Doug has entered PICCOLO in the Australian Wooden Boat Festival 2025 in Hobart. Sadly he didn’t get to sail his beautiful yacht but the Derwent sailors will bring her up the river next February to honour Doug.

But the penny suddenly dropped. Moon-spaceship-boat-Iceland. I skyped John in Switzerland and not long after we hung up, he had the boat booked. All I had to do was organise a group of eight friends to fill the bunks and find good ski-touring gear. Where we were going there were no lifts.

Melbourne based SWS has a loyal readership of 200+ in Denmark each week. We hope its the sailing stories and not ‘Something about Mary’. We recently received emails from Jens and Klaus Toyberg-Frandzen. They asked if SWS could get a letter and photo to Bill.

‘The run from Honolulu was a nightmare. In the last weeks of December I battled constant gales. The turbulent sea threatened to smash my boat to pulp. On two occasions the little boat was wallowing more than half full of water. My arms were so tired from constant bailing, I could not raise them above my shoulders. Once again, I strapped myself to the bunk and prayed. Providence has been kind to me.

This is a tricky time to be talking about sailing clubs with Royal Warrants. Last summer Captain Cook was amputated below the knee in the Catani Gardens right beside RMYS. In April near the St Kilda Pilot Beacon, four Canary Island palms were deliberately set alight. These trees, from the 1930’s, are a signature of the seaside promenade. Perhaps it’s a comment on European landscaping or random arson. Then King George V was decapitated on his recent birthday in Kings Domain. Regardless of this febrile climate, VCAT got on with its task and handed down a decision ‘of interest’ that clarified often misunderstood heritage guidelines.

If you don’t know something of Bill Nance, you should. Between 1962 and 1965 aged 25, Bill Nance completed a southern circumnavigation via Cape Horn in his Laurent Giles CARDINAL VERTUE. He was the first Australian to complete this journey singlehanded. In recognition, the Americans awarded him the Joshua Slocum medal, the International Award for Sailing Achievements. Australia hardly noticed, except for the die-hard yachting fraternity and the odd newspaper article.

The class always had devotees but the fleet slowly depleted in the 1990’s as keen sailors were attracted to newer designs. Over the last 20 years the boats have been patiently restored. Soon there will be some 10 yachts regularly sailing in Victorian waters

The top end of the course near Port Melbourne means tricky twisting shifts off the beach and apartment infill but flat water. The southern end exposed beyond Altona produced difficult rolling slop for the downhill legs. Thrown in on both days on the western side of the course was a huge tidal outflow from the Yarra and Maribyrnong Rivers with recent rain and floods.

Nurminen was regarded as a wizard for his ability to work his chartered Tumlare class yacht YVONNE to windward. He was rarely beaten by the top skippers pitted against him. In YVONNE, he won over 300 races, including 17 State titles, the last 11 in succession.

Founder of Seacraft, Sheila takes us on an adventure - “We hardly turned in our horsehair bunks after a wonderful dinner of fish caught by nearby lads spearfishing off the rocks. The wind increased and became a full westerly stinker. The Tum was leaping like a fretful mare. We could have stayed on two anchors but the thought of my darling going up on the beach was too much.”

The Yachting World Keelboat #1 ZEST was presented ‘on the pool’ at Earls Court Boat Show in 1961 and in an article by Yachting World as A-BUILD-HER-YOURSELF DESIGN BY JACK HOLT. In 1967 the boat was renamed the YW Diamond. Here’s Jack sporting hair a la Cosmo Kramer, writes Charlie Salter.

‘Women Should Own Boats. Women are very enthusiastic about sailing, but comparatively few of them own and sail their own boats. If a few more women owned boats they would be placed on the same footing as men in yacht clubs, as are the women in England and the United States’. So wrote the inspirational Shelia Patrick and first female member of CYCA - Charlie Salter takes us inside her story.

“It’s not an arms race. You can sail affordably in a high end competition.” SWS has done several stories about the Sharpie in Australia. This week watch ‘FROM THE GROUND UP’ and hear from those who are leading the resurgence and fresh enthusiasm for the class.

Both Mander and Tasker published books with accounts of this career defining competition. They reveal different approaches to sailing mostly defined by character.

The collective archives of our nation are suffering slow strangulation by lack of commitment and funding. The National Library of Australia, the National Museum, the National Film & Sound Archive, the ABC and various State Maritime Museums are struggling. Collections are deteriorating and large parts remain undigitised. Archivists, researchers and librarians have been sacked and if retained have been ironically rebranded as Knowledge Keepers or Navigators.

The word Sharpie has always appealed. They were 1960’s working class street gangs with flash style and tough attitude. Melbourne’s own West Side Story was Romper Stomper, a movie made in Footscray and Spotswood, next door to the Royal Yacht Club Victoria in Williamstown. The club had its own fleet of Sharpies in the 1950’s and 60’s and hosted the Olympic Sharpies at the 1956 regatta.

‘In the midst of a global pandemic, a young boy is given an extraordinary gift. AGRICOLA 7101 is an uplifting documentary focusing on a group of kind-hearted individuals who come together to rescue a long-neglected and rare classic Australian sailing dinghy - fundamentally changing the life of a young boy along the way.’

After years of building a dinghy collection, Tony now wants to develop a place to celebrate these boats, the people who built and sailed them and the Swan River environment itself.

Here’s the second part of our review of a terrific book Albert Park Yacht Club 150 Years on the Lake. We’ve picked out a few portraits and stories of people and boats that characterise a Rather special club.

Over the last month, we had more Ukrainian readers than Russians logging in. SWS can’t comment on the expansionary motivations of an authoritarian kleptocracy, but we can invite you to speculate about ordinary people and ordinary sailors living through a war along the Black Sea coast.