The West Cork Yawls were the gaff-rigged sailing fishing boats which dominated mackerel drifting and lobster fishing off the South West coast of Ireland from pre-Famine times through to the 1950's. The mackerel drifters were favoured by the fishermen of Roaringwater Bay, Cape Clear and Long Island. The lobster boats were the craft of the semi-nomadic Heir Island fishermen who worked their pots over hundreds of miles along the Cork coast. From the 1950s, faced with competition from new motorised designs, the sail-powered fleet went into rapid decline with many of the boats being broken up or left to rot on remote quay sides and in fields and barns.

In 1996 the revival began when Liam Hegarty and Fachtna O'Sullivan, local boat builders, and Terry Tuit, an Englishman living in West Cork, measured the lines from the remains of "The Shamrock" a 33 foot mackerel drifter which for years had lain abandoned and rotting in a small harbour called Colla near the village of Schull.

Back at Hegarty's boatyard in Oldcourt, which is on the Ilen river near Baltimore, Liam and Fachtna, along with Nigel Towse, an English traditional boat enthusiast living on Sherkin Island, built from these lines the first of the new fleet of traditional wooden West Cork Yawls. The traditional sail plan and rigging for the yawls was obtained from Michael "Mac" O'Donoghue, a Cape Clear Island fisherman who owned and worked these yawls in the 1930s. Four of these drifters have now been built. "Mac" O'Donoghue's own boat, the "Saint Patrick" is now being restored to its original working condition.

In the year 2000, Liam and Nigel recovered from a mud bank the remains of an 1893 Heir Island lobster boat, the "Honora". From "Honora's" authentic and unique lines three new boats have been built, and a fourth is under construction at Hegarty's yard. Nigel Towse is lovingly and accurately restoring the "Honora" at his premises on Sherkin Island. The history of these boats is documented by maritime historian Cormac Levis in "Towelsail Yawls: the Lobsterboats of Heir Island and Roaringwater Bay" (Galley Head Press, 2002).

The 1st Wooden Boat Festival was held in Baltimore in May 2002. It was the first gathering of traditional sailing boats on the south west coast since the 1930s, and proved such a success that is was decided to make it an annual event.

The main objectives of the Festival are:

· To celebrate the revival in traditional boat building.
· To encourage a local interest in the traditional, timber working boats of the area which use sail and/or oar.
· To make this unique aspect of our maritime heritage accessible to the general public.
· To develop a regular event that would forge links with wooden boat lovers from other coastal regions and countries.