken on its restoration as a life project.

- What I don't know about boat building, I've got to learn, 'cause I can't go out and hire everybody every time that something needs to be done on it.

Because unless you've got unlimited funds, these boats will bleed you dry.

So I'm going to just keep plugging away on her as best I can and be broke the rest of my life and happy as a clam, so.

(laughs) - [Narrator] Olympia is still a working port and modern tugs are still performing some of the same duties that the vintage tugs did a century ago.

In comparison, the vintage tugs look like little bathtub toys.

(boat horn honks) But for as iconic and cute as they are, the old wooden tugs were the muscle that built these ports.

- [Dave] Back in the day when a lot of these boats were brand new, there was so much logging going on, there was so much fishing going on, there was so much of everything going on.

All of the businesses were framed around the ports.

These boats helped build this area.

- [Narrator] When a large ship would come into port, they would need the assistance of a tug to maneuver it to the dock.

The tug crews would race to be the first to the ship, thus winning the work.

And just as rodeos sprung up from ranch work, tug skippers started this friendly competition.

Tug races sprung up in many of the larger port towns of the Pacific Northwest, like Seattle, Tacoma, and Olympia.

But today, Olympia Harbor Days is the last of its kind.

Out on the race course, the tugs have hit their full throttle, slowly building and building power, working up to about 14 knots.

That's faster than someone can jog, but slower than riding a bike.

- All right, here we go.

- In order for the tugs to remain healthy, they have to move.

They have to flex the old timbers and turn the engines, just as we would have to move our legs and get our hearts pumping and the blood flowing.

- [Sam] They're not happy sitting.

They're actually far happier being used than they are being parked.

- [Narrator] The chance for these retired tugs to move in the water is rare.

And few people are willing to commit to a lifetime of boat maintenance.

And when it becomes too late to save a historic tug, there's no turning back.

Like for this one, docked near Seattle, - [Dave] We're losing boats, at least one a year, if not more.

And pretty soon, unless something is done, we're not going to have any of these old boats left.

- It's a conundrum.

A lot of these boats, when they run out of the energy of the owner, right now, they very likely are dead.

There's not a lot of young people with both the energy and the monetary expenditure it takes to keep those boats up.

- [Narrator] But this year at Harbor Days, there was a fresh face at the skipper's meeting.

(machine whirs) Nick had owned a historic tug just a couple weeks.

- We're always down at the dock working on her boat.

A couple weeks ago, the old owner came to me and was asking if I wanted to become the steward of it.

I've always just had kind of an attraction to old boats, just 'cause classic boats have beautiful lines and look cool and the idea that it's been working really hard for 100 years and I can keep making it do that.

- Perfect.

And it's really an icon in the community of like, a working boat.

She's not this antique that stays perfect on the dock.

This is a boat we call when we need help and this boat always shows up, and when I was a kid, but like, if we had engine problems, you call Torito, you know?

- Yeah, this boat's pulled her boat off a beach a few times.

- Yeah.

(laughs) - Over the years.

(laughs) - [Cosima] We're not going to do some huge restoration that's going to be written up in magazines.

- [Nick] Oh yeah.

- We're just taking these old boats and trying to do the best we can and share it with people.

- We just want to use them.

We want to be on the water.

- Yeah.

- [Narrator] After racing for about nine minutes, the tugs are now nearing the finish line buoy.

- Go, go, go, go, go!

- Go, go, go!

- [Narrator] Creosote has been in the lead, but now the Chippewa pulls up side by side.

A nail bitingly close race.

(phone rings) - Finish line.

- At least by tugboat standards.

- Right in the middle of the race, hon.

Okay, bye.

- That's the finish line right there.

- Below deck, the Chippewa's engineer, Andrew, makes some final adjustments.

Eking out all the horsepower the old engine can give.

With the exhaust temperature nearing 1,000 degrees, the Chippewa chugs into the lead.

- Chippewa wins!

(boat horn blares) - [Narrator] With the Creosote and the Confer close behind.

- All right!

- Nice job, John.

(group cheers) (boat horns honking) - [Narrator] That's the race.

There's no real prize or glory.

- [Carol] So in first place, the Chippewa.

(group cheers) - [Narrator] Just some victory cake and a commemorative mug.

- Here's to local tugs.

- Yeah!

(group applauds) - Cheers.

- There's little fanfare as Harbor Days wraps up for another year.

The tugs putter back to their respective ports.

But the skippers leave with one shared accomplishment.

The legacy of historic tugs lives on for now.

And next year, another chance to race.

- Great people just doing their thing in their own northwesty way.

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