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WELCOME TO THE OFFICIAL ALMA DOEPEL WEBSITE The Alma Doepel is a three masted topsail schooner, Australian built and operated, with more than a hundred years of history behind her, and with more history yet to be written. The aim of this website is to make information available to the public about Alma herself, her history, the selfless people who have and continue to keep her alive and sailing and the plans for her future.
ALMA SLIPPED - July 2008 Birdon Group’s shipyard in the Hastings River at Port Macquarie played host to Alma Doepel early in July when she was slipped for an underwater inspection, repairs and antifouling. The ship’s Senior Master, Captain John Carroll, who skippered Alma during her sail training days in Port Phillip, took the ship on the hour-long run upriver to Birdon’s yard. On the slip for seven days, volunteers from Port Macquarie, Sydney and Melbourne worked on the ship’s underwater hull and her machinery. Shipwrights Ferdi Darley and Tom Mangan tackled hull areas which needed attention and before returning to the water the ship was antifouled with specialist paints generously donated by Hempel Paints. New anchor cables donated by Shipping Australia (Melbourne) were also taken on board. After a brief foray out to sea on her way back from the shipyard, Alma Doepel returned to her Lady Nelson Wharf berth in Port Macquarie.
LATEST NEWSLETTER - Click Here
ALMA DOEPEL REFIT FUND Would you like to see the once familiar 105 year old Tall Ship Alma Doepel sailing again on Port Phillip? You Can Help! Our beautiful ship is to be refitted to return to her highly successful Youth Sail Training Program on Port Phillip along with opportunities for everyone to experience sailing on a tall ship during day and weekend sails. The Alma Doepel Supporters Club has launched the Alma Doepel Refit Fund with an initial target of $100,000 to return Alma to the waters of Port Phillip in 2008 and kick-start her refit to survey. Click Here for further information.
The Naming of the Alma Doepel: Frederik Doepel was of German descent, but some of the family immigrated to Finland, where he was born. He went to sea, and as a young man jumped ship in Sydney in the 1870s, with a good friend, Big Mick. After their ship had left, they joined a coastal ship, and came to settle in the Bellinger Valley. Big Mick became a woodsman, but Frederik became involved as a shipping agent, and soon acquired a timber mill as well as starting his own little company of coastal sailing vessels. Most of them he named after his daughters, for he had several. In Finland there had been a well known sailing vessel named ALMA, with some possible link with the Doepels, and this may have influenced the naming of the youngest daughter, a babe in arms at the launching of her namesake, on 10 October 1903. When Henry Jones & Co bought the ship, Alma was 13, and she wrote to Henry, asking that he please retain the name. This he did, as we know.
Last modified: July 28, 2008
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