Fresh D’s Restored & ready to race
The AUSTRALIAN WOODENBOAT FESTIVAL 2025
is just round the corner and Derwent Class
shenanigans are set to be a highlight! Here’s why:
At SWS, the romance and energy the DERWENT CLASS brings to the world of classic boat design and restoration is truly exciting. READ ON to find out about the latest additions to the fleet - restored and raring to race - on show for the very first time in 2025 in a wonderful piece from James Harrison.
But first a couple of key dates:
Sunday February 9 at 10am There’ll be competition in the air and you’ll want to be quayside to watch cool kids leave the dock, ready to battle it out in the 2025 Derwent World Championships.
Then later the same day 18:30 - 20:00 join me, Sal Balharrie in conversation with five young shipwrights and sailors.
With distinctive design, rich local heritage, competitive racing potential and cool kid crews the Derwent Class is in demand. ‘D’s are being restored and raced by a fleet of sailors with smiles on their faces and Blundstones on their feet.
So… why Ds? What is it about this Class that’s grabbed the attention and hands-on restoration abilities of a community – a group of boat finders, young sailors and shipwrights.
This conversation will break it down. Join us to hear from a passionate community as they explain how they get their hands on these rare and precious boats and the unique system created to take a trashable hull and turn it into a unique craft. With big dreams, where will a laid-back spirit of friendship and sailing take this very special class?
And if you’re lucky enough to have a D secreted in your shed, you’ll come to realise you’re sitting on a gold mine – of fun.
CHECK OUT MORE FROM THE AWBF SYMPOSIUM HERE
Derwent class revival
By James Harrison
After close to a century of sailing off Hobart, Derwent class yachts are enjoying a revival as yet another generation of sailors are drawn to them.
A fleet of eight races regularly at Kettering. Another four yachts are nearing the end of restoration and are expected to be launched in time for the Wooden Boat Festival in February and there are likely to be more after that.
Owners have banded together to salvage, buy, restore, maintain and race the D’s, as they are called. They’ve found boats from as far afield as Burnie, Launceston, the Tasman Peninsula, even Sydney. They believe 18 still exist of the 26 or so that were built.
It’s been well documented that Derwent design dates back to the 1920s, when Edwin H Webster proposed a new one-design class to provide a transition for young sailors between cadets and A class racing yachts. A design, by AC Barber of Sydney, was chosen from the nine entries received and modified for Tasmanian conditions.
As Gus McKay, 34, who has owned GOBLIN for close to six years, says: “Now they’re just — I don’t know — as a fleet they’re just perfect. They punch well above their weight, that’s for sure.”
His brother Ollie owns JANUS, which has been in the family for years. We’ve had JANUS since we were kids. Always had yachts and been involved in club racing.
They are 24 feet long overall, with a three-foot bowsprit, carvel built, with a half-cabin. The sail plan has a large main, small jib and a symmetrical spinnaker. Being one design, the boats all stick to the original plans.
“Their low freeboard means they can be fairly wet to sail upwind, particularly on a heavy day, but downwind they’re rockets,” Gus says. “We now sail them in our own fleet. Previous to that we were in Division Two and at times beat the fleet, even the modern boats. So they’re pretty quick.
“We’re still narrowing the sail plan down because over the years people did their own thing a little bit with spinnakers and stuff. But now they’re coming back to the original sail plans.
“We’ve agreed we can have modern gear like deck hardware, things like that, just to keep it a bit more relevant, to make life a bit easier and keep the boats attractive to youngsters. We have the opinion that if they had it back in the day they would have used it. You can see the older boats, at different times, had different stuff. We figure that’s not a bad thing.”
Derwent class sailors frown on the idea of reefing. “The mains do have reefing points, but you’ll see that there’s not one picture of a Derwent with a reefed main, and we go out in almost anything. We definitely put them through their paces.
“At each Australian Wooden Boat Festival we have our World Championships, which is a bit tongue-in-cheek. We had a pretty nasty day last festival, six races over one day, no one ran a kite the whole regatta. It was pushing 30 knots at times, gusty westerly stuff. I think we started with seven boats and by the end of the day there were three boats left. We had a dismasting, we had people going in because they were worried they were going to be dismasted. There were collisions and start-line dramas. And yet though chaotic and a little dangerous at times everyone came in with smiles and stories and celebrated in true D class fashion!”
Gus is looking forward to the restored boats rejoining the Derwent fleet. “I’ve just had a big conversation with the Festival and a few owners who are having restorations done, and the shipwrights involved, to organise a sort of a ceremonial splashdown for a few of the boats in Kettering a week before the Festival.
“One of those four, MERMAID, was ‘rescued’ from Sydney by the Reid family, who also own MERLIN, which they’ve also just restored. They heard about MERMAID in Sydney. It had lost its mast and busted a few things inside, ribs and things. So they rushed up there with a truck and brought it back. That’s being done in Kettering at the moment by Tasmanian Shipwright Co. and should be ready to go by February.”
Gus’s own boat, GOBLIN, has been through the wars. “She got run over by a passenger ferry up near the Showgrounds during one of the regattas in Hobart in the 1950s. She sank and was refloated, which was pretty amazing.”
He helped local sailor Phil Myer restore GOBLIN after it was found in a dilapidated state in Cygnet. “He just wanted to save the boat and I did a bit of work on it near the end of the resto. I did the rigging and bits and pieces — helped him with the layout and getting it to sail properly. And I purchased it from him after that, which was pretty cool because all the hard work was done.
“That's what is so beautiful about the community around these boats, people with passion really want to see them thrive and continue racing for another 100 years! It also showcases the immense talent of our local shipwrights, they are what give our fleet life. There are more hidden away waiting to be restored. Not a huge number.”
The future is looking bright for Derwents. “We’ve got a couple of younger guys in Kettering who are passionate about it and have jumped on the bandwagon, and around Franklin the Wooden Boat School is involved,” Gus says.
“The upcoming AWBF Worlds should hopefully host up to 12 Derwents, something that hasn't been seen since their heyday. It’s a very special time for the class, we can't wait!”
