Ian Smith

In a career covering more than thirty years, Ian has built dinghies, yachts, launches, canoes, kayaks, power boats, ski boats, historic skiff replicas and cradle boats. He has built in traditional clinker , traditional carvel construction, seam batten carvel, plywood clinker, conventional plywood, cold moulded, WEST System strip-planked , tortured plywood and stitch and glue.

He has restored many traditional boats from launches to yachts.

He set up the Sydney Wooden Boat School in 1989 and has helped hundreds of home builders to build their own boats in classes that ran from 1989 to 2000 and have recently resumed. He has taught at-risk teenagers and long-term unemployed people the skills they need to build boats, and the satisfaction to be gained from this. Years of experience of teaching first-time builders led to the production of a series of how-to manuals on the different methods of wooden boatbuilding. He set up Woodcraft Boats Pty Ltd in 1993.

Ian is Honorary Secretary of the Australian Historical Skiff Sailing Association and has been involved with the revival of this aspect of Sydney's maritime heritage since 1994, building and sailing a replica Six Footer and a Ten Footer before building a replica of the famous Sydney Eighteen Footer Britannia in 2002 which he sails in races every Summer Saturday with the Sydney Flying Squadron fleet.

Ian has a passion for wooden boats and for our local maritime heritage.

Jordan Smith

Jordan grew up around boatsheds, and built his first boat when he was 13. He apprenticed with his father Ian in the mid-nineties, then spent 18 months as Carpenter's Mate on the Endeavour Replica on both coasts of the USA and in
the Caribbean and Pacific. He worked on replica ship building in Ireland and
yacht restoration in San Francisco, then returned to Sydney to work at several boatyards before beginning to specialize in difficult commercial building
construction. He recently returned to Woodcraft Boats to help out with the
increasing workload. In the winter of 2007 he launched Serenity , a 24' Lyle
Hess Renegade/Seraffyn cutter he commenced building as an apprentice.

Nick Hocking

Nick Hocking trained as a boatbuilder in Tasmania and has worked on restoration projects in several Sydney boatyards. He is part owner of our major current project Ripple and works several days a week on that yacht. Nick found Ripple in 2002 and kept it afloat in a holding pattern until restoration began in 2007.

Cocoa

Cocoa joined the team in 2006 and is in charge of staff games and recreation.

Bosun

Bosun joined in 2007 and is in charge of security.