This is the first new boat of this design to be built and launched in Australia for about 50 years. One sprightly eighty year old, Doug Jack, set himself the task in 2020 of building a cold moulded version in his basement.

Some of the weekly correspondence. There’s no doubt its a community!

There has, of course, always been professionalism in yachting but that a fat paycheck outweighs national pride is a relatively new development. The rock stars have become hired guns – unashamed mercenaries prepared to compete for whichever country offers them the best deal.

Last month the niche world of wooden boats made a fleeting apperance in the mainstream media with almost an hour of conversation on ABC Radio Sydney’s nightlife program. And what’s affirming for us is that the participants are all regular contributors to this humble journal.

The main and important thing behind all of this is to pass the knowledge onto them because as you know, they will be the future ... my hairs are going white and everything is going slow.

He’d shown himself to be one tough old bird by sailing his Dragon from Glandore across the Celtic Sea and the western approaches of the English Channel to Brest for one of Brittany’s many Festivals of Sail. Under the foredeck was a tightly packed heavy-duty plastic bag, and when Brest was finally reached in the inevitable sodden state, the bag was pulled out and carefully unpacked, and Captain Street stepped ashore in dry clothes including a dazzlingly white shirt with RORC tie, and a classic blue-black reefer jacket.

The only medieval and primary sources we have of Freydís are the two Vinland sagas; the Grœnlendinga saga and the Eiríks saga rauða. The two sagas offer differing accounts, though in both Freydís appears as a masculine, strong-willed woman who would defy the odds of her society.

In 2015, a break-up of 40 years of marriage upended life as I knew it and cast me adrift on a sea of grief and confusion. Under pressure to sell or buy out, I decided to take on Aziza as sole owner and soon realised that to have the freedom to sail at whim I would need to learn how to sail single-handed.

The South and West coasts of Tasmania are places that demand respect. The isolation, the exposure to the southern ocean, the lack of communication, all conspire to make the coast daunting. But all coins have an obverse side.

This approach of building brand new boats to old designs can, I feel, sometimes fall between two stools, ending up with a boat without the functionality, systems, volume and performance of a modern yacht and yet lacking the “soul” of a yacht that has undergone a sensitive restoration.

My partner is convinced that my demanding mistress has a mind of her own. When told the engine needed removal, she said, “Of course! She wants new Bling; her big birthday is coming up!” After letting that statement settle into its rightful place on the astral plane, I informed her of my horsepower foible. “Safety First,” was the cut through response.

With registrations due to open later this month for the 2025 Australian Wooden Boat Festival, we thought it might be a good time to have a chat with the Festival Director and General Manager Paul Stephanus about his philosophy on the event, why you should make the effort to attend and the process for registering your boat.

While the bizarre spectacle that is now the Americas Cup lumbers towards a start date in August, and Sail GP (Powered by Nature!) jets its ten 50ft catamarans, and associated paraphernalia, crew and egos across the world from Christchurch to Bermuda, one event took place last weekend in California that has more skill, tradition and competitive tension than both the high profile events put together.

The Bahamian wooden racing sloops begin to arrive. Sloops from distant islands are transported as deck cargo on inter island barges; sloops from closer islands arrive under tow. Along with the sloops come their accessories — extra booms, masts, sails, and lead ingots used for ballast so the sailors can tweak their boats during the regatta as wind conditions change.

Jack Bellamy and his twin brother, Keith, who were both on the 1952 voyage, had watched from the kitchen window as the boat was built.
"You'd see the boat growing and all the framework going up, all the ribs and everything, and it was an amazing job to think what they did, the three brothers," Jack said.

The boat yard needs a good tidy up, as most good boat yards do. There are two working slipways, quite a few interesting timber boats around in various states of disrepair, and a great big shed that appears to house generations of maritime objects that “might just come in useful one day”. It’s picturesque, it’s mildly functional and just for a fraction of a second, the romanticism the of prospect trumps the daunting realities.

"These findings not only open a new chapter in Australian, Melanesian, and Pacific archaeology but also challenge colonialist stereotypes by highlighting the complexity and innovation of Aboriginal communities,"

Built as a shallow-draft yacht, WHOOPER was mostly cruised, but her natural reaching and downwind speed exceeded expectations. Anecdotes from Peter Bruce recall crossings back from the Channel Islands in the 1960’s, at average speeds over 10 knots!

It’s not recorded whether Dick was the sort of bloke who would have enjoyed a 420nm bluewater cruise to have an informal BBQ on the beach, but there are obviously plenty of sailors out there who do, as the Lord Howe Island BBQ plans for its 22nd iteration

The cover pictures two of the most storied yachts currently based in Tasmania, neither of which has her origins in the Island State… The famous TE RAPUNGA and the Aage Nielsen’s Newport Bermuda winner, HOLGER DANSKE