Bassett was a forceful and decisive character who found it hard to tolerate foolishness, but was forgiving of ignorance. The uninformed he set out to educate, lucidly and patiently. He had an uncanny knack of grasping the salient problems and of solving them at the outset.

A yacht constructed with one of the greatest timbers.
By one of the worlds most famous shipwrights.
With 130 years of irrefutable provenance and achievements.

I can’t help thinking that auctions are an under used way of passing on unwanted timer boats. They provide an accurate way of assessing the REAL value of a particular vessel on any given day. Assuming the advertising is comprehensive, and the bidding system is fair, then the market will speak.

Here are five interesting little boats under $5,000, all harbouring within their timber shells thousands of hours of pleasure.

As Melbourne celebrated the Olympics in late 1956, and Beryl and Miles Smeeton headed off from the Yarra River on their epic journey around Cape Horn, the finished vessel quietly slipped into the water near Great Yarmouth on the Norfolk Broads.

Although he designed racing and cruising yachts, it was fishing boats that launched his commercial career. The introduction of high-powered diesel engines was a significant change and needed someone able to calculate the power and propeller requirements, along with the best hull shape and construction, if the craft was to achieve its desired performance

Al frequently mentioned that the greatest praise a yacht designer could receive was the absence of his designs on the resale market. To him, this indicated how pleased the owners were with his designs.

There used to be one lying neglected in the corner of every off the beaten track boatyard north of Gabo… but perhaps their desirability has grown over the last decade.

Chris Crerar was a great supported of SWS. He wrote some heartfelt articles that told of the highs and lows of owning wooden boats. Many of our readers were absorbed by a deep seated honesty in his writing style

The boat yard needs a good tidy up, as most good boat yards do. There are two working slipways, quite a few interesting timber boats around in various states of disrepair, and a great big shed that appears to house generations of maritime objects that “might just come in useful one day”. It’s picturesque, it’s mildly functional and just for a fraction of a second, the romanticism the of prospect trumps the daunting realities.

“Unremarkable little boat lives on a mooring and is little used in recent years, The family finds it too hard to look after. By this time it’s in disrepair and probably too late to sell it as a going concern”

Nothing remarkable there!

The arrival in Auckland in September 1953 of Eric and Susan Hiscock on the WANDERER III is believed to have inspired SCARLET’s first owner to commission her construction choosing Kauri planking over hardwood frames, Mahogany Cabin and deck of Queensland Beech.

Many Thanks to all those who have contacted us with messages of support (and condolences!) on our decision to move on from FAIR WINDS. In the meantime we have created a dedicated page on SWS with all the information on her that we can muster.

This summer we spent a month living on board, cruising through Bass Strait and the Southeast coast of Australia. In was another special adventure aboard this extraordinary craft. Anchoring 30 meters off the beach at Erith Island on New Year’s Eve with no other human in sight; sailing 220 miles from Flinders Island to Eden, with the windvane nodding and nudging us back on course as the miles disappeared under our transom. These and hundreds of other memories will never be erased.

Waitoa was part of a flotilla boats used by a pearl cultivation enterprise, run by Japanese investors in 1960’s. As time went on she became a ferry for Islanders working at Escape River to travel back and forth to TI. When an oil spill wiped out the cultivation business in 1970 we returned this lugger and few others to fishing for pearl shells, called mother-of-pearl, in the Torres Strait.

The door slid open again and the room lit up as an unassuming bearded man in a dusty cable knit jumper walked towards me. He moved through the shed, feet wide as if crossing a moving deck, held his hand out and with a beaming smile and a soft Hudson Valley lilt said, “Mark? I’m Nat”

“I have mentioned the influence of Claud Worth, the English doctor, writer, and designer, whose TERN IV I greatly admired. Those who know Worth’s boat and my BRILLIANT design may see this inspiration; both are shaped and built not as racing yachts but as sea boats intended to survive the worst weather and to make good passages.”

So when you learn that here in little old Melbourne, there is a fully restored Fife 8m for sale, with immaculate provenance and a practical set up, for much less than the cost of a twenty year old, questionably constructed, production fiberglass floating caravan, then you should sit up and take notice.

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!

E.F. Schumacher wrote in his seminal work Small is Beautiful that “Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage — to move in the opposite direction.”