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Search engines seem to track our entire lives. Some also trawl the web for images. Here are some that Google found on 11th March 2013. Click the mosaic for today's update - there are lots to explore.

     

Formed in 1979 at the Southampton Boat Show by a group of junk rig enthusiasts, the JRA (Junk Rig Association) is for its members and about their boats and their rigs. We aim to: promote the use of the junk rig by encouraging members to organise 'rallies' and 'junkets' (see About Us) and via our tri-annual Magazine and this site; encourage the development of junk and related rigs, the building or conversion of boats to the junk rig, and the use of vessels with the rig or its derivatives; create an international community of people who've already 'junked' their boat, are thinking of doing so, or are just interested in learning what it's all about.  

Summing that up, our main job is to get the rig talked about. Former Chairman David Tyler certainly helped there: the Ocean Cruising Club recently awarded him their Rose Medal "for the most meritorious short-handed ...and exceptional voyage on board Tystie [from the UK to New Zealand]. You will  have inspired many others, some of whom may well adopt a junk rig." David's follow-up voyage to and around Alaska was tracked here. Tystie and David are now in Canada.

We were formed in the UK, and although our 'office' address and banking remains in the UK we are run by an increasingly international Committee via the internet. A number of posts become vacant in 2014 so if you choose to join you could also put your name forward to help run the 'club'. It doesn't run itself. Our membership is now more than   50% outside the UK. Click the chart for detail.

We usually feature here boats that members have built, bought, begged or 'saved', but this time it's a genuine junk that desperately needs conserving.

Keying II is an authentic fishing junk, built in Hong Kong in 1980 for the 'Hong Kong in London' festival in Battersea Park. She was presented to the Hong Kong government by Sir Yue-Kong Pao CBE, probably the world's largest shipping owner at the time. She was then donated to the International Sailing Craft Association for their extensive collection at the Exeter Maritime Museum (UK). Dr Stephen Davies (ex-Director of the Hong Kong Maritime Museum and now Research Fellow at the HK Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences, University of HK) believes that the basic hull design is a late 19th century, possibly early 20th, derivative of something like the HK sampan and the fast Chinese police junks, themselves derived from rice-carrying junks in the mid-Qing. He suspects "a fair bit of design tweak emulating the finer waterlines and entries of western vessels".

During her time at Exeter, Keying II made several voyages around the UK coast and France. Following the closure of that museum in 1996, Keying II sailed to Lowestoft, remaining until the late summer of 2004 when she went to Eyemouth International Sail Craft Association. She is now deteriorating fast, and EISCA have neither the space nor funds for her maintenance. They seek a new home where she might receive a sympathetic restoration. JRA members are trying to think how this might be achieved. Our Boat of the Month Archive is here.