Heritage Sailing School: Monitoring Wetlands to Rescue the Art of Handmade Sails.

By the late 1970s, most of the artisanal fishing fleet in Chiloé consisted of boats propelled by oars and sails, explained Katherine Araya and Tomás Jorquera in their proposal—both promoters of the Heritage Sailing School project—, which last year received the open fund granted annually by our foundation.

This project addresses the biocultural heritage of the Dalcahue Channel, Chiloé, in the Los Lagos Region, highlighting the use of sailing as a tool for the social appreciation of the marine-coastal ecosystem. It continues two earlier initiatives: the Heritage Sailing Laboratory of the Dalcahue Museum, which led to the construction of a navigable replica of a dalca (a traditional Chono canoe); and the Experimental School of Chilote Boatbuilding, where a traditional wooden boat was built alongside recognized practitioners of this intangible cultural heritage of Chile (SIGPA).

The launch of the school, within the development of the FMA Fund, included “rowing and sail-making workshops, educational activities, and environmental monitoring using instruments to measure humidity and evaluate the presence of microplastics in water bodies,” explained territorial manager Tomás Jorquera during the project’s presentation.

Participants included local students and apprentice boatbuilders, who went on sailing excursions through the Dalcahue Channel, receiving technical guidance for monitoring the Astillero and Diañ wetlands. They also reflected on the importance of preserving traditions such as the crafting of handmade sails—a practice that has partially been lost due to the increasing mechanization of the fishing sector.

In this way, the school gains relevance by reviving practices that interact with the region’s historical and geographical context, countering the current lack of understanding of natural phenomena in the environments where these vessels operate, according to the project team.

“The few remaining spaces for learning traditional sail navigation techniques tend to be disconnected from the culture that once characterized these latitudes and are often viewed more as tourist attractions. Using experimental methodologies, the team helped share knowledge about conserving the Dalcahue Channel based on the community’s deep understanding of their maritime territory,” they elaborated, emphasizing the importance of community participation.

Regarding the region’s ecosystem, the Dalcahue Channel’s coastline is primarily made up of stony beaches, wetland mud at stream mouths, and to a lesser extent, sandy beaches. “Since prehistoric times, understanding climatic and astronomical phenomena has been crucial for navigating this maritime territory, as they influenced currents, tides, and the entire trophic chain,” explained the school’s organizers. They added that until the late 1950s, the channel was navigated exclusively by oar and sail. However, with the advent of motorized boats and the 1960 earthquake, the use of sailing vessels drastically declined.

The “Life of the Bordemar”

The so-called “life of the bordemar (oceanedge)” refers to the blending of Spanish and Indigenous heritages that, over five centuries, shaped a distinct version of a “nomadic transhumance among islands,” whose mobility was determined by oar and sail navigation, explained the project team in their proposal. This contextualizes both the maritime territory where the school activities took place and the historical roots of the practices they sought to revive.

The team behind the school has been working on this subject since 2017, restoring boats for research and educational purposes. They also received a National Fondart Research Grant in 2023. Among the project’s goals was to deepen the understanding of biocultural heritage as a tool for nature conservation—reactivating the use of sails to highlight the traditional boatbuilder’s craft, and encouraging hands-on knowledge transmission to new generations, that is, by sailing in boats equipped with sails.

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Team members include Tomás Jorquera (sociologist), Katerine Araya (architect), Pablo Salomón (industrial designer), Giannina Jorquera (visual artist), and Adriana Yañez (commercial engineer), who proposed the Heritage Sailing Laboratory (LNP) under the Dalcahue Museum, resulting in the construction of an experimental dalca.