At no point up until now has it seemed unusual to send a rowing boat half way around the world to an unfamiliar, developing country, only to row it back home. But now I understand; it puts a smile on my face.

Barnett was determined to regain his Australian title and his design of Myra Too created a boat exceptionally suited to Sydney Harbour conditions and, along with a powerful Marconi-rigged big sail, had good, all round speed in any conditions.

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.

This week we discover for you, four interesting options combining a love of timber boats with an unapologetically indulgent sailing holiday. And not a flotilla in sight!

The Tancook Whaler is one of those boats which evolved over many decades to do a particular working job, in this case to fish off the rough coast of Nova Scotia in all weathers and which at the same time took on a shape which is a thing of beauty. They were fast and seaworthy and kept on moorings off the rocky coast all year round.

I’m sitting at 35,000ft, watching Tucci devour sardines, the place he visited next, grabs my attending – there on a rocky beach, a ‘boat graveyard’ – a sandbank of discarded, impounded wooden boats, makeshift craft, roughly hammered together, cut down from bigger craft, wooden boats used by migrants crossing the waters from Africa.

Dylan’s reaction when he first heard what happened was, perhaps not surprisingly, pretty sanguine.

“Man…it’s like that reef has been sitting there waiting for you since the very beginning.”

The late Bob Gordon was just 16 years old when he launched his first hand built wooden boat. He went on to build around 30 classic craft over the next 67 years.

Got a wooden boat? Why not bring your pride and joy? It will be four years since the last Festival, and the AWBF crew are excited to open the flood gates for registrations.

Rob, a talented and successful Mullet boat sailor had a chat with us about how and why he ended up as the new custodian and what his (exciting) plans are for the future.

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.

Firstly, and most importantly… she has an appointment with a large, angry chainsaw on the 1st May unless someone puts their hand up

After rounding Cape Howe onto the southern coast, Bass discovered a big bay he named “Western Port” because of its position relative to Port Jackson. Bass reported the southern coast and islands were teeming with seals and predicted a colonial sealing industry.

Not many sporting clubs survive for 150 years. Albert Park Yacht Club reached its sesquicentennial in 2022, making it one of the oldest yacht clubs in Australia.

The pictures in this article are my brief attempt to capture the essence of this wonderfully evocative piece of Tasmania’s wooden boat history.

Its alway sad to see pictures such as this, but it’s important we put it out there….”They were seen heading out from their mooring at Flinders and around the point.”

Wooden boats were and still are a common feature in Tasmania, an island surrounded by water. Sharing the knowledge surrounding the wooden boat craft is a big feature for the Australian Wooden Boat Festival.

She first met Julian, the man not the boat, at the Shakespeare Hotel - an irony not lost upon her, for Julian was a fisherman with a sonnet in his heart and his very own name on the stern.

Its rich, and informative, and unlike most coffee table books (I hate that term!) has a substance that makes it cherishable and unlikely to end up on the nature strip on hard rubbish day.

A speech by Ian Johnston from the City of Hobart’s Speakers’ Corner Series acknowledges why Tasmania is so special and suggests what needs to be done to keep it so.