50 Years of Seagoing Wharram Coa

The Wharram story began with a relatively small seagoing catamaran 50 years ago. TANGAROA was a little boat, just 23 feet LOA. She proved to be a seaworthy design at her crossing of the Bay of Biscay after leaving England in 1955. Nevertheless there was a lot of room for improvement. After the Atlantic crossing James Wharram clearly recognised and analysed her strong and weak points. He started to design a portfolio of catamarans based on the lessons learnt and did stick to it without any compromises until now. Contrary to other designer he did not neglect the wish for smaller seagoing cruisers.

Now, after 50 years many many voyages were made in small (less than 30 feet) Wharram catamarans some were spectacular, some far away from the public, some made remarkable offshore trips and others did remarkable undertakings by means of trailer sailing. It would be impossible to compile a complete report of all these ‘epic’ voyages. This article should give you examples and a flavour of what can be achieved. Eg. did you know that the Atlantic ocean has been crossed already seven times (*) by Tikis ?

Tom and Carol Jones could be considered pioneers in small Wharram deep water cruising. Summer 1975 was considered as disastrous between the American East coast and the Bermudas. They did a lot of cruising in this area onboard their 23’ Hinemaoa TWO RABBITS; they were offshore when the wind increased – Hurricane Blanche was closing in:’ We changed to smaller sails and kept her moving, we were finally reduced to storm jib alone, while force 7 streaks were on the water. The taller the forestay, the shorter time a storm jib can be used without shaking the boat apart – on Rabbit with her 16-foot fore stay, the storm jib saw us through a force 11. We were below, and Rabbit was self steering herself, with her helm lashed and her storm jib flat amidships. There was not much to see, because the air was full of water and the water so full of air that the distinction were hard to make. When the wind blew hardest – we were about 30 miles from the eye. Both boat and crew survived without losing anything, breaking anything, or hurting the crew.’

In the late 70’s another ‘Wharram Discipline’ started: Trailer Sailing. Because of the nature of having two canoes put together, Wharram designs are easy to be taken onto a trailer. If you keep things simple and make a few adoptions, it’s a perfect boat to take with you even if you have only a few weeks of holidays. The first reports stem from Trevor Clarkson. He was living in Germany at that time and he trailed his 23-foot HINEMOA preferably to Greece in the summer. Once when crossing the Aegean Sea bound for Turkey they did stopover at the island of Psara. ‘All the little harbour offered were a restaurant and barrack. Later that night, a Greek with a rather sinister expression approached the boat. He surveyed everything very thoroughly and deliberately, then addressed us in broken English: “This boat is no good” and added while looking at the hulls ”Man sleep here; woman sleep there – no good”

The smallest Wharram Catamaran which sailed around the world was, for many years IAORANO, a Tangarao Mk I (34’), built and sailed by Wolfgang Wappl. He started building in 1977 in Vienna and launched her in 1981 in Grado – Italy. Together with his girlfriend he sailed the blue water route around the globe and returned to the Mediterranean after six years. He reported that they didn’t do too badly and had just a few cosmetic points for improvement. He also proved that even an early classic Wharram in cruising mode could be fast, doing a fantastic 224 miles a day. This circumnavigation held the record for a long time. It was the third circumnavigation of a Wharram catamaran at that time (other Henk de Velde – ORO surviving cyclone Oscar and John Margarson – NARAI).

Another epic voyage was made in the early 80’s, this one in newer design, a Tikiroa / Pahi 26. Glenn Tiemann left San Diego – California for a life time adventure in 1983, he sailed down singlehanded the coast to Mexico, later he sailed on to Hawaii and after visiting many different islands he reached Thailand in South East Asia. He was the first who had crossed the Pacific Ocean in a small Wharram. Later he lost his Pahi 26 PEREGRIN in the Philippines, but could rebuild her (Detailed story in box)

GLEN TIEMANN STORY

Glenn wrote about his ups and downs enroute to Mexico: ‘…the wave crests were exploding out of my path by PEREGRINE’s bow. Just as I rounded the headland I saw darker water only 100 ft away. I knew it was a fatal sign but with only a second to react I was paralyzed. I looked aloft and was terrified to see the mast flexing and pumping down the deck into various ‘S’-shapes. It lasted only a second before the masthead pointed towards the horizon let go with a crack like a gunshot and the top three feet of the mast was on deck. It was actually a relief to have same sail off and my speed reduced….’ Glenn had made his mast from a 20$ old solid wood spar and he could repair it. He was rewarded a bit later: ‘averaging 100 miles per day, I sailed on to Bahia Tortugas. Entering the wonderfully sheltered bay right at dusk, so filled me with relief and joy at the unspoilt beauty that was surrounded by dolphins, birds and whales, I laughed and yelled with happiness…’

On his way to Hawaii he had a Canadian crewman onboard:’…the boat was sailing in a very light breeze. The jib sheet flicked a cooking pot off the deck into the sea and Bernard dove in to swim for it, not realizing how slow people swim. He could not get back to the boat even after I turned beam on luffing so, I lowered the sails and rerigged (?????) for tacking. By that time I could only see Bernard’s head on a wave crest very infrequently but was able to tack back to him and he was safe….’

He stayed in Hawaii for a year and then continued: From Hawaii I stopped at uninhabited Palmyra Is. for a few weeks, then American Samoa, then Western Samoa where I lived with a family in a village for about two months. Next to Figi where I spent most of my half year at Savusavu on Vanua Levu and worked for a yacht charter outfit to make a few dollars while improving the boat. I sailed back east from Figi out through the Lau Islands against the trade winds during hurricane season to Vavau Tonga. Then back to w. Samoa, then to Niuatobutabu Tonga, which is closest to Samoa, then back to Samoa one last time. Finally on my way out of the south pacific I sailed to Tuvalu, spending a month each at the capital Funafuti and Nukufetau, the first place I went where the local people sail, and that in real proas. Continuing northwest across the equator, next was four months in Kiribati. The usual anchorage at Tarawa is rough but Peregrine's small size allowed her to fit into a small ferry harbour. I spent about two months living with a family at the outer island of Abemama. That was a high point in spite of hatching Hepatitis. After checking back out through Tarawa I spent a year sailing through vast Federated States of Micronesia stopping at about ten islands, including the most traditional in the pacific. That's the end of the pacific since from Micronesia I sailed into Asia. The last four years of cruising were between Philippines, Malaysia (where I sailed up several rivers) Singapore and Thailand following the monsoon winds so as to run west across the Sulu and south China seas and straits of Malacca with the wind then in summer run back the other way. In 1990 Glenn lost his boat in the harbour of Cebu in the Philippines (Typhoon Mike) but wrote:’ now many scarfs and many butt blocks later , Peregrine is coming together…..’

In the late 1980’s Coastal Trekking and Trailer sailing of smaller Wharram catamarans became quite popular around the world, a few examples: Pahi 26 AMAZON built in western Canada was trailed by Bill Gardam to Florida for extended cruising in the Bahamas (including a lot of equipment on deck); in the same year Ed Bears (nomen est omen) sailed his Tane Nui FIREWOOD some 700 nm from Vancouver (SW Canada) to St Rupert at the Alaskan boarder; on the other side of America Gene Perry sailed his Tiki 21 PAHLIULI down the coast to the Florida Keys. Gerhard Bobretzky sailed in Europe from the Adriatic Sea to Turkey and Mike and Jenny Wynn trailed GRATITUDE (Tiki 21) from England to Yugoslavia and sailed down the Adriatic Sea from Krk to Hvar.

This was topped by the Hitia 17 journey by Pierre and Marie La Plante in NE Canada. They sailed SKUA down the St. Laurence river, visited beautiful inaccessible country: They sailed during the day and camped at night. SKUA was junk rigged and Pierre was satisfied with the rig but had his problems with the hatches and the trampoline. The boat did quite well:’ we hugged the coast towards the east with the prevailing westerlies and habitually sailed 2-3 miles offshore, but occasionally had to sail some open stretches. Baie des Chaleures mouth was a memorable crossing, we had then a force 6 on the beam with steep breaking waves but with no jib set and the main well reefed we were very safe although quite wet and cold.’ They logged 750 nm during their journey which ended at Cape Breton Island (between Nova Scotia and Newfoundland !!!!!)

In March 1990 Bob and Dan Beggs set sails in England bound for Belize – Central America for the first Tiki 26 transatlantic and the first one in a small Wharram after the TANGAROA trip (apart from the Atlantic circuit, sailed by the Jones’s onboard VIREO, a Wharram style 27 footer in 1979) ; its been quite early during the season and the Bay of Biscay gave them a hard time, wind gusting up to force 9 and they were reefed down but still making 8 knots, later between La Coruna and Madeira again they encountered very difficult conditions: ‘..soon blew at gale force, and the waves increased in height to about 35 feet. We were soon surfing down them at speed in excess of 15 knots. The waves began to break along their tops, causing the cockpit to fill with squirreling white water on several occasions, but this quickly drained out through the outboard well (its been a GRP boat, all of them having the outboard well in the cockpit). As we approached the Madeira Archipelago the weather seemed to deteriorate further, so we ran before the wind, heading for a small island called Porto Santo. As we approached our haven the huge Atlantic rollers were running up against the shoaling sea bed, this forced the sea to heap up, and toss TIKI around at some very alarming angles. This exaggerating movement caused two of the rope lashings which bind the beams and hulls together to loosen…..

They did some repair work and continued to Tenerifa (Canary Islands) from there they sailed across the Atlantic to Antigua; the crossing took them 21 days covering 2850 nm, the continued via Jamaica to Swan Island (hunting for a good map of Belize); disaster struck May 19^th 1990 when they hit a reef a few miles before they could reach their final destination ‘The first rays of sunlight had just kissed the horizon, when suddenly we struck a coral reef, the next wave lifted TIKI and slammed her onto the reef. The breaking waves and the surf continued to push TIKI further onto the corals, until we were firmly stuck. Both hulls were now holed and slowly filling with sea water..’.Via Ham Radio their Mayday was received and they were rescued by the British Forces, but the boat was lost. Nevertheless the Tiki design could be considered as very well proven.

If we talk about epic voyages then there is one which can be considered as the ultimate – Rory McDougals circumnavigation. Tiki 21 COOKING FAT was built real solid but only spartanly equipped – had no engine – her motor were the wind and the skippers energy and determination. He met the Wharrams enroute – read his story in the box – what a man.

THE RORY McDOUGAL STORY

A year later another epic voyage started, on August 6^th 1991. Rory McDougal set sail and headed south from Lands End – England. Steve Turner introduced me to Rory in 1990, when he was building his famous Tiki 21 COOKING FAT. She is an interesting boat, basically a GRP boat, but in addition traditional bulkheads were fitted in (not necessary on the GRP design) and she had a deck and cabin style like the Tiki 36. Originally Rory wanted to go around the world in a 18 foot beach cat eg a Tornado….however the Tiki was a good choice. COOKIE did well in bad weather, could sail very fast (eg heart breaking surf through the Strait of Gibraltar), could stand some payload (remember the deck chairs & windsurfer on her foredeck in the Tasman Sea @ F8?). As many others he encountered very bad weather after leaving the Canary islands:’…Canaries harbours were bashed by F11 winds, accelerated between the steep mountainous islands. COOKIE rode out the storm very happily to a1 sq.m. sea anchor and 250 feet of nylon warp set over the sterns. She tended herself, allowing us to stay dry below and to rest. In fact the situation felt so settled and relaxed….’ It took him 29 days to cross the Atlantic (2800nm), ‘Arriving in the Caribbean was thrilling. I was especially proud to enter on my own brave little craft. No engine and no electrics. Just a sextant, 10 –year-old reduction tables and a compass.’ Following Rorys statement you can say that the size of the cat was only secondary – big achievement. He then sailed on to Panama. The passage through the canal is difficutlt for an engineless boat. First Rory tried to be picked up Piggy-back on a freighter, but this was not allowed by the Canal administration. Finally COOKIE was towed alongside a Swan 42. From here he sailed single handed. Rory was using a self steering system named ‘Harry’ which became a legend as well ’..For some wood, glue, bolts and string, I thought that Harry was a fantastic helmsman. He could cope with any strength or direction of wind blown at him…’(**) He took a rather unusual route across the South Pacific, because he did not want to spend the required cash at the Galapagos islands nor to pay a bond in Tahiti, which is required for visiting yachts. Rory was in a hurry to meet his girlfriend in New Zealand and consequently sailed quite long stretches having stops only at Easter Island, Mangareva and Rarotonga onto New Zealand. The final approach became difficult and became an endurance test: ‘ A succession of low pressures bombarded us, sweeping up from the southern ocean, creating rapid weather changes and plenty on work on deck. The weather gods wanted the last word with tree gales in succession, forcing me to lie-a-hull for 7 days. It was August, the depth of the southern winter, and I had no gloves or sea boots to defend my tropical limbs. When cooking fuel ran out I survived for nine days on rice and pasta, softened all day in cold water. It meant even more energy lost for batteling on, both physically and mentally. However at one’s lowest point there is only one way to go – up, and forewards.’ Other boots were heavily damaged in the same storms, Rory’s resume: ‘ Undoutable I owe my life to the fact that COOKIE is a deep-displacement, low freeboard catamaran built for strength and not lightweight speed.’ He dropped anchor there for almost 4 years. After concluding that this was long enough he started again in May 1996. Across the Tasman Sea, up the Queensland coast of Australia, Darwin, Bali, Singapore, Malacca Strait, Sri Lanka, Aden, Red Sea, Suez Canal (first time use of an engine onboard Cookie), Mediterranean, Gibraltar, ‘…Lisbon was quite an occasion as Cookie crossed her outward tracks of 6 years earlier. Well done Cookie! We have officially sailed around the world..Finally some favourable winds winged Cookie and crew in one hop up to the NE of Cape Finesterre and a perfect spot to head off across Biscay. I could almost smell the shores of England….Rory arrived just in time to join in directly to the PCA meeting in Milbrook and finally arrived home in Dartmouth August 23^rd 1997.

Bob Beggs set out June 7^th 1992 from England and crossed the North Atlantic in 28 days and 14 hours. He was competing in the Europe 1 STAR (Single Handed Trans Atlantic Race). He returned with crew via the Azores back to England in September. His boat was a GRP Tiki 26 named SHARING THE CHALLENGE, with only a few modifications. To sum it up: he and his small Wharram catamaran did extremely well. His crossing time was compatible in all classes. Before the start you could see all the big multihull racing machines and in between the Wharram crowd. Bob did only run twice into trouble: During the race the mast head shackles coming undone. He dropped the mast in the middle of the atlantic and after repair got it back up. The trick did his huge spinnaker pole, acting as an arm, attached at the base of the mast to help with the lever angles to re-erect the mast. It’s a bit of an irony that the shakles wer on the check/repair list before the start. Somebody replaced the old ones without ticking the item off on the To Do list. Somone else again replaced them – but with the old outworn ones…..The other issue of trouble was water coming in. Bob noticed at the end of the first week that the port bow was deeper in the water. He bailed 20 gallons out of the foreward hold, but could not trace any visible cracking – finally plenty of silkaflex did the job (a pre race problem caused the leak). Bob’s participation in the race brought a lot of knowledge and improvements for the Tiki 26’s, such as spray hoods, hatches, autopilots, osmosis pumps, central long spinnaker pole and it proved that GPS is wonderful or that the rope lashings do work (&hold) well under heavy conditions.

Patric Dowman picked a few ideas up for his remarkable voyages from SW England to Ireland and to Brittany. This area provides no family weekend sailing – it’s rough out there. He added to his Tiki 26 MEIRA an electric autopilot system and spray hoods similar to the ones SHARING THE CHALLENGE had. Because of the rough nature of the area, he started to experiment with deck pods. He was one of the first to add a solid deck pod, his pod designs were later much improved.

Trailer Sailing activities increased a lot in the early 90’s, a good example is Austria. It’s a land locked country from where dozens of trips were made to the different shores around Europe, but predominantly to the central Mediterranean. Interestingly enough in most cases Tikis were used; they can be assembled pretty fast. This is a key point, otherwise its getting complicated and tiresome and people loose interest after their first trip soon. Gerald Winkler reported:’A key issue are the trampolines – you can loose hours if you haven’t a simple way to fix them and….we had changed our beam lashing system from the original rope to a webbing strap and SS ratched buckles system as described in a PCA. We left Vienna early in the morning and after a long day had our Tiki in the water and loaded to sail away in 2.5 hours from the trailer…. We set sail next morning heading for the southern Adriatic …..’

In August 1998 Nicolas Vivier set sails in Camaret (West France) in his Tiki 26 BICAP. He crossed the Bay of Biscay without any difficulties. He continued via Madeira and the Canaries, then crossed the Atlantic and arrived in French Guiana, the crossing took him 3 weeks. During spring he went up north in the Antilles. Because of time constraints he sailed back from Guadeloupe directly !! to France. Probably the longest non stop trip of a Tiki 26 so far, app 3500 nm, which took him 45 days. He comments: ‘It was quite a long crossing, far more difficult than the first one, although I had no big trouble with my Tiki. Apart from light winds I had a few gales, especially 4 days with wind force 7-9. The cat behaved very well though I worried, unnecessarily, about the rudders. I didn’t have one but I’m convinced that a Para-anchor would have been useful and that the Tiki 26 could endure heavier weather with it’. That’s an important statement and underlines his seamanship and the seaworthiness of the Tikis on the occasion of this North Atlantic circuit. Nicolas suggested after his two Atlantic crossings 3 points for improvement: 3HP outboard, tent to each hull, electric autopilot.

Not too much Wharram sailing activities in the South Atlantic or not known to community, such as the South Atlantic crossing of Brian Walker on his Pahi 26 – MAGIC CARPET. He has rigged her with the Tiki soft wing sail and has added a little deck pod. He left Port Owen in South Africa May 1^st 2000 for St Helena (19 days) and from there to Brazil (17 days), he considered the trip: ‘….across atlantic was wet windy a bit of a rough one….. but…Magic Carpet sails like a dream and surfs down waves up to 16 knots averaging 6knts over 24 hr period, that was the best run’.

The same year the Atlantic did see Tiki 26 MEIRA again, the new owners - ….. sailed her from Portugal to the Cape Verde islands, which they cruised extensively. On the way south they had to face very difficult conditions…Tuesday 6/2/01
By 8am, goosewinged with 2 reefs in main At 11am Will rigged the stormjib as a trisail, sheeted in fairly tight, with lines from the clew to the tillers. This made Meira steer herself an amazing course straight downwind - to within 5 degrees of her course all the time - spooky to see it working.
Wind got up steadily through the next day - and by 5pm being steered by Vicki under bare poles again. By 9pm it was frighteningly windy - probably a gale - there were parallel strips of cloud running at an angle to the wind. Under clear sky it added about one force to the wind. The seas were mountainous and all of them breaking. We were getting ready to stream the unreefed mainsheet in a bight when a larger than usual wave picked Meira up and flung her forward. She was hurtling fairly straight and Vicki was coping, until, quite late on, her Starboard bow dug into the water. Meira swung round to beam on to the seas in a flash. I thought she was going over, as the wave she had been surfing on came up to the port hull and broke over it, and us. Nothing of the sort, Meira recovered from her blow and lay quietly beam on to the seas. This is an interesting report, about real troubles. It’s not clear if they started to experiment too late with drag devices, or if they were at the wrong time at the wrong spot. Nevertheless it clearly shows that the catamaran did well.

In 2003 the first Tiki 30 Atlantic crossing took place – Gunther and Gundi Zimmermann sailed their Tiki 30 ANNA SOPHIE from November 2002 from the Cape Verde Islands to Guadeloupe across the Atlantic. They have built near Vienna and started out in Italy in 1999. Later they sailed via Greece to North Africa and then via Gibraltar to Culatra, where the met other Wharram folks.

On their way to the Cap Verde islands they used the traditional double jib – tradewind setup: ‘…During the following week we had constant northeasterly winds mostly 5 bft (up to 26 kn in gusts) and only two days of rough seas. The rest was pleasant sailing. We used our "tradewindsail" for the first time and were very pleased about its performance. We can use them either with the clews boomed out to each side of the boat ("tradewindsail") or tie the clews together and use them in the normal way (where they cover each other). The big advantages of the "tradewindsail" are the stabilizing effect when sailing downwind and the possibility of easy and immediate reefing when the wind pipes up.

They enjoyed their atlantic crossing obviously very much…..We caught a big dolphin fish (Goldmakrele) just before we could bring it aboard but caught a smaller one in the evening which gave a nice meal next day. During the whole crossing we showed no signs of seasickness although Gundi is normally very sensitive to it. She was able to prepare meals on the spirit stove all the time.’ ……… a line of lights became visible on the western horizon. When the sun rose at about 6 30 local time we had covered 2124 nm; At 9 15 we dropped the anchor into the turquoise water near the beach just south of Pointe de Folie Anse. The anchor is down, buried in the Caribbean coral sand. The boat sways in a gentle breeze and all of a sudden all the tension is gone and in this moment we realize that we are there, released from a friendly ocean and we first notice the intense tropical green behind that stretch of sand in front of us. Have we ever seen such green trees? Did we forget that there was anything but the sea and us? Have we ever been so happy and so thankful?

Nothing to add, in 2004 Gunther and Gundi reached Venezuela and as I am compiling this story now they are preparing ANNA SOPHIE again for their next adventure in 2005, exactly 50 years after……

*) Beggs 1990, Rory 1991, Beggs 2x in 1992, Vivier 2x in 1989 & 99, Zimmermann 2000