Wow! Only three weeks left in the summer of 2013. I think that weather-wise, this has been one of the best.

Remember some of those Julys and Augusts in years gone by when we had temperatures in the high 90s and it was too hot to sleep at night; then other times when we wondered if we would ever get more than two nice days in a row. That didn’t happen this year and we sure were able to enjoy a great northwest summer.

It has been a great year for crab and salmon fishing. About half a dozen of my good friends have told me about the 17-pound-plus fish that they have been landing. The Dungeness crab fishery has been very productive since July first. I was able to catch my share, I hope you were too.

The boaters in central Puget Sound have been showing up down at the port to enjoy the great things Kingston has to offer. The Kingston Farmer’s Market and the summer Concerts on the Cove have become iconic Kingston weekend events.

Someone asked me the other day how many of those little white electric cars we have. He couldn’t believe we only had one, he told me he sees it all over town quite often on busy weekends. He thought we had at least two of them. It is fun to see that little rig scooting around town.

I know a lot of you are interested in what is going to happen with the park area (old Kingston Inn site) that was recently gifted to the port to be developed into a place for residents and visitors in to enjoy. If you have been down there, you will notice that we have cleaned it up a lot, placed some nice rocks and will soon be hydro-seeding in order to get some grass growing before winter. We are doing this to clean up the place and make it more inviting. There will be two public meetings where we will discuss with the residents of the port district just how we will proceed for future development. The meetings will happen at 7 p.m., Sept. 5 and Sept. 18 of in the Kingston Cove Yacht Club. I hope you can make it to one or both of those events.

Prior to the Sept. 5 meeting, there will be a survey on the ports website, www.portofkingston.org. It would be great if you could go there to answer a few questions to help the staff develop the agenda for the meetings. Check the site around the first of September to find the survey.

The Big Dig — dredging — is moving forward in Apple Tree Cove. There was a hint of the possibility that the dredged soil could be used by the Suquamish Tribal Fisheries for a project near Bainbridge Island. The permitting on that project is more than a year away and we do not feel that we can hang on that long to reopen our channel access to the boat launch ramp.  Consequently, we will be going out for bids on the dredge project on Sept. 1. We expect some activity by the end of the month.

Since we are talking about it, I thought that the Nautical Term of The Month should be relevant. So here it is:   Bucket Dredge – This dredge has many buckets that travel along a boom on cables. The boom is maneuvered underwater so the buckets take a scoop of sediment and travel back to the vessel or barge where they deposit their load.

Well that’s about it for this month. I can’t believe that I have been writing this column now for almost nine years! I hope you still enjoy it as much as I like doing it for you. As always, thanks for reading this stuff I hope you found something interesting.

— Pete DeBoer is a Kingston port commissioner. Contact him at pete@petedeboer.com.