We are well into Hobart festival season now, something that would have been pretty unthinkable just a few years ago. Back in 2001, the only sign of life in mid-winter was the Antarctic Midwinter Festival, based on the traditional winter solstice.  How things have changed, with Dark Mofo, Festival of Voices and the Huon Valley […]

Now that we are past the shortest day of the year, I know all boat owners, and their crews, will be thinking about getting their boats ready for the coming season, and of course, the next MyState Australian Wooden Boat Festival!  It is great to hear that we have already received more than 120 expressions […]

Did you know that the early history of exploration in Antarctica was dependent on wooden boats?  Long before the era of ice-strengthened hulls and powerful diesel turbines, heroic Antarctic explorers pitted wooden hulls and sails against the ferocious winds and crushing ice of the polar seas. Most Australians are familiar with the striking images of […]

 A Herreshoff-designed 53-foot ketch built by Canadian tuna fisherman Douglas Baron in 1974 in Sidney, Vancouver, British Columbia will be featured at the 2019 MyState Australian Wooden Boat Festival. Originally called the Mercator, the renamed Wright of Passage Mercator completed four Pacific Ocean crossings from Vancouver to Hong Kong and twice from Hong Kong to New Zealand. In […]

It is an exciting exercise for each MyState Australian Wooden Boat Festival – choosing the design for the festival poster.  The accumulated collection of festival posters from1994-2017 represents some of the finest colloquial artwork in Tasmania, as local artists contribute to the record.  The posters have come in many styles and formats and each one […]

Now, here’s a great lounge room game you can play when it’s cold and raining and definitely not sailing weather outside.  Check out Off Center Harbor’s latest video release, The River Home. You might need a pen and paper, or be ready to hit the ‘rewind’ button, but the challenge is to name as many […]

We are well into Hobart festival season now, something that would have been pretty unthinkable just a few years ago. Back in 2001, the only sign of life in mid-winter was the Antarctic Midwinter Festival, based on the traditional winter solstice.  How things have changed, with Dark Mofo, Festival of Voices and the Huon Valley […]

There’s nothing like a good photograph to tell a story and over the years, there’s been many a story to come out of the MyState Australian Wooden Boat Festival.  In fact, that is one of the greatest assets we’ve got – a wonderful searchable library of stunning photography collected by the AWBF’s amazing cohort of […]