Combined Clubs on Bancroft Bay

After forecasts which threatened gales and heavy rain, the morning arrived sporting blue skies and very gentle breezes. We gathered with a dozen or so old classic boats for a social sail and a sail past the Metung Hotel and the Metung Yacht Club. The event was sponsored by the Metung club in conjunction with the Gippsland Lakes Classic Boat Club. While the forecast weather trimmed the numbers of participants somewhat, the morning was a glorious celebration of being in the outdoors enjoying simples pleasures.

Pearl and Endeavour showed that the big muscle Couta boats can thrive in light conditions.

Thoroughbred Couta boats off Sorrento Victoria

Sorrento has maintained a fleet of these powerful sailing boats since the days of the fishermen, and an association now rules on their standards of sail and equipment. These pics are from the Sorrento Sailing Couta Boat Club and are of their first and second races of the Wooden Boatshop Series 2016.
I share them simply for the loveliness of the event...despite my own relative disinterest in racing of any sort, because I recognise that without organisations and competition there would be very few remaining of these beautiful boats.

Couta Boat restoration in Port Fairy

Garry Stewart is a fine professional boat builder, working on the Moyne River in Victoria's west, and he has recently restored this 20ft couta boat in what he describes as a refit and a new laid deck. This is quite small by 'couta standards but is a lovely no-nonsense hullform of rather beautiful proportions.

Garry wrote that she has a length of 20 ft, a  beam  of 7ft 6'' draft 2 ft 6'' and was  built by Peter Locke boatbuilder at Queenscliff around 1935-1940. She has a lug rig, centre case with 3/8'' steel centre plate, planking and ribs are New Zealand Kauri. The new deck is Iroko, new combings King Billy pine, and is powered by 20hp Volvo diesel.  He added that as she has lifting eyes for and aft she would have worked from Lorne or thereabouts on the Surf Coast where it was usual to lift boats onto the pier for storage between fishing trips.

'Castwood' (ex 'Dolphin') on the lovely jetty at Port Fairy

A 'Couta Boat on the lakes

Peter Medling of Paynesville came up with this picture of 'Pearl' built by Mitch Lacco in 1926 with a NZ Kauri hull and Queensland Beech decks. She was recently purchased and brought to the Lakes from Port Philip, I think...but I'll need to do a bit more digging for the details.

She is a powerful hull. Five up on the rails seem insubstantial. I am quite intimidated by the overhang of the boom!

I also include this pic from the early 20th Century of the jetty at Kalimna. The boat there is reputedly the one belonging to a well-known Melbourne business family, but it bears an uncanny resemblance to Beachcomber, whose origins and maker are still a bit obscure, despite lots of information.

 I recently spoke to a man whose lineage goes way back in this district and he claims that his ancestor was a likely builder of Beachcomber in the traditions of the French Canadian boats he learnt his trade upon before coming down to Oz. His name was MacMillan (a branch apparently unrelated to the explorer and pioneer in this area who has a very disturbing and unhappy reputation in his dealings with the local indigenous people ), and I'll be interested to find out more about him because the previous most likely builder has working dates that don't quite match Beachcomber's given history.

I keep an open mind on these things but glean anything I can by making these claims online and at dinners, and seeing what comes up...