boat Archives - Small Boats Magazine

Dutch Wooden Boat Festival

In 2024 we will do it again and again at the same time as the Jutterhaven Days. Those who ‘didn’t know anything’ about the previous festival and were a bit surprised: put on your brave shoes and COME! Above all, feel welcome!

Our new Festival will also take place at Willemsoord in Den Helder.

What is the Dutch WoodenBoat Festival?

The Dutch WoodenBoat Festival was first held in July 2019 as a Dutch festival for wooden boats.

This festival is not only an ode to the centuries-long wooden boat building tradition that boosted our economic development, but also to the warm feelings that many enthusiasts get when they see…

What is there to do?

Seeing and ‘experiencing’ wooden boats and everything related to them; meeting like-minded builders and paddlers, admiring all the beauty on and out of the water; exhibitors with various products related to wooden ships; presentations, speakers while enjoying food and music.
There is an ABBA, the Amateur Boat Construction Award. A boat is even being worked on. The boat building schools do demonstrations.
We want a second hand market on Saturday, model builders at the weekend, youth activities?

In addition to this festival, there are also the Jutterhaven Days on Saturday and Sunday: a nice market with old crafts, street theater, music, catering, a nice initiative by Willemsoord BV.

Friday starts with the annual Botterrace, for the 15th time in 2024. Check out the Heldersebotters.nl website

How can I register?

It is a low budget event, but participants with a boat or companies that want a stand must register by sending an email to [email protected].

Visitors have free access everywhere, along the quays in the halls, the workshops and they can possibly visit the ships after approval by the owner.

Texas 200 Race

The 17 th Annual Texas 200 will be held from June 10-14, 2024. After a number of years doing a 6-day event, this year we’re going to do this thing in 5 days. Our theme this year is “Back to Basics”. Nothing fancy. No gimmicks. No alternative routes. No new camps. Just five solid days of sailing with new friends and old, to a set of tried and true camps that have all been used on this event several times.

The Texas 200 is a “Raid”-type event; that is, it involves a scheduled gathering of small boats traveling more or less in company from Point A to Point B over a period of several days, camping along the way. The Texas 200 goes through the Laguna Madre and the bays of South Texas for five to six days and about 200 miles. Shallow draft boats will have options in terms of routes through the bays, while deeper draft vessels will spend more time in the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW). For any who may be unfamiliar with the ICW, it follows the Atlantic and Gulf coasts from New Jersey to the southern tip of Texas, providing a more or less protected waterway of canals and bays for commercial barge traffic, an alternative to open ocean shipping.

The Texas 200 was established by Chuck Leinweber, founder of the Duckworks website https://www.duckworks.com/. Chuck competed in the Everglades Challenge (EC) several years ago, and wanted to do more of that kind of thing. The Everglades, however, are a long trip from his home in Texas. Chuck thought he could organize a modified version of the EC, right on the Texas gulf coast.

Kim Apel “A Californian Does the Texas 200”

What the Texas 200 is:
• A “rolling messabout” where people bring boats of all shapes and sizes and sail them on the south Texas coast.
• A moving, exhausting, endurance test of boat, captain, and crew.
• A chance to see areas of America rarely visited by man.
• An exercise in planning, preparation, and problem solving.
• A chance to make new friends and legends of the small boat world
Andy Linn “Texas 200: Embrace the Suck”

The 2024 Texas 200 will be held the second full week of June 2024, which means a start date of Monday, June 10th. Additional information including the start point, finish point and all camps, will be published on our website on or about January 1, 2024.

Man Who Crossed Bering Strait in Dinghy Deported from Russia

Posted on February 4, 2019April 21, 2020 by Anne Bryant

John Martin III had originally been planning to sail to China aboard his 8′ Walker Bay dinghy, but he ended up in Russia two weeks after his departure. He’s now been deported about six months after his arrival, and has written blog entries about his time there.

Many people sharing this story or reading the background have found that Martin’s past is both complicated and dramatic. From a small-boat standpoint, he’s very lucky to have had a safe arrival and a safe deportation from Russia, but it also demonstrates how boats are taking care of us probably just as much as we’re taking care of them.