Sixareen Vaila Mae

The sixareen is a traditional sailing and rowing boat from the Shetland Islands that was used at the haaf fishing (meaning deep sea) in the 18th and 19th century. The Vaila Mae is a replica built for the Shetland Museum and archives by Robbie Tait and Jack Duncan in the Museum's boat shed.
The Vaila Mae was sailed at the Walls Regatta and Shetland Boat Week festival earlier this summer and gave the opportunity for folk to experience sailing in a sixareen and an idea of how these boats performed on the water. Shetland Boat Week has organised training of volunteer crew, to learn the ropes of handling a sixareen, this short film was taken during such a training session.
This project plays a valuable role in preserving a very important part of Shetland's maritime cultural heritage and is allowing a new generation, as well as experienced sailors a chance to learn how these traditional Shetland vessels handled and performed under sail.
The Shetland haaf fisherman were some of the best handlers of small boats in their day and would sail or row out to fishing grounds up to 40 miles into the North Sea or Atlantic Ocean around Shetland.

[@aliciacarafi420]

Good sailing, great music... 😍

[@RobbsHomemadeLife]

absolutely wonderful boat, made me subscribe.

[@chronicawareness9986]

imagine the marlins and other huge oceanic fish they caught... the tuna, the wahoo, king fish, mackeral, sailfish, mahi mahi or dolphin, the list goes on AND ON

[@isaaclaurenson3860]

Don’t get marnlins wahoo king fish sailfish and they wouldn’t catch a dolphin o think they were built for cod or herring

[@garychynne1377]

neat. looks like the square sail on the norse boats. so this is how they worked. pretty fast.

[@MauriceHendersonShetland]

Yes, similar, the boat is very much a descendant of those norse craft. This sixareen is rigged with a square sail based on that used in the westside of Shetland and has a slightly higher peak. I shall see if I can post a video of the Unst sixareen ‘Far Haaf’ sailing, that has the lower peak and a more square looking sail.

[@kjetilsildnes]

Nice sailing! Is that a little low bowline I’m seeing just above the tack? I assume a “bowline stick” pushing the front edge forward, and getting the tack all the way down would improve windward efficiency.

[@MauriceHendersonShetland]

Yes, the bowline fairly helps sailing to windward. A very nice boat to sail.

[@darrellwoolums6292]

Mute the sound and listen to Olafur Arnalds "Life Story" as you watch the video.