The Australian Wooded Boat Festival was held in Tasmania over 4 days last weekend and is a bi-annual event celebrating our nation’s rich maritime heritage and culture and there is no doubt last weekends was the biggest and best. There were hundreds of boats of all types and sizes, enormous crowds and the weather was perfect.
There was everything from light weight canoes from Peter Ingram-Jones from Canoes & Lampshades who specialises in building products that are incredibly lightweight and strong to the magnificent barque, the James Craig built in 1874 and painstakingly restored by volunteers from the Sydney Heritage Fleet before relaunching in 1997.
There were many highlights during the event and a memorable one was the Quick ‘n’ Dirty Boat Building Challenge Race where teams of students raced against each other around Constitution Dock. The boats were built by the students over a 3 hour period a day or two before. The quality of the construction was high with a number of entries finishing the race still floating and in excellent condition.
Here are a few more images of the event.
Congratulations to all who organised and participated in the best festival yet.
– Peter
