Parade Theme Sends Rowing Club Founder into Reverie of Float Building

When Greg Sabourin, rower, classic wooden yacht owner, sailor and boatbuilder, heard that the theme of this year's  would be "River of Dreams," he couldn't let the opportunity slip away.

Sabourin is nothing if not a dreamer. In 1984 he dreamed up and founded the North Bay Rowing Club, and several years ago, he and other like-minded boaters with big dreams for the Petaluma River, co-founded the Petaluma Small Craft Center (PSCC). The group is working on building a dock-based small craft rental center in the turning basin, where anyone can rent some kind of human-powered watercraft to tool around in, as well as a community boathouse for Petaluma. In fact, its very mission is making dreams come true on the Petaluma River. That's why Sabourin knew the group had to make a big splash with this year's float.

So he dreamed up the perfect representative of the multi-sport boater's group, all of whom use paddles of some sort to propel themselves along the river: a sidewheeler. Sabourin, who also sits on the board of the Arques School of Traditional Boatbuilding, has spent the past several weeks building the wheels, the pilot house and the smokestack, and designing the float to represent the group's dreams and the river's past and future.

The paddle wheels sit on an axel across the North Bay Rowing Club's trailer, and are fitted with the halves of 2-piece paddles borrowed from Clavey River Outfitters, another member of the group. Also members are He'e Nalu and Ohana Wa'a  and the Spring Training Kayak Racing School. The PSCC binds all of these groups together in the goal of getting people out on the water, and this year's float celebrates the effort involved in both propelling oneself with nothing but paddles and your own endurance and vision and moving forward on big projects that require a combination of determination and dreams.

By inviting members of the public to participate in the dream, through programs like the Annual Free Day on The River (Sunday, June 3) when PSCC's members help people try out any watercraft they like, and running youth camps, PSCC raises Petalumans' awareness of the recreational resource that is our "river of dreams". 

For this year's "boat float," the slogan of the Petaluma Small Craft Center, "Get your butt in a boat" will be modified to "Build it and they will boat!"