The Open Boat

The book

Folklore says the 18-footers grew out of Sydney's working boats. Ian Smith set out to find whether they did. Part one, nearly 30,000 words researched chiefly from old newspapers, runs from the regatta of 1827 and the centreboard yacht Presto of 1854, through the hired boats of the 1880s, the canvas dinghies and the other open-boat classes, to the 18-footers' emergence in the 1890s, the widening of the Sydney boats, the loss of the heel, Aberdare's seven-foot beam and, briefly, the split of 1935.

Part two shows how the boats were built, from lofting to launching. It follows Smith's own building of the replica Britannia in 2001 and 2002, with what he learned from the last builders of batten-seam boats, Bill Barnett, Len Heffernan, Ken Minter, Ron Balkwell and Jimmy O'Rourke among them. There are lines plans of boats including Cygnet, Vanity, Tangalooma, Top Weight, Aberdare and Britannia, drawings of the rigs with their ringtails and squaresails, and appendices on restoring the boats that survive. The cover photograph is the original Britannia.

Publication

The book went to the printers at the end of 2016, after two years' writing and more of planning, and came out in January 2017, during the Australian Championship: after the second heat Smith held a launch, and many of the club's and the Skiff Association's members bought copies. In February he towed Britannia to the Australian Wooden Boat Festival in Hobart and sold plenty more. The first, limited run had gone by August 2017; a second edition with revisions has been printed on demand since. WoodenBoat reviewed it in its September/October 2018 issue, Smith reports.

The author

Ian Smith is a retired traditional boatbuilder. He set up the Sydney Wooden Boat School at Mortlake in 1989 and has built more than 80 wooden boats, among them the ten-footer Republic, launched on Anzac Day 1995, and the replica Britannia, launched on 19 October 2002 by Fay Magner, Wee Georgie Robinson's daughter. He raced Britannia with the club's fleet for 21 seasons. He is a Life Member of the club and President of the Australian Historical Sailing Skiff Association, and keeps The Open Boat, his site of yarns and a register of the 18-footers built before 1950. His next book was The 18-Footer Britannia (2020).

The author sells it in print and as an ebook. The club's old pages offered it at $75, the price of the first printing.

• The Open Boat (the author), paperback: A$49 plus A$15 postage. Not posted to the EU, where bookshops order it from the printer
• The Open Boat (the author), ebook: A$25
• Boat Books, St Leonards, paperback: A$49.00
• Booktopia, paperback: A$50.75
• Angus & Robertson, paperback: A$51.75

Prices as the sellers listed them on 28 October 2026.

Libraries that hold it: National Library of Australia, State Library of NSW, State Library Victoria and the Australian National Maritime Museum, through Trove.