Michael Chittenden
BRITANNIA, an 18-Footer built in 2002 to replicate a 1919 boat now in the Australia National Maritime Museum, is one of the iconic Sydney Harbour types that Ian Smith has built. Here, incredibly, she flies the smaller of her two rigs, with a period-correct spinnaker and a ringtail that extends the mainsail’s leech.
Ian Smith of Sydney, Australia, eats, sleeps and breathes wooden boats. He has built them for clients as a profession and also for himself. He has taught other people how to build them. He has raced aboard them, most notably with his faithful replica of a famous Sydney Harbour 18-Footer BRITANNIA of 1919, which is now in the collections of the Australian National Maritime Museum in Sydney. He has cruised extensively along the east coast of Australia in a succession of his own boats. And even while he was working 40 hours per week as a boatbuilder and running his own business, he founded the Sydney Wooden Boat School for evening and weekend classes. He has written books, made videos about wooden boat construction, and taught hundreds of first-time boatbuilders the fundamentals of the craft.