My connection with the Australian Wooden Boat Festival, has allowed me to meet many dedicated wooden boat aficionados, perhaps none more so than fellow board member Captain Sarah Parry, so I was delighted to hear that she was going to be on the ABC’s “Conversations with Richard Fidler.”

Karen Batson is the mistress of reinvention! In this interview we chat balancing work and boats, what it means to take on the job of custodian and, we attempt to answer the question, why don’t more women sail?

Occasionally, quite unexpectedly, we come across our heroes. An interview aboard with Anna Ingham, the current custodian of a 42ft, cray boat, the OWEN JOHN.

70 years after her first trip to Hobart, this little boat is heading south again this year, in the hands of husband and wife team Anne Lawrence and John Whitfield.