Hobart turned on some well received warm summery weather for us mainlanders during the boat show recently. Well worth the trip with boats of all types on display in the water and in the exhibition halls nearby (on the waterfront). A lot of salty old dogs roaming around with many years of experience in life on the water. I had only the Olympus em5 with 24-80mm (full frame equivalent) capturing these images. Every kind of watercraft was represented from super lightweight single seater kayaks and row boats to sea going yachts and ships reminiscent of the 'old days'.
Also represented at the Festival was the Wooden Boat Centre at Franklin offering short courses in boat building. A short tour of the facility gave us the low down on this craft and a little history as well.
Surprisingly few tools are required to build your own boat according to John, our tour guide. Some of the older tools are shown on display here. A course is around 7 weeks to complete. 2-5 people are taken for each group. At the completion of the course, one of the attendees are invited to buy the finished product if they like. Materials for a 12-14ft boat are around $7,500.
Most of the timber used to make boats in Tasmania come from the bottom of rivers. They are floated to the surface then processed (dried etc).
In the background is an old style motor boat as you might have seen in a James Bond movie. There are no straight straight panels in that example.
An explanation of what goes into the making of a boat - processes, types of timber etc. One of the boats recently built incorporates timber used around pipelines, cleaned up and recycled. New timber is at a premium.