The Living Boat Trust (LBT) is an incorporated non-profit community association based in Franklin on the banks of the Huon River in southern Tasmania. It aims to maintain traditional boat building, repairing, rowing and sailing skills.

We acknowledge the traditional owners and original mariners of these magnificent waterways in southern Tasmania; the Mellukurdee of Cygnet and the Huon, the Nuenonne of Bruny, Oyster Cove and NorthWest Bay and the Lyluequonny of Recherche Bay and the south coast and are honoured to have the Aboriginal community acknowledging and participating in our ventures.

The LBT has commenced courses on boatbuilding, boat maintenance, oar construction and tool making as part of our mission to promote skills and knowledge in things maritime, especially to do with traditional boats. Our first course started in January 2010 building an Iain Oughtred Acorn 12, a beautiful whitehall rowing and sailing skiff. It is now complete and the course has been an outstanding and thoroughly enjoyable success. The second, an oar making course run by John Young has completed with 10 sets of oars being made mainly by Franklin residents.

There are several other courses in the pipeline as well, making greenwood furniture, making wooden tools, building a wooden shaving horse, restoring a Huon Pine dinghy to mention a  few and all of these can be seen on our courses page. They are starting towards the end of July.

The workshop, which every Monday night is manned by enthusiastic volunteers, has been very productive. The fleet of Grebe dinghies that have been well used during the OWP have been regularly maintained. The little Huon Pine clinker dinghy Lady Jane is complete and has been sold. The Kontiki, an Uffa Fox designed Flying Fifteen, has been renovated and launched after many years out of the water. She was actually re-launched for the second time just recently, she took on water after being hit by a log during the winter while the Huon was in flood. In addition work has been done to the Capricornia, and most impressively, the cray boat Matilda was launched on 21 December 2009.

The Gretchen has been taken out of the water and is undergoing maintenance and will be a fully functional day sailer capable of overnight trips up and down the Huon. This delightful Atkins gaff rigged leeboard day sailer is a delight to sail and will be a useful addition to our fleet.

We have embarked on building a large 4.5 metre wide verandah along the northern side of our workshop. This will provide a welcome addition to our workshop workspace. It will allow more courses to flourish as well as increase the output of the workshop. It will be built in at a later date to accommodate meetings, catering, dinghy storage, etc in order to further enhance our activities.

The first inspection for the verandah is complete and concrete footings were poured on July 19 courtesy of Hazell Bros efficient service.

Pettit Hire have been transporting gravel for the walkway as well as the base material for the verandah. They used a small machine  to spread the verandah gravel. Pettit’s  continue to be staunch and practical supporters of the LBT and offer good advice as well as prompt and relaible service.

Conservation Volunteers Australia have been working away on the riverside pathway and spread the gravel supplied by Pettit Hire. They will also do some landscaping as well as dinghy maintenance and moving our pontoon.

Island Specialty Timbers have donated splendid 5’ x 5’ Celery Top Posts and we are very grateful for this generous community support. They will look very much in place in the next couple of weeks.

We have been successful in our application for a Hire and Drive licence from MaST and intend to commence formal dinghy hire in the near future. We trialled this enterprise recently  at the Derwent Valley Autumn Festival in New Norfolk and everyone enjoyed themselves. These boats are now for hire.

We will also be seeking approval to use the Capricornia for Egg Island tours, both initiatives are to help us meet the considerable insurance premium burden (namely public liability insurance)  we face and to enable us to continue some form of OWP over the coming year

The ladies rowing group is expanding and they are rowing on Monday evenings and now Thursday mornings. They are also in training now for the Swiftsure Regatta to be held in November 2010, rowing the Swiftsure early on Friday mornings.

As mentioned above we operate a fleet of magnificent and original wooden boats that are a feature of the Franklin foreshore. They can be seen here, and hire charges are available here. Most have been built by the LBT in co-operation with various of the Huon cluster of schools

Project Understorey is a long held dream of the LBT, the recreation of a Tasmanian coastal trader, canvassed in the strategic plan.

In addition there are adult education style weekends on learning sailing and camping skills in the magnificent surrounds of the Huon estuary and the D’Entrecasteaux Channel area. Photos of the last sailing weekend in April can be seen here.

The On the Water Programme (OWP) will be refunded this year thanks to the State Labour government who have upheld a pre-election promise to do just that. It looks as though there will be some changes to the programme. While some of the money will be spent in the same format as last year, we will also be targetting those students who wish to attain a basic yachting qualification by conducting after hours courses. We will also be suporting the Swiftsure Regatta in Novmeber this year and next.

We regularly run expeditions and our flagship expedition, the Tawe Nunnugah will be held again early next year, completing as the Wooden Boat Festival begins in Hobart. Once again it will be a major expedition with lots of little boats and many brave souls making their way over 10 days over the 120 miles to Hobart. Lots of lovely campsites, some with concerts at places like Cygnet and Alonnah, some with welcome to country such as at Cockle Creek and at Oyster Cove, all in beautiful and unique locations along this wonderful, historic waterway.

Previous Tawe Nunnugahs were held in 2007 and 2009 and were very successful events. Tawe Nunnugah means “to go by canoe” in the original Tasmanian language, which, contrary to general belief, is not lost and is being recovered by the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre.

There are other expeditions planned and many have already been held this year. In a ddition a “Swallows and Amazons” trip is planned for later this year to explore the lagoons at the southern end of Egg Island.