About Us

The WBA NSW was formed in 1991 after a very successful wooden boat festival in Sydney organised by John Wood (Member No 1!).  The Association is incorporated under the NSW Incorporated Associations Act (registration No Y1364725) and is administered by a committee of 6-10 members (see below) elected at the November AGM each year. Membership hovers around 200, spread throughout NSW (and the world) but concentrated in Sydney.

The aim of the founding members was, and remains, to foster the enjoyment and appreciation of wooden boats and to encourage the continuation of associated skills, vessels and artefacts. The Association has no permanent facility and owns no boating assets; it is a vehicle for people to share their interest be that as an owner, operator, designer, builder, restorer, retailer, historian, artist, toolmaker, timber merchant, book seller or simply someone who just likes to look.

Items of general interest include large boats and tiddlers, square riggers and pulling boats, trawlers and work boats, sailing boats of all configurations, kayaks, lapstrake/clinker, carvel, cold moulded, epoxied ply or copper roves and nails, bronze fittings, rope work and rigging, paddles and oars, steam driven, petrol engines – Blaxland, Clae, Olds, Simplex and more exotic/ rarer ones, and so on. One member made a storage box for a cannon (see Hal Harpur 2016), complete with intricate rope handles straight out of The Marlinspike Sailor.