The News, Culture and Practice of Sailing woodenboats
in Australia, New Zealand & The South Pacific.
Fishing/Racing Relationships
These boats have an inherent integrity because they are are shaped by the vernacular of their allotted challenging task. Even as the pilot cutters of Western England (or the Couta boats of Port Phillip) have become pleasure craft, they have carried with them an honesty of design that is missing from boats shaped purely by the need for speed, or more recently, three double cabins and two heads.
a Film from Either side of America
Two very different but equally interesting films have landed on the desk (laptop) at SWS this week. One from The heart of East Coast US wooden boat land, Maine. The other from Pacific North West.
SOUTH PASSAGE- a microcosm of life ashore
South Passage’s reason for being is sail training, a term which, these days, is lost on many people. To para-phrase Irving Johnson: sail training is not about preparing young people for a life at sea; rather, sail training uses the challenge of voyaging on a sailing a ship to prepare young people for life.
Schooner Music
In the months just before and after 1969, as clean-cut crooners and girl bands and Motown acts gave way to long-haired singer-songwriters who filled football stadiums, the Great American Songbook tilted on a fulcrum. At the center was a mustachioed scamp with sparkling blue eyes – and a wooden ship designed 40 years earlier by the great John G. Alden.
The Bigger the Rig, the Harder it Falls
“It is an unforeseen circumstance. No one trains to have a giant mast break on a schooner. Everyone acted with professionalism. Everyone was doing the best they could with the gifts that they had.”
schooner henrietta
In 1941, the ashes of a master mariner from Massachusetts were scattered at sea over the shipwreck of his schooner in Port Phillip Bay. The site is the mile wide reef extending off Point Cook just 7NM from Williamstown. He had sailed from Cape Cod to Sydney arriving in 1938.
an American schooner on Kangaroo Island
Now, 216 years later, the INDEPENDENCE is again taking shape on the shores of American River and the men involved have had to use as much craftsmanship and ingenuity as the crew of the Union to get it done.
A Death Defying Voyage of Pleasure
Lone sailor Bernard Gilboy’s small boat voyage, in 1882, was perhaps the most daring undertaking on the world’s biggest ocean. Yet, when departing San Francisco, the Customs Certificate read, “starts on a voyage of pleasure for Australia.”
Help Needed! Naming the Schooner
“I have included a photo taken from leeward just after the start with MORNA leading the fleet, SAGA is just to windward of her, but further to leeward and astern of MORNA is a staysail schooner with a wishbone rig on the foremast.”
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