About the Wench
Wicked Wench is a 48 foot long, wooden ketch of traditional form, combining the features of a sailing vessel of earlier and more sedate times with a hint of modern adventure, displaying a raking bow with a unique tumble home stern, and distinctive twin portholes in her transom. With her newly constructed timber masts, built by one of Sydney’s finest shipwrights, she displays a unique appearance, and even more so below.
Below, Wicked Wench does not slavishly follow the typical layout so often found aboard; rather a series of compartments, that lure the visitor in, to further explore her unique configuration, bolstered by different textures and colours. From the business-like forepeak, or the old worldly main cabin or the intimacy of the low set aft cabin, with her transom port holes, Wicked Wench is – different - but in an intriguing, quirky way.
Wicked Wench was built in a park at Blackwattle Bay; her builder often toiled long into the night, living on site with his partner in a clutter of plans, tools, and possible trifles of value for the boat, utilising hand tools to construct a hull of the finest workmanship. He sourced the timbers for her keel from demolished wool stores in the Darling Harbour area, and the timbers for her decks and planking from the original Dee Why ferry as she was being prepared for scuttling. Every structural element of Wicked Wench’s hull is riveted and roved - occasionally, when her builder ran short of roves, penny or half penny coins were employed, giving an interesting variation to the term of putting one’s money into a boat! A man of great imagination and resourcefulness, he believed in the recycling of good timber, long before it became more fully entrenched.
In 2015, she was the winner of the Peoples’ Choice Award, 2015 Timber Boat Festival, Royal Motor Yacht Club, Broken Bay.
