Tag Archives: waitematawoodys

AUCKLAND WOODEN BOAT FESTIVAL – Dockside Gallery – 75+ Classic Woody Photos – Part 1

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AUCKLAND WOODEN BOAT FESTIVAL – Dockside Gallery – 75+ Classic Woody Photos

Slight change of format today. Normally we do one big gallery of event photos, but the 2024 Auckland Wooden Boat Festival deserves two stories – why? Well in the eyes os of the woodys I spoke to, the off-the-water (in the shed) exhibition was on equal footing to the exhibition afloat. So woodys come back tomorrow to see the off-the-water gallery, you won’t be disappointed.

From my mooching the #1 feedback I got was ‘where do they all come from’ i.e. people have never seen this number of classic wooden boats together #2 (from owners) was ‘it is so great to meet all the owners / caretakers’. I think a lot of people were quietly hoping their partners were thinking “there are other zany people out there, my partner isn’t the only eccentric old boat nut in town”.

For a three day outdoor event in Auckland we were gifted to have two (Fri/Sat) days of amazing weather, Sunday was a on/off rain day but it didn’t seem to slow down the people. I believe over 8,000 people were counted thru the dock-gate (it was free entry).

The photos tell the story today – its takes a lot of people to pull something like this off, so well done to all those that rubbed up against the show and well done Tony and team for pulling it all together.

PART TWO – THE OFF-THE-WATER SECTION – LINK BELOW https://waitematawoodys.com/2024/03/05/auckland-wooden-boat-festival-off-the-water-gallery/

AS ALWAYS – CLICK ON PHOTOS TO ENLARGE

AND YES I DID BUY THE T-SHIRT 🙂

RSVP – waitematawoodys@gmail.com

Waitemata Woodys hits 4,000,000 views and celebrates with a gallery of over 100 classic wooden boat photos

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If you think being passionate about wooden boats is niche – think again, there are a lot of us out there. Waitemata Woodys has just passed 4 MILLION views and we celebrate with over 100 classic wooden boating photos

Never in a blue moon when I started this site could I have seen it becoming as popular as it has. Along the way the site has morphed to also become an awesome information source for just about anything connected to wooden boating. Some facts:
4,000,000 views
370,000 people have visited the site, most of them come back – some daily, some weekly, some just when they need to know something
2,469 stories
20,000+ photos published
A 50,000+ photo library
It wouldn’t have happened without in the early days a few fireside chats from people way more worldly in the wooden boating community than myself. The list of people that have shared their family photo albums, stories and knowledge with us is huge and  the site just wouldn’t be what it is today without these people.
I’ve made so many friends, and been fortunate to rub shoulders with a lot of you in person.
So where to from here?, I would be a lier if I said I had not considered pulling the pin a few times, its a big ask publishing a wooden boating story 365 days of the year, but for every one dark day when I’m questioning why I do it – I have 100 days where someone tells me that the first thing they do every every morning is check out Waitemata Woodys, or that they print the stories and once a week when they visit grandad they read them to him, because he is nearly blind, or when we uncover the provenance of someones boat, or when we find someones long lost family boat etc etc
Aside from thanking you all for your support and asking you to keep following Waitemata Woodys – I only have one request – please keep sending us your stories & photos – you may be thinking they won’t mean much to us, but at some stage, someone will send in something and SNAP, they match & we have the makings of a great story. Email them to   waitematawoodys@gmail.com
The following link takes you to a Waitemata Woodys story that epitomises all that’s good about the site – you wouldn’t find content like this anywhere else – it’s gold
And in answer to all the emails re when I will be doing another Waitemata Woodys t-shirt run – the answer is before Christmas, so start saving your pennies. I’ll do another post soon re taking orders 🙂
Again many thanks to everyone. I hope you all still enjoy the site as much as I do pulling it all together. Shortly I will be sharing with you some exciting news on how WW will become even more relevant to wooden boat owners, but for now I have pulled together a random selection of 101 woody photos that have appeared on the site – enjoy 🙂
Alan Houghton – founder
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