Flotsam & Jetsam 13.03.26
Third Best Festival in Australia
We all know that really it’s the best, but the AWBF’s recognition as the bronze medal winner in the Major Festivals and Events category at the 2025 Qantas Australian Tourism Awards is something that both participants and organisers to be proud of. The two festivals rated above the AWBF were the Canberra Flower show, Floriade, which attracts half a million visitors and the Adelaide Fringe, Australia's biggest arts festival and the world's second-largest annual arts festival (after Edinburgh).
Tall ships sail on the River Derwent during the Australian Wooden Boat Festival in Hobart, Tasmania.
Credit: Australian Wooden Boat Festival / Stu Gibson
The national recognition follows AWBF’s double Gold win at the 2025 Tasmanian Tourism Awards in the Major Festivals and Events and People’s Choice categories and places the Hobart-based festival among Australia’s leading events.
“We’re incredibly proud to see the Australian Wooden Boat Festival recognised on the national stage,” said AWBF General Manager and Festival Director Paul Stephanus. “While some may think it’s a niche gathering for wooden boat devotees, the AWBF has grown into the largest celebration of wooden boats and maritime culture in the Southern Hemisphere, with each festival building on the last. This recognition belongs to the passionate community behind the festival — our staff, volunteers, boat owners, partners and supporters.”
Born in 1994 from a shared love of wooden boats, AWBF has become the Southern Hemisphere’s premier celebration of wooden boats and maritime culture and Tasmania’s largest free festival.
Crowds gather during the Australian Wooden Boat Festival in Hobart, Tasmania.
Credit: Australian Wooden Boat Festival / Ben Wilkinson
Today, the biennial event extends well beyond the waterfront, featuring an expanded arts program of exhibitions, films, theatre, music and family-friendly fun alongside its much-loved flotilla of wooden boats. The 2025 festival attracted over 56,000 visitations across four days, with participants and guests travelling from across Australia and around the globe.
The 2027 AWBF will be held 5–8 February 2027 in Hobart, Tasmania.
What we at SWS find most significant about this award, is the evidence that the values of the wooden boat craft and custodianship have grown beyond the niche little world of a few private boat owners, into grass roots communities the length and breadth of Australia.
Inverloch Classic Dinghy Images
Photographs by Ian Taylor from last month’s Regatta are now available for viewing on line, or for purchase. By All reports another successful edition of this growing community event. Here’s a few samples.
Unreserved- 53ft Timber Converted Trawler
While the Australian housing market is experiencing continued price growth, with capital city dwellings in the first 10 weeks of the year increasing 11.5% in annual terms, the option to live (or holiday) on the water is becoming more realistic day by day. While there’s obviously a lot of work that can be done here, there’s also the potential to own a characterful floating home on the trending central New South Wales coast for next to nothing! KYLIE RHI is not for everybody, but with the right adjustments she could certainly provide a lifestyle that many land lubbers would be envious of.
She’s going up for auction and bidding will start on Wednesday, 25 March 2026 will end on Tuesday, 31 March 2026 2pm AEST…. And there’s no reserve.
For more information contact Adrian Seiffert 0418 783 358 adrian@marineauctions.com.au
INGLIS
And while we are talking about low cost oppertunities, here’s a fun little boat looking for a new custodian. Brian Broxham writes on the " Wooden Boats of Tasmania" Facebook group.
If anyone is interested in a project, there is a rather interesting little yacht currently in Wynyard whose owners need to move her on and would be happy to see her go to a good home at a low negotiated price.
The vessel is INGLIS, she was built at Launceston by the famous Edwin Jack yard in 1929 probably for Dr G J Walker of Wynyard who was definitely owner in the early 1950s when she competed in several races between Stanley and Wynyard (winning the small boat division race in 1951). For 70-odd years she has been owned by members of the Stutterd family of Wynyard.
INGLIS was for a short period in the late 1950s a licensed fishing boat when her dimensions were recorded as 26 x 8 ft. In design she is very much a large northern Tasmanian cod boat - or a small couta boat, with a full-height cabin now over the originally open midships cockpit, built into the original coach-house forward. Still has I believe a 6-cy Rugby Continental petrol engine.
Although rather run-down after being out of the water since 2012 she appears to be structurally OK and a basis when restored for quite a nice and usable craft.
Copy Writing Done Well
I’m a big believer that good copy writing goes along way to selling old boats. And I don’t mean hyperbole laden promises, aimed at trying to impress people who don’t know what they really want. All you can really hope for is to make the boat sound interesting enough to arrange a visit in the flesh.
That’s why this advertisement from the Northwest Maritime Center’s (Portland, Oregon) for sale pages, made me smile, telling it how it is, with just the right amount of humour. And above all… It sells the romance not just the hardware.
MAHIRIYA is a Thomas Colvin Schooner. How many opportunities do you get it own a real schooner? No, you won’t fetch the windward mark before the others at the Shipwrights Regatta. But racing is for dentists, boats with rod rigging, and for people who like to yell. You would rather catch an outgoing tide, a sweet southerly, and fetch up in a little cove up north in the Islands. Now and again you pop below to put a few sticks in the fire. Maybe even bake a batch of biscuits in that adorable little oven. After a day in the wind, with the hook down, your snug little cabin is warm and dry the way only a real fire can make it. Take your ease on one of the settees, pour a glass of your favorite and learn to tie a mathew walkers knot for a new set of lanyards to rove through the dead eyes of your own schooner.
MAHIRIYA, is 36’ on deck and 42’ overall. Mahogany over oak frames. She sports a little separate aft cabin, a huge cockpit and a comfortable main cabin with full headroom for average sized persons. Her rig is all dead eyes, gaff sails and pin rails. Everywhere you look is a little piece of bronze. Yet she is not so full of herself as to overlook the practicality of a glass over ply deck.
MAHIRIYA is looking for a dedicated care taker. For more information contact, David david@nwmaritime.org
And there’s plenty of other interesting offerings on their pages. Take a Look
Escale à Sète 2026
If you are heading to Europe soon you might want to have a look at this event. It’s news to us at SWS but sounds like its well worth a visit.
From March 31 to April 6, 2026, the port of Sète will host a new edition of Escale à Sète, which in fifteen years has become one of the largest gatherings of maritime traditions in the world. An entire week dedicated to the heritage, know-how and culture of the sea, confirming the event's status as an essential reference in the Mediterranean.
Launched in 2010 as a one-day event with around 50 boats and 10,000 visitors, Escale à Sète now brings together over 120 ships, old and new, and attracts almost 300,000 visitors, thanks to the commitment of over 400 volunteers.
The 2026 edition promises to be exceptional, with the presence of a number of internationally renowned tall ships. Among them :
Étoile, Nave Italia, INS Sudarshini, Belem, Vera Cruz, Florette, Phoenix, Santa Maria Manuela, Pascual Flores, Nao Victoria, as well as "Espérance", the last beef ship in the Mediterranean.
Read on HERE
Hald and Johansen Update
One of our most popular artilve from the first couple of years of SWS was the story of the Danish boat builders in Sydney in the 1960s, Hald and Johansen. Greg Dwyer, the author of the piece was kind enough to give up a short update this week.
Postscript: # 1 Tup is now back on Sydney Harbour - and renamed as such. Her new custodian moors Tup at Birchgrove, and is a member of the Sydney Amateur Sailing Club, where she was during my ownership. H&J Twister Casuarina and Folkboat Vivienne Marie also sail out of SASC. #2 The Trade-a-Boat advertisement for the "Folk Boat Stella" was among the papers sent to me by Johansen's nephew - so I assumed it to be a H&J build. But given the reference to Foster it may be that the builder was Alf Jahnsen. As far as I know Alf Jahnsen's sons worked with him, and of course Hald and Johansen were uncle and nephew, not brothers
Classic Regatta Calendar
Classic Boat Magazine has published a comprehensive guide to the European Classic Racing schedule.
Summertime and the living is easy – or so they say. But it’s also regatta season in the northern hemisphere and the quays and pontoons are alive with the sound of tapping halyards and rustling sails as great fleets of yachts emerge from hibernation to shine. The world of the classic regatta can seem esoteric, but it a surprisingly broad church and one that is growing in number and popularity. As Jonathan Dyke puts it, “not that long ago there were, perhaps, three dedicated events, our own Suffolk Yacht Harbour Classic Regatta, the British Classic Week and Falmouth Classics.” Now, as we will see, there are dozens, taking in everything from motorboats and dinghies to rustic working sail regattas such as the Looe Luggers where you might spend the evening sipping on warm ale while discussing the niceties of pilchard fishing and the merits of Stockholm Tar.
The flipside is the opulent silliness that is shoreside at Les Voiles de St Tropez. Here, warm ale is replaced by champagne. Great herds of Birkenstock-shod sailors prowl the narrow alleys of Saint- Tropez, their white chinos and monogrammed linen shirts glowing luminous. Meanwhile on the waterfront, a bevvy of half-naked women draped in jewellery throw shapes on a stage so bedecked in gold that even Donald Trump might blink. For all the diversity and madness, the stars of the show are always the yachts themselves and the vast and varied range of classic events that make up the rich tapestry the classic boat scene is. Summer is the time to fully celebrate this.
Puig Vela Clàssica Barcelona Regatta – Hallowe’en. Credit: Nico Martinez
I think that we here in Australia and New Zealand, are now grown up enough to have our own Comprehensive Calendar of Classic Yacht Racing Events. SWS is, over the next few weeks going to have a crack at compiling one. I’m sure we know about most of the big ones, but if there are some local events out there that slip under the radar then let us know and we’ll include them.
Puig Vela Clàssica Barcelona start line. Credit: Nico Martinez
Jean-Louis Boglio’s Maritime Books
This Maritime literary institution based in Cygnet Tasmania is one of the unsung gems of the wooden boat world. Thanks goes to Charlie Salter for pointing out to us, Jean-Louis’ latest catalogue, dated March 12th.
Here’s four of my favourites, all well worth a read.
COLES, K. Adlard
HEAVY WEATHER SAILING
$20.00 AUD
Adlard Coles Limited. London. 1967. 1st Ed. 304 PP with over 53 figures (maps and diagrams), plus 24 pages with 28 b/w photos. Fp: "Cohoe III" at the start of the Fastnet Race, 1957. Eps: A freak wave, thought to be 60 ft. high. Hard cover, top edge tinted, dj (price clipped). Stamp of the Maritime Museum of Tasmania on front endpaper and recto of frontispiece. Sellotape marks on endpapers, otherwise a very good clean copy. 25.3 x 18.5.
FOX, Uffa
ACCORDING TO UFFA, Handling Sailing Boats
$30.00 AUD
Newnes. London. 1960. 1st Ed. 174 PP with b/w illustrations (maps, plans, ..), plus 24 pages with 22 b/w illustrations (1 chart and 21 photos). FEP: The Clyde. REP: The Solent. Hard cover, dj (price clipped). Light foxing, o/wise a fine copy. 22.2 x 14.5.
How to sail and how to care for the sailing boat, mast, rigging, sails. The elements: sea & wind, and their effects on boat design and performance.
HAYTER, Adrian
SHEILA IN THE WIND, A Story of a Lone Voyage
$35.00 AUD
Hodder and Stoughton. London. 1959. 1st Ed. 319 PP, plus 8 pages with 9 b/w Illustrations (portrait and 8 photos). Fp: Portrait of Adrian Hayter, by Maureen Connell. Eps: Map with route taken by"Sheila II" between Southampton and Nelson in New Zealand. Cloth cover, gilt title on spine, dj (price clipped). Sellotape marks on edges of dust jacket. Foxing spots on outside edges, o/wise a very good clean copy. Scarce. 22 x 14.5.
A wonderful single handed voyage that took 6 years.
STEPHENS II, Olin J.
ALL THIS AND SAILING, TOO - An Autobiography
$45.00 AUD
Mystic Seaport Museum. Mystic, Connecticut. 1999. 2nd printing of the 1999 original. 280 PP with 73 b/w illustrations: 12 plans and 61 photos. Hard covers, dj. Fine (as new condition). 26 x 21. 9780913372890
And it’s flattering to see “Chew” coming just before Chichester and Childers in the alphabetical listings!