Corsair Boats, in Rosebud, Victoria, Australia, was founded in 2008 by Mark Abbott to specialize in wooden boat construction, and the company since has focused on one homegrown type and one notable import. The home-grown boat is the racing sailboat called the Couta boat (see WB No. 137). The company builds the historic type using traditional plank-on-frame construction, relying on Huon pine, a slow-growing, resilient wood native to Tasmania. Abbott also extensively uses Huon pine and other Australian woods in building his adaptation of the second type he is making a specialty, the Maine lobsterboat, long admired far and wide for seaworthiness and handiness. The most immediate inspiration for Abbott's powerboats-the Bass Strait 35 and Bass Strait 40-is a single yacht, BENITO, a 44-footer that Victoria resident Will Baillieu commissioned from Peter Kass, a noted lobsterboat builder in South Bristol, Maine (see WB No. 227). Once the boat arrived in Australia, it turned a lot of heads among the locals in Port Phillip, and soon Abbott thought to adapt a lobsterboat hull by Lowell Brothers of Yarmouth, Maine. He built, a 40-footer and a 35-footer side-by-side at Corsair Boats, both of strip-planked construction using western red cedar and mahogany planking, sheathed in fiberglass cloth set in epoxy. Both boats have larger-than-usual cabin structures for lobsterboats, with comfortable accommodations. MENINDEE, which is 35' on the waterline and 37'6" overall, with a beam of 12' and a draft of 3'11", powered by a 370-hp Yanmar diesel, attended the Hobart festival as the first example of what Abbott hopes will be a line of such boats. The Bass Strait 40 is 42'6" overall, with a beam of 13' 8", a draft of 4' 9", and a 530-hp Yanmar diesel engine. Corsair Boats, Rosebud, Victoria 3939, Australia; www. corsairboats.com.au; +61-5981-2451.
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