Australian Wooden Boat Festival

As a part of the Australian Wooden Boat Festival 2017, Hydrowood is proud to be the principal sponsor of the Dutch Wooden Boat Project.

Using Hydrowood Celery Top Pine which has been submerged for more than 30 years a team of young Dutch boat builders are on their way to Tasmania to participate in a unique project.

They’re travelling around the world to build a Dutch design sailboat (Bergumer Meer class) at the Wooden Boat Centre at Franklin, in Tasmania’s south. The Dutch Boat Project is a major highlight of the 2017 Australian Wooden Boat Festival, the largest of its type in the Southern Hemisphere. The 2017 festival is taking on a Dutch theme, marking 375 years since explorer and navigator Abel Tasman discovered the island, planting a Dutch flag on the land that would ultimately bear his name.

The aim is to exchange knowledge on shipbuilding and materials and to create the first Tasmanian-built Dutch monotype – a 16m2, an enlarged version of the BM using batten construction.

Using salvaged Tasmanian celery top pine, the Dutch team will finish the boat at the Shipwrights Village during the festival in Hobart – and then race it.

The team includes one teacher and six boatbuilding students from HMC Amsterdam and Rotterdam, a Wood and Furniture College.