Georgetown Wooden Boat Show Activities 10 '14

Of course there is more to do at  Georgetown's Wooden Boat Show than just  checking out the boat displays.   Like all street fairs it had is share of  street performers

A Pirate encampment  greeted visitors at the entrance to the festival.

A talking miniature tug boat intrigued passing  children.

art and crafts, and food and music.

But the action didn't stop there.  All sorts of  maritime activities took place over the course of the weekend: including  a wooden boat building competition, a children’s model boat building, and rowing  rowing races. 

What is the Wooden Boat Challenge?

It’s a boat building competition with teams of two battling each other and the clock to build a 12 foot rowing skiff – the CAROLINA BATEAU – within a four hour time limit. The teams are judged on building speed, workmanship, and rowing speed when they test their completed bateaux for seaworthiness in a rowing relay on the Sampit River. At the end of the day cash prizes are awarded to first, second and third place winners.

The Challenge begins at noon with the command “Gentlemen Start Your Skill Saws” which sets off a din of circular saws and swirling sawdust as the teams commence to build their bateaux fast and build them right. Quality counts for 1/3 of the points, speed of building for 1/3, and team rowing ablity for the final 1/3.

Each team receives a set of plans for the CAROLINA BATEAU when they pay their $100 entry fee and are encouraged to practice-build a boat before the Challenge. On the big day they are issued the same building materials. They provide their own tools, sawhorses, work tables, hull molds and home-made oars. Each team builds within a 12 x 15 foot space beneath a huge tent with hundreds of spectators cheering them on. Some teams finish, amazingly, in just two plus hours. It was amazing to watch a boat  cut and fitted from start to finish in such a short amount of time.

But perhaps the best part was actually watching the builders then have relay races in  their newly built boats on the Sampit River.  Talk about having confidence in your product.

The Children’s  Model Boat Building 

 Adults weren't the only ones who could get into the action. Children could build and embellish a wooden boat model and then test sail it in a pond on Front Street. Two model kits were available at $15 each: a paddleboat and a sailboat. The kits are made and assembled by Wooden Boat Show volunteers and proceeds from sales benefited the SC Maritime Museum.

The New Charleston Mosquito Fleet gave both adults and children a chance to practice their rowing skills.  

The rows began at noon and continued until 4pm from the floating docks at Francis Marion Park. Each row took about 45 minutes. The New Charleston Mosquito Fleet was founded in 1995 in Charleston SC to get inner city middle school children involved in boatbuilding and boating. The mentors built two Joe Dobler designed pilot gigs with the kids, and they row early mornings three days a week.  The original Mosquito Fleet were the mid 19th century Gullah fishermen of the South Carolina  and Georgia Lowcountry, who rowed out upwind in the morning in small wooden boats and sailed back downwind in the evening; they arrived home at twilight along with swarms of Lowcountry mosquitoes and sold their catch in local markets.