Wooden Boat Association NSW Meeting - tonight

[The Bigfella]

Anyone coming? No idea of who the guest speaker is - but I've never seen a dud one. Some of the best have been when the speaker doesn't show and an old-timer gets up for an impromptu one.

I'm going.

[Wooden Boat Fittings]

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Hope you enjoyed it, Ian....
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[The Bigfella]

It was a bit of a quiet one. When his two speakers couldn't make it, he should have done what they did last time I was there and they had a last minute speaker drop out. That time they handed the microphone to one of the old codgers - oops, elder statesmen - and said - tell us abut your life with wooden boats. It was fascinating.

One interesting tale that did get told last night was by one of the guys who did the 1970 Sydney Hobart - which had worse weather than the killer race in '98. They were hit by a 95 knot 2+ day gale - but survived better because they were further down, off Bicheno. The boat he was on had 10 on board - 7 of whom were below for 2 days being violently ill. He was on deck with the other 2. They couldn't go below at all because of the stench (without going into the gory details). The cleanup involved bucketing water in from outside .... There were half a dozen of a new class in the race - 42 footers - all of which experienced major delamination problems too.