First St Ayles Skiff Boat regatta at All At Sea 2024 Maritime Festival event launches community-build project

Albany’s first regatta gala of Scottish-inspired, community-built boats will mark the start of the 2024 Maritime Festival with the race kicking off the build of the city’s own vessels. June 29 will see six St Ayles skiffs from across the State compete in a race around the Albany Marina breakwater in the City of Albany’s All At Sea Saturday event, after which members of the public get a turn having a row. First designed in 2009 in Scotland by Australian expat Iain Oughtred, the four-oared row boats were based on the design of a traditional Scottish Fair Isle skiff and built by volunteers, with the underlying ethos of “communities build boats, boats build communities”. The competing boats hailing from Augusta, Denmark, Freshwater Bay and South Perth make up more than half of WA’s skiff stock, with only 30 of the rare boats built across the country and just over 400 built worldwide. Albany Maritime Foundation will be adding two more skiffs to the ranks over the coming months, the first build to start in the Albany Boat Shed after the maritime festival and the second about two months after that. Co-ordinator John Gaunt said the process was a bit like assembling a very delicate IKEA flatpack. “The way it works is that you order the boat kit, which arrives in a flatpack with most of the bits inside it,” he said. “You then gather some volunteers and assemble the plywood planks upside down on a frame over the span of about six months, before flipping it over, which is when we’ll start building the second boat, using the frame of the first. “These are very beautiful things, not just an aluminium tinny on the side of the road — very much Popeye the Sailor or Pirates of the Caribbean which is a look that gives a strong connection to where we were nautically 150 years ago.” Mr Gaunt hopes the boats will be ready for the 2025 maritime festival and regatta, after which they will be available to hire recreationally. AMF already has a good few volunteers keen to assist with the building process of the skiffs, which will be done in several three-hour sessions a week, but Mr Gaunt says more are welcome to join. “At its core, this is a community project, so we want all sorts of demographics of people helping out,” he said. “We’ll take anyone who can make a cup of tea, sweep the floor or any fully qualified boat-builders hanging around. “We have people on board who have never picked up a piece of sandpaper or power tool before, so it’s a learning experience as well as social thing.” The regatta and project launch will take place at 10am on June 29 at the Albany Boat Shed on Princess Royal Drive, alongside a creative build-a-boat competition, cooking demonstrations, art workshops, educational displays and live entertainment.