Winning the Sydney Hobart with a wet well.

Here’s the latest film from the team at the Australian Wooden Boat Festival. If you haven’t yet booked your trip to the 2023 event, get onto it!

WESTWARD was originally designed and built to be a recreational fishing yacht, by Jock Muir, famous Battery Point boat builder. With an overall length of 42 feet, a beam of 12 feet and draft of  6 feet 6 inches, she was heavily constructed of one-eighth inch celery pine planking on laminated blue gum timbers, with eight inch centres and heavy blue gum stringers and deck beams. 

She started off as a new build for a Sydney owner that fell through, and she was purchased by the late George Gibson, former main sheet hand on KITTEWAKE from the cadet dinghy days. 

WESTWARD  had a roomy deck house which almost covered the self draining cockpit, and the deck was raised for the length of the cabin allowing more head room below. 

She  had a fairly long keel and a stern-hung rudder. This proved a boon when hard running under spinnaker across Bass Strait in a strong north-easter, gusting to 40 knots, while other competitors were dragging sea anchors and warps astern. She rated low under the RORC offshore rating and revelled in gale conditions – as indeed Jock did. 

On she went to win Maria Island Races and Sydney to Hobart Yacht Races.
Jock liked to remember WESTWARD as the only yacht with a fish well to win a Sydney to Hobart race. Her building virtually marked the start of Muir's Boatyard and her first race and handicap win kicked off Jock Muir's illustrious career as a blue water ocean racer. 

Jock classes WESTWARD's 1947 and 1948 Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race wins as two of the three greatest thrills of his sailing life. 
As a relatively small timber boat from Tassie, WESTWARD has travelled a fair few nautical miles since launching in 1947. Since 2010, she has been in the very capable hands of the Maritime Museum of Tasmania.