Trying to learn more about wooden boat construction, I sought out the few remaining shipwrights in Perth.
I was lucky enough to find Aaron Woodall’s contact details, and visited him in his Henderson workshop. He was able to offer me a short-term job learning some tricks of his trade.
Aaron’s training came with a distinct Croatian influence. [...]

Today the local newspaper, Slobodna Dalmacija (Free Dalmatia), published a story about our plight to get our boat, the Labud, out of Arista Nautica’s shed.
It was a good article, describing how we want to use the boat to promote ‘real’ Dalmatian tourism.
Unfortunately it doesn’t mention the work I did for Arista Nautica and David Hicks [...]

David Hicks, of Arista Nautica and Arista Yachts, was questioned today by Croatian police in Split, regarding threats he made to us (Julie Morgan and Shane Braddock) on May 8th to harm us himself or use Ivica Viljac as a weapon.
David said on the day, “I want to scare you to protect my friends, Tim [...]

Whilst away on a trip this week I received a text message on Friday from David Hicks, an owner of Arista Nautica, who has been holding our leut, Labud, for several weeks, advising me I had some mail at my office.
After weeks of trying to approach Arista and deal with this issue respectively, David’s response [...]

The last two weeks have been a little disappointing – and between trying to fix the problems and run tours we haven’t had time to post regularly on the blog. Its written somewhere that bad news comes in threes – so hopefully we have good times ahead.

#1 – Time Out Croatia
We provided numerous pictures to [...]

Split’s a small town – almost 250,000 people – and the traditional wooden boat community is even smaller.
Tonka Alujević, our sea-faring friend and owner of Bonnie’s ‘favorite boat in the world‘, is also a journalist. The latest edition of Otvoreno More, the local nautical magazine, features her article on the Dani Hrvatske Male Brodogradnje (Croatian [...]

The finishing touches are being completed on the leut, including her name been painted on the stern. As mentioned previously her name, Labud – which means ’swan’ in Croatian – is a reference to the river which runs through Perth. From my parents’ house on the river the Swan Yacht Club can be seen. Its [...]

Split’s adventurous couple, Tonka Alujević and Alen Krstulović, last night presented the documentary for their last adventure – rowing and sailing their renovated 1936 2.9m guc (shown above) 550 nautical miles through France’s Canal du Midi, from the Mediterranean Sea to Atlantic Ocean, and finishing in Brest for the International Maritime Festival last year.

The [...]

The leut is close to completion, finally. All the benches and the galley are in, as is the engine. Currently she is being painted – mostly black. Traditionally boats were painted in whatever paint was at hand – all the available paint was poured into a big pot – so the end result was usually [...]

While in Australia we desperately seek and jealously protect any tiny thing that can have a ‘historical’ label slapped on it, in Croatia ‘history’ just exists. A short time ago I was walking along the waterfront at the shipyard and saw the sunken boat below.

Its now just another of the rusting hulks tied to the [...]