Australian Wooden Boat Festival: They are coming…
by AWBF 30 May 2018 06:21 BST
8-11 February 2019
MyState Australian Wooden Boat Festival © AWBF
The list of boats and their owner signing up for the 2019 MyState Australian Wooden Boat Festival continues to grow. With expressions of interest (EOIs) open just over a month, we have received more than 60 applications already for Boats Afloat. There are some wonderful stories behind some of them (see our separate story on La Vie en Rose).
There was this Kiwi, you see, who walked into a boatyard in America and ordered a boat for delivery to Australia... No, that's not the start of a long joke, but a real story from the North West School of Wooden Boatbuilding, where Chief Instructor Sean Koomen tells us he's completing work on a new Dark Harbour 17 (26' LOA) for shipment to Hobart in February 2019. New Zealander Kere Kemp is the owner, and a graduate of the school, who wants to display the new boat at the festival. Going by the elegant lines and exquisite craftsmanship, it will be a star attraction.
Meanwhile, in Victoria and New South Wales, there's excitement growing around plans to bring the Couta Boat Nationals to the River Derwent in time for the next festival. These classic Victorian fishing boats have undergone a renaissance in the past two decades and new-built examples are building up a fleet of fast, enjoyable sailers with a competitive edge. We've seen many examples at previous festivals, but there's nothing like the excitement of organised racing and we've got just the place to do it.
But it's a long, wet sail from Sydney to Hobart in an open boat, so how do you get your couta boat from there to here? Well, you put it on a flatbed, don't you!
Over in South Australia, the Friends of One and All are working hard to convince the South Australian government to let them take this magnificent two-masted tall ship on the journey from Adelaide to Hobart for the 2019 AWBF. What's stopping them? Risk management, apparently.
While the ship does short cruises in its Port Adelaide backyard, the dangers of actually going to sea have so far proved too much for the bureaucrats. It may have sailed from Rio de Janeiro to Sydney for the First Fleet Re-Enactment, but they say the Bass Strait is just too scary a step. We would like to point out that if that were the kind of risk-avoidance regime in place back in Colonel William Light's day, there wouldn't be an Adelaide! Good luck, Friends of the One and All – we'd be delighted to have you back.
www.australianwoodenboatfestival.com.au