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NEWS
Pittwater Wooden Boat School opens
Passion for the past fuels preservation for the futureInterest in wooden boats is experiencing a resurgence. Now one skilled enthusiast is seeking to share this passion for the past with the launch of the Pittwater Wooden Boat School in Mona Vale, Sydney.
An initiative of former film and theatre designer and self-confessed boat tragic, Larry Eastwood, the Pittwater Wooden Boat School will offer boaties and non boaties the chance to craft totheir own wooden boats from scratch or restore and maintain older craft using traditional boat-building techniques.
“This project really has been a labour of love for me,” says Eastwood, who lives on Pittwater’s water-access-only western foreshore.
“Wooden boats offer such beauty and joy for an owner but can also be challenging to maintain. What I wanted to do was demystify the 'how' of owning these types of boats but also to keep alive the art of boat building and preservation of a time honoured skill.”
The courses offered by the School are recreational in nature and focus on the fundamentals of boat building for both modern (strip plank, stitch and glue) and traditional (clinker, plank on frame) wooden boats.
Aimed at all levels of expertise, from teenagers to retirees, the courses can be undertaken as a solo project of the student's own choosing or as a group project that will vary from term to term.
The students will be guided through their project by professional shipwrights, Simon Sadubin and Ian Smith, both formerly of the Sydney Harbour Wooden Boats.
The courses are broken up into 10 weekly sessions conducted both by day and evening. A 10-week semester costs $825 including GST per student.
The school’s first intake of students commenced at the beginning of October, working on a range of projects including four new boats in build and a restoration of a 120-year-old Tasmanian dinghy.
Eastwood and the team hope that this venture will grow to include local schools and be a ‘destination’ attraction where families may come from interstate and overseas to discover the joys of sailing, kayaking and bushwalking in and around Pittawater, the Hawkesbury and its national parks.
For further information on the Pittwater Wooden Boat School and upcoming 2014 courses, go to www.pittwaterwoodenboats.com.au.
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Written byBoatsales Staff
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