SALACIA II was commissioned by Arthur William Byrne, the Australian businessman, philanthropist, and founder of B&D Roll-a-Door. The brief at the time to her designer, Olin Stephens, was to match the dominance of Syd Fischer's RAGAMUFFIN on the water

Brooks’ research in Japan focuses on the techniques and design secrets of the craft. These techniques have been passed from master to apprentice with almost no written record.

This is your last chance to get your hands on a copy of Andrew’s old school, analogue (!) Calendar for 2024, featuring his photographs of Australia’s wooden craft.

There seems to be a long tradition in the telling of maritime adventures of, let’s call it….embellishment. I personally find a note of inauthenticity in perhaps the most revered early circumnavigator, Slocum. Some people like Tristan Jones, just blatantly made stuff up! Even writers like Jonny Wray and Erling Tambs who I enjoy enormously, are prone to gloss over the emotionally and politically difficult issues. But Robinson doesn’t shy away from telling us of his fears, his unfettered delights and his opinions of all manor of human and physical discoveries as he sailed around the world.

The latest edition of “Sailing La Vagabond” had 340,000 views in the first 24 hours, earning its creators around $7000 USD in addition to the income from blatant product spruiking, which make Lou Richards’ Bertocchi Ham promos look genuine. But they have 1.9 million subscribers… so my cynicism is rightly trampled under the feet of the madding crowd.

In about twelve days time the oldest yacht in Australia will either have an appointment with a chainsaw or become the subject of one of the bravest rescue missions seen in the last decade. Crazy things have been going on in the wooden boat market recently. Let’s hope it’s the latter!

Whether you are custodian of a much loved family dinghy, have just finished building your first kayak, are restoring a traditional Tassie cray boat, or are mad for sailing among other timber boats, this is your weekend to head down to the beautiful D'Entrecasteaux Channel on, or with, your wooden boat.

The Ocean Photographer of the Year exhibition features over 100 photographs of beautiful and thought-provoking imagery from some of the world’s best ocean photographers.

Each of these boats has an inter-generational story to tell. They were handcrafted in a time when we still made things with our hands. Some carried across oceans some were traders serving communities up and down our coasts. They were our transport and our recreation.

Imagine discovering a log that had just floated down a Tasmanian River in a storm and building an ocean going yacht out of it. Not just any log, but a rare Huon Pine log, felled 40 years earlier from a tree estimated at 1,000 years old.

Now almost five years later, the School‘s Lead Boatbuilding instructor, Sean Koomen, has been invited back to be a guest instructor at the Wooden Boat Centre in Tasmania, Australia. He will lead students in constructing two wood sailing dinghies during a three-month course beginning November 2024. 

The trio of rafts travelled 14,000 kilometres across the Pacific Ocean from Ecuador to eventually and accidentally arrive at Ballina on Australia's east coast.

The complete absence of parental coaching from small craft on the water, which appears so prevalent today.

This week we seem to have accumulated a locker full of small items that we thought we should clear out, by putting them all into one big news post.

As the work is nearing completion, the AWBF is now welcoming any enquiries regarding her future! She will be launched on February 10th 2024, as part of the Kettering Wooden Boat Rally, and all funds from her sale will go directly to the AWBF.

On a moonless night in August 1943, a US torpedo boat commanded by Lt John F Kennedy, on patrol in Solomon Islands, was rammed by a Japanese destroyer.

Needing substantial, but not complete restoration, just as she was about the be dismantled, three years short of her 100th birthday, a final desperate round of emails produced an outcome.

The Blue Peter comes down… a minute to go… the Div One boats are jostling for the final run to the line…. It’s all about max. boat speed at the gun… winding these things up takes minutes not seconds… Five 40+ footers all get it right… as the gun goes 60 tonnes of timber elegance come up onto the breeze on starboard tack, waterlines fizzing, gunnels just yards apart.

The Couta Boat Association has posted a wonderful record of the early years of the Class on its website. There are about 50 Editions of “SCOOP” on line, starting 42 years ago in 1981 and ending in 2011.

Our EDM goes out at 7am every Friday to 4000 readers. By 8am we had over a dozen emails and comments, rightly pulling us up on our shoddy research!