SLIP INN NEWSNewsletter from Armfield Boatshed and Slipway Goolwa

Chairman Rick Eylward 20 Billabong Rd, GOOLWA 5214

0428 254 821

Editor Dave Saunders 16 Oliver St, GOOLWA 5214

0417 019 748daswight@bigpond.com

APRIL 2013Hullo Folks,

The Wooden Boat Festival appeared to be a huge success and I, for one, thoroughly enjoyed it. With reference to said Festival, I would like to say a big thank you to all the volunteer raffle ticket sellers who sold all the tickets for our raffle boat in record time. The remaining tickets were snaffled up by midday on the Saturday. Well done chappesses and chaps and a special thank you to Roger for again regaling the crowds with his spruiking abilities.

On the way to the Festival on the Saturday I was accosted by a chap who claimed he was Welsh – he said his name was Rhiff Grease Jones and I believed him....you have to humour these people....anyway, he was looking for a Festival to open …. so I said why don't you declare this ere Wooden Boat Festival open as nobody else has turned up. He agreed that would be the best plan and than thanked me profusely – by the neck. After a short conversation, he said he could provide me with a book I have been seeking for years – you know the sort, Golf For Dummies, Microsoft Office For Dummies, Constructing Ocean Going Liners for Dummies etc. – as he had a rare copy of Ventriloquism for Dummies and was happy to lend it to me.

I am still waiting for the book. Hmm, I digress – painfully.

Meanwhile have a look at this handsome pair............

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On the subject of the Festival and the raffle boat, the lucky winner was presented with the lovely Guillemot a few weeks ago (see photo).........better start building the next one!

Ed.22April2013

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Griff buying a losing ticket

The lucky winners with Mike Duane

Chairman’s Report

We are hopeful that the progress towards incorporation of Armfield Slip and Boatshed will result in success soon. Many of the changes that are needed for the transition are well underway or have been completed.

The Wooden Boat Festival saw the Armfield Slip visited by more people than in recent years because of improved parking arrangements so that more passed on their way to the Festival site. We were pleased to have the enclosure of the veranda completed in time for the Festival to give us more room.

The visit by Alec Jordan was a great help with the early preparations to building the St Ayles Rowing Skiff as his business supplies the kits that we are using to build the skiff.

The involvement of Armfield in the Festival was probably not as much as in previous years. The raffle was very successful again with tickets being sold out before Saturday midday. The winner of the boat was very enthusiastic about owning the boat and made contact with Rob Hylton at Clayton who generously offered free sailing lessons as part of the first prize. We thank Rob most sincerely for his generosity in adding to the first prize as he did last raffle in 2011.

Peter Shipside attended the conference of the National Maritime Museum in Brisbane in March and presented a paper on the operation of Armfield Slip with particular reference to the restoration of wooden boats with a view to selling them to enable the group to raise very much needed operational funds. It is clear that all similar organisations are experiencing funding problems and Armfield appears to be the only one that has adopted this method of raising funds. There is an expectation that the 2015 conference will be held in conjunction with the 2015 Wooden Boat Festival.

Peter’s report to the group was appreciated and we thank him for representing Armfield and giving us a profile that will be added to in 2015.

Rick09April2013

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ARMFIELD SLIP AND BOATSHED STEERING GROUPPROGRESS REPORT MARCH 2013

On the 15th March the Steering Group received a response from the Chief Executive to our letter of 25 January. The letter indicates that the terms of the lease are being drafted and that we will receive a copy shortly. The letter also commends the stated objectives of the new association. These objectives will be applied to draft strategic plan to prepare the program for the next two years or so of activity. The development of an Armfield marketing plan will be the next on the list of tasks.

An application for incorporation has been submitted to the Office of Consumer and Business Affairs and we therefore expect the process of incorporation to be complete in the next week or so.

Progress has been made on logo and graphics for use by the association. We are grateful to Amanda Fairman for the donation of her time and expertise to this task. The various uses of the logo are being worked on at the moment so that the various needs of the new entity can be available once incorporation is achieved. This will include letterhead, clothing and preparation of signage to be used once the transition is effected.

The Steering Group is keen to ensure that the deadline of June 30 th is met for a range of reasons. In particular, timing is crucial to enable the procurement by the association of appropriate insurance cover for the coming year, as it is clear that requirements are quite different from those of Alexandrina Council.

Gary Coombes06April2013

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Following Peter Shipside's successful tour of Queensland, spreading the Armfield Slip Gospel according to Shippers, he has graciously supplied a summary of his presentation and his impression of the National Maritime Museums Council conference:

From the Slip to the Ship.

Now, which ship would that be? Well it could be the HMAS Diamantina on which I had the pleasure of staying for three nights, or it could be the Ship Inn where I attended a conference of the National Maritime Museums Council on behalf of Armfield Slip.

The Queensland Maritime Museum on the Brisbane river was host this year to the annual conference. They opened up the cabins on HMAS Diamantina, their main exhibit, to just a few of the delegates. This ship is a river class Frigate, built in Maryborough, Queensland, and completed in April 1945. She saw service in the Pacific theatre in World War 2 until peace came in August of that year. In fact the official surrender of enemy troopsfrom Nauru and neighbouring islands was signed on the quarter deck of this ship.

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HMAS Diamantina is the only one left of its class, one of 137 built around the world. After her naval service she was used as an ocean survey vessel before being donated to the Brisbane Museum where she is "moored" in the historic dry dock constructed in 1880. An audio tour gives visitors a comprehensive guide to the ship which is surrounded by boats of all descriptions, the latest exhibit being Jessica Watson's yacht, Ella Bache, in which she sailed around the world.

As luck would have it, my room mate aboard, Roger Cooper of the Holbrook submarine museum in NSW, had served on the third HMAS Sydney on her duties taking supplies and troops to Vietnam. By this time she had been converted from an aircraft carrier to a transport ship. Of course this has significance for us at Armfield Slip as we have the cutter from the Sydney. Roger started his navy career as a stoker, no coal on the Sydney, but his duties included looking after the spray injection units of the oil fired boilers. Later he went on to serve on HMAS Otway, an Oberon class submarine.

The conference was a full on affair, opened on the Thursday evening by Penelope Walmsley, governor of Queensland, with drinks and nibbles in the museum. On Friday morning we moved to the Ship Inn for a series of half hour talks by delegates from nearly every state. These were varied and informative, covering subjects from museum design and operation, to vessels included on the Historic Register. The state of various sailing ships around the world was another interesting subject, and of course, I had to fill in thirty minutes about our facility, Armfield Slip. I could have talked for longer but had to cut it short as time was at a premium. One aspect of Armfield that the audience found of interest was the fact that part of our fund raising is to restore and sell back into the community some of our wooden boats.

Pre-dinner drinks were taken on the deck of the Diamantina whilst presentations of certificates and burgees were made to the successful applicants of boats being listed on the Register of Historic Vessels. Saturday saw us continuing the half hour talks until morning tea, after which there was an open discussion on a theme for the next travelling exhibition to be staged by the national body. Many ideas were put forward, but I think the most likely will be one that highlights the movement of troops by sea in World War 1. This would coincide with the 100th. anniversary of the 1914-18 war.

More speakers followed with the conference finishing with a "national wrap" from around Australia, speakers from each state given just ten minutes each. An evening BBQ on the museum's lawns brought the event to an end.

Conclusions - well I learnt a lot which I hope I have passed on to the Armfield crew, and I made contact with like-minded people Australia wide. Geoff Braddock from the Oscar W. and I pushed for the 2015 conference to be held in Goolwa. This is likely to happen just prior to the next wooden boat festival.

Peter Shipside.18March 2013

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....and now, two emails re: Wooden Festival 2013 etc. submitted to this fine publication - one from Peter Reedman and the other from UK fans (declare our interest here.... and very close friends of the Ed and Ed's missus) reflecting on their experience of the Festival, Armfield and Goolwa in general:

from Peter Reedman:

The EditorSlip Inn NewsGoolwa

Dear Sir,

Despite some searching I was unable to locate an Armfield Display (except the raffle boat exercise) within the main concourse of the 2013 Wooden Boat Festival.

However, I do acknowledge that the Slip was open (at least on the Saturday) but it disappoints me to see that the organisation which started the Festivals and which is the only surviving tangible and practical example of Goolwa’s wooden boat heritage should be relegated to the backblocks where the most likely visitors would be those who have had to park between the Slip and the Yacht Club.

It disturbed me to see Armfield boats safely tied up “at home” when the “rest of the world” proudly strutted their stuff to show what they could do. Each of the boats which were sitting idle are of greater local historical interest than most of the boats on display.

Lotus, one of its kind, and a great restoration could have been proudly displayed.Untama, a locally built boat with an interesting and varied career in the local waters is also unique.

The Cutter, a part of Australia’s naval history is another worthy restoration of which the group can be proud.

Still langhuishing on a trailer Gladys (with the distinctive Armfield bow) is one of the very few original Armfield built boats surviving and could have made an interesting “awaiting restoration” display given her historical significance and the closeness to her original appearance an earlier restoration achieved.

My experience with the festivals is that the Armfield crew are seen as a “human resource” by the organisers which generally leaves little time for” Armfield only” involvement and I suspect that this has been the case this year.

However in view of the fact that the Festival has gone blatantly commercial my hope is that it will mean that the Armfield people will no longer been needed as volunteers which will enable them to spend the time presenting their achievements and explaining what their organisation is all about.

Sincerely

Peter Reedman. 03March2013

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and from Malcom and Norma Storey Chester UK :

The Wooden Boat Festival of 2013 was a huge success, at least from the viewpoint of two visitors from the UK. We are not Griff & Jo Rhys Jones, who made such a contribution to the Festival, and we are not the Scots who made off with the Rough & Ready prize. We are long-time friends of Sue & Dave Saunders, visiting them twice in Goolwa before fixing this trip to coincide with the Festival: we had heard a lot about the Festival, tried hard to win the raffle (in vain) and maintained our track record this year.

We did more than miss out on the Raffle Boat, beautiful as it was: we were welcomed into your community and allowed to enjoy the Festival as insiders.

Norma helped sell raffle tickets and the independence of the process is evidenced by our continued inability to win. I helped Dave move the Raffle Boat around and was then given my own job, though Peter Shipsides generously helped me: we scrubbed two year’s worth of pelican guano off the Armfield pontoons before they were moved to accommodate visiting boats. This isn’t something I normally do, as we don’t have many pelicans in the UK.

We do like boats and were welcomed (frequently) with the warm aroma of coffee as the Armfield guys mused on important matters……and boats. We saw the “New Armfield Wing” commissioned, we touched Hide Away and old boats “waiting for help”, we touched boats being restored and completed. Further, we stood in awe as Brian demonstrated his “caravan”: wooden boats are fantastic, but Brian’s machine was something special, attracting great interest, helped by the nonchalant way he described driving the contraption to Darwin through the odd forest fire. Further, many other Armfield people went out of their way to welcome us: we really appreciated your kindness…….and the Sunday breakfast!

As we travelled home for 25 hours in an aluminium tube, not a stately wooden boat, we thought about the things we were bringing home. First, we had a wonderful holiday with Sue & Dave in Robe, at their home in Goolwa and at the Festival: we just hope we can repeat it. Secondly, we appreciated the warmth of the Goolwa community in general and Armfield in particular: any attempt at a quick trip to the shops ended some hours later……..the shopping took 10 minutes, but everybody stopped to talk to everybody. Thirdly, we saw boats, we saw superb craftsmanship, we saw great ingenuity in fixing things but most of all we saw passion for craftsmanship. Finally, we brought the flag of the Lower Murray to Chester, UK: apart from Griff’s, ours must be the only other one here, where it hangs in our house so we see it every day, and we will fly it aloft on sunny days, as evidence of our welcome at the South Australia Wooden Boat Festival……we loved it!

Thank you all at Armfield and in Goolwa for making our latest visit so very special; we really do hope to return to see Sue & Dave……and you all…..and make off with the bloody boat!

Big thanks from Norma and Malcolm Storey, Chester, UK.10March2013

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ST AYLES SKIFF TAKING SHAPE

Following an approach from the Goolwa Wooden Boat Festival committee, Armfield Slip has undertaken the building of a St Ayles skiff.

With the building of the 21ft sea-going rowing craft Armfield has joined a world-wide competitive offshore rowing movement. The skiff is a simple, seaworthy boat supplied largely in pre-cut kit form and designed to make competitive rowing available to a wide cross-section of community groups.

It is hoped the Armfield boat, which is being funded by the Festival committee and local agent Robert Ayliffe, will be the first of several to be built in the Fleurieu area with a view to competition both here and interstate. One of the boats has already been built and is in use in Tasmania and other groups in Victoria are well down the St Ayles track.

A guest at the Goolwa Festival was the founder of the St Ayles rowing movement, Scot Alec Jordan, who told a group of interested parties that the boat was designed by expatriate Australian Iain Oughtred, who also designed the Guillemot dinghy which has proved such a successful raffle enterprise for Armfield. Mr Jordan said that the St Ayles skiff program began four years ago as part of the Scottish coastal rowing movement and already 40 boats had been launched in the UK withanother 26 under construction. Wordwide, 94 boats had been either built or were under construction and countries involved included the US, Canada and Holland as well as Australia. Racing regattas are organised among groups which have built boats. The double-ended St Ayles skiff is built from laser-cut plywood sheet components and is comparatively light at about 180kg. The boats are crewed by four rowers plus a helmsperson.

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A number of groups were in Goolwa to inspect the kit including the Port Fairey Oar and Sail group and were told boats could be built by amateurs and could be completed for an estimated $6500.

After a slow start due to the locking in of administration details – and the slow arrival of some key timber components not included in the kit – the skiff is now taking shape. The laminated inner stem and stern post are in place and have been glued to the double-layer keelson. At the time of writing planking is about to start.

The project is under the guidance of Mike Duane and the team which built the last raffle boat (with the exception of Ted Becket who has been co-opted to the Nellie program. He may be reclaimed…) Expect to see interested groups visiting Armfield to inspect the boat.

Bob Jennings

04April2013

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