The Wooden Boat Association of Victoria

The Wooden Boat Association of Victoria is a friendly, warm and welcoming association that was formed in 1989 for people who enjoy wooden boats and wooden boat building. This year is our twentieth anniversary, where we celebrate the diverse breadth of interest that our members both past and present have always had for wooden boats of any shape or size.

The Wooden Boat Association of Victoria has always taken great pride in the way that we welcome anyone who has an abiding interest in wooden boats. Members appreciate wooden boats for their aesthetic qualities, the inherent beauty of handcrafted wooden boats and the materials from which they are constructed, and the pure romance of wooden boats. In an age of mass production, each member’s wooden boat is truly as individual as her owner.

Membership is open to all wooden boat enthusiasts. Most members own boats, others do not, but we all enjoy the chance to get together and mess about in boats. Our boats include rowing boats, putt-putts, Couta boats, radio controlled models, pond yachts, canoes, kayaks, steam-powered boats, sailing dinghies, dayboats and ocean-going yachts. Members without boats are able to use the Association's own trailer boats, two traditional sailing boats, the Begonia and Lindsay Symons, and the canoe Stringybark.

Whilst our Association is based in Melbourne, at the Albert Park Yacht Club on the Albert Park Lake, we also have a branch on the Gippsland Lakes, catering for wooden boat enthusiasts in East Gippsland. We like to spread the word about wooden boats in print as well. We publish Watercraft, a quarterly journal with news and articles about events, boats and people across Australia and around the world, and Shavings, a monthly newsletter that brings together timely news about wooden boat events and activities in Victoria. We also cater for armchair enthusiasts and members who want to carry out nautical research, with our extensive and growing library of boatbuilding and other nautical books.

The Wooden Boat Association of Victoria has sister associations in every other state and territory of Australia. We are proud to be associated with the inaugural Melbourne Wooden Boat Festival in 2010.