GM’s Log – August 2016

Greetings, All

The 2017 Australian Wooden Boat Festival is taking good shape now, with just 5 months to go. Already, we have more than 260 expressions of interest for water berths, 11 feature vessels, 100 exhibitors and an exciting program laid out for the International Wooden Boat Symposium, supported by the Australian National Maritime Museum. We have an enthusiastic team working on the Dutch participation in next year’s event and some new ideas for the Shipwright’s Village and the festivities in Constitution Dock. We will be detailing all of these in the monthly newsletters leading up to the event, so don’t miss an issue as the festival draws nearer.

Antarctic Festival

In early September (8-11), we will deliver the Australian Antarctic Festival on the Hobart waterfont with guided tours for 900 Tasmanian school children and around 1500 members of the public. At the time of writing, tours on the Aurora Australis are sold out, but a few places for the French Antarctic ship L’Astrolabe are still available. There’s more to do than ship tours, of course, with an Antarctic film festival at the State Theatre, a huge Antarctic Expo in Princes Wharf No.1 (admission free) and a stunning Antarctic Photography Exhibition at TMAG’s Bond Store, among other attractions. AWBF, Inc. is proud to be the event contractor producing the Australian Antarctic Festival on behalf of the Mawson’s Huts Foundation.

In this month’s Blog/Newsletter, we’ll tell you about the Dutch Boat Builders Project, already underway in the Huon Valley, give you some details on the impressive line-up for the International Wooden Boat Symposium and tell you about of some magnificent additions to our list of feature Vessels at the 2017 Festival. And don’t forget: if you have a wooden boat story worth presenting to a subscriber list of 4,000 avid boat fans, do drop us a line!

Paul Cullen

General Manager