The News, Culture and Practice of Sailing woodenboats
in Australia, New Zealand & The South Pacific.
SWS in 2025
So far this year, 116,000 individual people have visited the SWS website and they have read 187,000 pages. I point this out not to be self congratulatory, but indicate the strength and size of the community that sees the value in promoting traditional maritime culture.
Flotsam & Jetsam 05.12.25
Some sailing related stories that piqued our interest from around the web and the world this week.
Curating the Feed
So the solution to managing the perils of social media is to be strict with the inputs. Regular culling of the feed is cathartic. It’s like putting out the bins on a Thursday evening… a bit of a hassle, but it feels good when its done.
Flotsam & Jetsam- 07.11.25
This week’s news and events from around Australia New Zealand and the world.
Flotsam & Jetsam 10.10.25
This week’s news and questions from around Australia and the world.
Avoidance Issues
We describe sensible, rational people as ‘grounded’. The moorings are dropped, the anchor breaks ground, the pen is left behind: What is it? It’s avoidance. Avoidance of being ‘grounded’. A drift up a creek, a fang around the cans, an ocean crossing, an around the world race, all just ways of evading the sticky mud that clings to earthbound life
Flotsam & Jetsam 19.9.25
A round up of Traditional Maritime News that we have stumbled across during the last week.
Flotsam & Jetsam 5.9.25
It’s about time we settled on a name for this page. I’ve found over the last few months that we come across many interesting snippets and links that might be of interest to the readers, but probably aren’t worth a full, stand alone article. So we started a news page, rounding up wooden boat and related stories from the past few days.
Visual Inspiration
The text was short and to the point. “My late father fresh out of the Navy after WWII, courting my mother by taking her sailing on a 90ft wooden schooner on the coast of Maine.”
August News Wrap
Half a dozen items that caught our attention in August from the world of wooden boats or the values that surround it!
Forms of Carbon
So while diamonds glitter on distant exoplanets and sparkle in alien skies, wood tells a deeper story. It is the rarest treasure because it is born from life. A simple stick on Earth is more precious than an entire planet of diamonds when viewed through the lens of the universe.