People in Korčula understand how important it is not to forget the traditional skills and knowledge.
So, for the past several years they have organized the shipbuilding course, lasting several days during which children from Korčula are taught how to build a ship. The organizers of the course are Davor Mihalić and the StolArt collective, the course took place at the Port9 resort (for the last two years it’s been held there; in previous years it was organized in the town centre, right by the central monument and the small beach, where it attracted a lot of passer-by attention), it lasted for 5 days in early July, and this year 5 boys and 5 girls took place, ages 10 to 13.
Davor, who lead the workshops, says that children of that age are perfectly able to understand how machines work and comprehend what it means to build a ship, and what requirements there are. They also listen to lectures of history of shipbuilding in Croatia, and the role it played throughout our history. This year the children took 5 days to build a model of Korčulan “pasara” boat, from understanding the design, geometry of parts, then working with tools to help them make parts, and finally the assembly of the parts into functional model, which then has to be protected, painted and equipped with all the stuff you need for safe sailing, such as tethers etc.
And, yes, they do get to launch the boat they built and take it out for a test run, using paddles of course!
(photos from korcula.online website)
A video of what it looked like last year, and we can just presume it was as fun this year!
