Sailing the Quang Yen Junk, April, 2017

The new sailing junk from Quang Yen was built for Dr. Nguyen Viet, an archaeologist with a longstanding interest in ancient and pre-modern boats from the region. Essentially all fishing boats in Viet Nam now are engine powered, mostly of a modern design. The last of these sailing junks disappeared during the 1990's and no new ones had been built for some time before that. However, Mr. Le Duc Chan, the local boat builder, is the the eleventh generation of boat builders in his family (his sons are the 12th). He was born in 1950 and has been working in the boatyard since he was sixteen. Except for three years right after the war, when he was sailing one of these junks for the fisheries department, he has worked full time building boats. Thus this boat is not a reproduction or a replica, but rather it is simply one more boat just as they had been built for generations before here. I was invited to see her launched in December 2016 but could not make the trip at that time. In March 2017 I saw her for the first time, but the weather was vile and I did not get to sail on her until a month later. She sails very well, goes upwind very nicely and handles with ease. In earlier times she would have been the home for a small family who would work her by themselves, husband, wife and whatever children. She is readily handled by two people.