Early Sail in Quang Yen

Soon after launching, the builder, Mr. Le Duc Chan took the new boat out into the main stream of the river for a short shake down. The building site is up a short dredged slip off the Chanh River, on the south bank, about 4.7 km below the town of Quang Yen, or 7.5 km above the river's mouth in Halong Bay. Fishing junks like this one worked in Halong by by the hundreds up until about 1990, when engine powered boats (like the ones seen tied up in the video) finally took over. The last of the men who actually built and sailed them for a living are old men now or gone. Mr. Chan, the builder of this boat apprenticed to his father and his grandfather when he was sixteen, and except for three years during wartime he has built boats on this site ever since. Now in his late sixties, he is still a vigorous man working every day with a good crew in the yard. The boat was built at the behest of an archaeologist, Dr. Nguyen Viet, who has been interested in the prehistorical boats of Vietnam, and realized that the chance to record construction of a traditional sailing junk was likely to come to an end within the next few years. He funded the project and had the entire construction sequence filmed and photographed, 8 to 10 hours per day for the entire two month construction period. During construction and when construction was complete, a naval architect, Mr. Do Thai Binh and associates did a detailed takeoff of the build and documented the vessel for its registration. Mr. Binh is a staunch supporter of Vietnamese traditional boat building and sailing and is working toward a National Maritime Museum for Vietnam.
This video was captured by Mr. Chan's son.