The Wooden Boat Shop is an Accredited Training Facility for apprentices in Marine Trades and over the years has trained around 50 shipwrights.

Have you cooked lunch for the Queen aboard a super yacht? While backpacking around Europe did you happen to spend a summer working in a lighthouse in the Scilly Isles? Perhaps you’ve worked as a rigger on a tall ship or have an unusual story of restoring a Viking Longship for a museum in Oslo.

Last Wednesday on the ABC’s “Art Show” there was in interview with Gemma Rasdall. She not only lives on a boat on Pittwater but works as an artist painting on Scotland Island often using old sailcloth as her canvass.

It’s so invaluable to have these cross hemisphere connections… so when I saw this great little story which covers all the things we at SWS feel are so important, youth involvement, environmental custodianship and female participation, then we felt we had to republish. And surely this is the worlds best looking sewage barge!

With the recent dramatic change of thinking on Australia’s next Submarine fleet, It’s apposite to look back a hundred years and perhaps learn something from history….

“Yay rich people doing a totally non-scalable thing to make themselves feel better!”…. OR….. “The human race is doomed to destroy our home, but it's better to go out trying to effect positive change than to throw up our hands in embittered despair.”

The truism that product lifetime “ain’t what she used to be many long years ago” is underscored by the Navy’s decision to fork out an eye-watering $90++billion on subs having a service life only ten years longer than its build-time.

We were one of 747 boats in the Douarnenez Festival and won the Marco Polo award for having travelled the furthest. We were treated like rock stars.

“For such a hunt to take place in 2021 in a very wealthy European island community just 230 miles from the UK with no need or use for such a vast quantity of contaminated meat is outrageous.”

Rob Read, COO at Sea Shepherd UK

We remember what we have heard or seen on the water when any number of situations arise on land, and are likely to say, “It is just like being on a boat.” Sailing is a metaphor for everything.

Traditional wooden boatbuilding and seafaring are integral to the long history of an archipelago of islands that became Indonesia. This is Australia’s northern neighbour that we sadly ignore except when making a holiday dash to Denpasar.

While re-reading Ian Fleming’s oeuvre recently, I seem to remember that my wife remarked… ”This is misogynistic crap” …and she’s probably right.

“Were a settlement to be made at Port Phillip, as doubtless there will be some time hereafter, the entrance could be easily defended. It is capable of receiving and sheltering a larger fleet of ships than ever yet went to sea, and the region has a pleasing and in many parts a fertile appearance.”

"If you can remember it, you weren't there", a phrase often used in connection with Woodstock, but equally applicable to the infamous Auscrew parties of the Admiral's Cup era of offshore racing

Jonathan, who becomes a father again at the age of 58, realises that he is not going to be around forever for his three-year-old daughter Phoebe. Despite his lack of practical experience, decides to build her a 10ft clinker dinghy in real wood, and in the space of a year. The result is, by turns, moving, funny and perceptive.

With the AFL frantically juggling to rearrange fixtures, this second story from Russell Kenery’s Book “Curious Voyages” is perhaps a reminder - in order to live our lives to the full, rather than just exist, we need to accept a certain degree of risk.

With all the justifiable doom and gloom around this week’s release of the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report I thought it would be good to think about what changes could be made in our area of interest.

In the second-hand bookshops I sometimes frequent, I’ve noticed that the “Maritime” section is often very close to the “Mountaineering” books. It’s not an alphabetical thing. I think it’s just that the bookshop owners believe that the two disciplines have a lot in common, (too much fresh air, an element of danger, isolation, fear etc) and so a potential shopper who is interested in one, might well be interested in the other.

Historic Workboats Are An Endangered Species, But This Little Tasmanian Has Remained Remarkably Intact For Over 100 Years. I’ve always been attracted to that place in sailing where working boats and sailing “yachts” intersect.

“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.”