Continuing my series from the Australian Wooden Boat Festival is the mast of the Enterprize, one of the ships participating in the Festival. It was raining quite hard at the time so difficultto keep the lens dry (hence the blury bits)

Getting your two dogs on to a boat can be difficult as i watched this man lift one and then the other onto the boat

Continuing my series from the Australian Wooden Boat Festival, this time of a familiar site on the Derwent, that of the Ferry Cartela.

Thanks to a pamplet that i got on board i have quite a detailed history:

The SS Cartela was designed and built at Purdon and Featherstone’s ship yard in Battery Point for the Huon Channel Peninsular Steam Ship Company to Carry both freight and passenger services.

The hull is made of New Zealand Kauri with framing of Tasmanian Blue gum and the upper deck is made of Huon Pine. When launched in 1913 she was powered with a set of triple expansion steam engines that gave her a top speed of 13 knots. Since her launch she has continually operated from the same birth on Brooke Street Pier and is the oldest continually registered commercial passenger vessel in Australia

Cartela was the largest of a fleet of steamers that serviced the Huon River, DÉntrecasteaux Channel and Tasman Peninsula taking between four and six hours when the equivalent road trip could have taken several days.

Cartela was on the river when Sir Douglas Mawson left for his Antartic Exploration and towed the James Craig to Recherche Bay in 1925.

In 1951 the ownership of the Cartela changed andin 1958 she was converted to diesel power continuing to be used for river transport and carrying apples from the Tasman Peninsula until the late 1950s and Huon Island until the mid 1960s.

She continued limited regular services on the Derwent until the partial collapse of the Tasman Bridge in 1975 where the Cartela provided a regular link for commuters to and from the Eastern Shore and Hobart.

Cartela is still in operation today for functions andcharter operations.

In 2013 it is planned to fully convert the Cartela back to steam in time for its centennial anniversary at an estimated cost of A$5 million dollars. The Cartela Project Trust is to be established in June 2009 and will be seeking financial donations and volunteers.

It wasn’t just boats on display at the Australian Wooden Boat Festival, there were displays of everything from machinery to whale skulls (as part of a display on whales and whale beaching).

A shot of a small part of the rigging of the James Craig. The total length of rigging on the vessel is approximately 19.5 kilometres!

This grand vessel is the James Craig. Built in Sunderland, England it was launched on the 18th February 1874 and orginally named the Clain Macleod until taking it’s present name in 1905. It was abandoned and later sunk in the early 1930s in Recherche Bay Tasmania and refloated in 1972 and again 1973. It arrived back in Sydney and at the cost of around $A22 million was restored to its present glory.

I remember seeing this ship for many years tied up at the gunpowder wharf being restored sufficiently to be towed to Sydney as a child.

Continuing my series of photos from the Australian Wooden Boat Festival is a shot of a wooden dingy, one of the participants in the event.

It is a busy time at the Port of Hobart with the Australian Wooden Boat Festival under way, HMAS Stuart and cruise ships calling and creates a dilema of what to post first! In the end I decided to go with the Wooden Boat Festival.

About the Festival. Hobart is the home of the Australian Wooden Boat Festival which runs over four days and features wooden boats and ships of all sizes and includes entertainment, demonstrations, displays and races.