With 504 registered wooden boats, the 13th MyState Bank Australian Wooden Boat Festival added a host of new attractions and welcomed a major presence from North America, as the Northwest School of Wooden Boat Building sent a team of qualified shipwrights to Tasmania, most of them visiting Australia for the first time. Their goal was to build an American boat, the Haven 12.5 (a Joel White evolution of a classic Herreshoff design) using Tasmanian timber supplied by Hydrowood, at the Wooden Boat Centre in Franklin, 45 minutes south of Hobart.

The team arrived in December to a warm welcome from the residents of this picturesque little port town on the Huon River. As the crew of eight got to work, plans unfolded for a revitalised Shipwright’s Village in a new location, a ‘Small Stages’ program that presented specialist woodcraft skills and a Wooden Boat Film Festival that played to packed houses. A photography competition sponsored by Specsavers and an unexpectedly popular display of ships-in-bottles added to the attractions of the four-day festival program. The National Maritime Museum again hosted the International Wooden Boat Symposium, with a stellar cast of presenters from the USA and Australia attracting overflow audiences at the University of Tasmania’s Dechaineux Theatre. The magnificent HM Bark Endeavour, the James Craig, Soren Larsen and Adelaide’s One and All led the tall ships fleet. With Steve Knight as Chairman of the Board and Paul Cullen directing the festival, the organisation celebrated 25 years of this enormously popular community event.

Dimensions: A2 size. 420mm x 594mm