James Wharram Designs

Building your own boat with Wharram Designs is the easiest and most cost effective way to fulfil your sailing dreams. Wharram Self-build boat plans start from only £100.

We recommended you follow the tried and trusted Wharram process to ensure the boat you build is both the right type of boat for your needs and also one that will match your building skills and expenditure.

1. Read the Wharram Design Book and familiarise yourself with the various designs and their unique qualities.

2. Order one or more sets of our Boat Building Study Plans and immerse yourself into the boat builder's mindset; evaluate the costs; the amount of time required to build your boat; where you will build it and where you will eventually launch it.

3. Once you have decided on the boat that is right for YOU to build, order the Boat Builder's Plans and become a real life member of the Wharram Boat Builder Community.

Spirit of Gaia renovation, 20 years after her launching (Part 3)

Work on Spirit of Gaia continues..

We arrived in Messolonghi marina on the Spring equinox to recommence work on Spirit of Gaia.

I travelled by car and ferry from the UK with two volunteers, Dutch Michael, who helped me last Autumn (and also helped to build Amatasi in 2011) and Tony, an old acquaintance from Manchester, who built one of our early 27ft Tane designs in the 1960s, built a Pahi 31 in the 80s and renovated another Tane in the 90s, which he sailed in Greece for many years. He also crossed the Atlantic from St. Lucia to the UK in 1979 on our 51ft Tehini as a single charter guest when the boat was sailed by a different skipper and crew. They encountered a serious gale West of the Azores.

Hui Wharram Spring Rendezvous 2013 - Event Details

Wharram Rendezvous (HUI Wharram)
Spring 2013 -- May 17, 18, 19

Islamorada, Florida -- (The fabulous Florida Keys)

If you have friends who would be interested in getting emails about Wharram events, please forward their email addresses to floridawharramrendezvous@hotmail.com. Thanks.

If you didn’t get email #1 or #2 about this event, please let me know and i’ll send them to you. They contain a lot of details about the location, getting there, the dinner, etc.

Meeting of the ‘Golden Oldies’

In 2005 in France people set up the Golden Oldies Multihulls Association. Its aims are to support individual actions to protect the heritage of historic offshore multihulls. Most of its members own Classic racing multihulls designed before 1988, there are also Silver members with special multihulls of a slightly later date.

On May 15th -20th they will be holding a sailing meeting in Sète in the South of France to which James and Hanneke have been invited. They were tempted to sail ‘Spirit of Gaia’ to the meeting, but logistics are too problematic. However, sistership to Gaia, ‘Largyalo’, will be attending the meeting and James and Hanneke have been asked to sail on board her.

Also attending will be Jeaques Pierret with his trans-Atlantic Tiki 38 ‘Pilgrim’ and another Tiki 26. Anyone wishing to meet James and Hanneke in the South of France, do try to come to the gathering.

Visit http://www.goldenoldies.biz/ for further details

James Wharram is awarded the 2012 ‘OCC Award of Merit’

James recently received an unexpected letter from the Ocean Cruising Club Awards Chairman with this notice:

“I have great pleasure in writing to you to inform you that the committee have voted you as the winner of The OCC Award of Merit that is awarded to members and non members for ‘an outstanding voyage or achievement’. This is our most prestigious award.

Who can possibly argue with the fact that you are thoroughly deserving of this award for your innovative designs over many years that have helped people fulfil their dreams of building a boat and sailing into the sunset."

James and Hanneke will be attending the awards ceremony, which will take place on April 20th on board HQS Wellington in London. Though James has never been a member of the OCC, many of his sailing friends are and perhaps it is time for him to join as well. The main requirement to join this club of World sailors is to have sailed a voyage of 1000Nm.

Other award winners this year are fellow Experimental Marine Archaeologist Tim Severin and single-handed sailor and writer Val Howells.

Read the original 'Classic Boat' article (PDF Extract)

www.oceancruisingclub.org

James Wharram - Patron of Queenborough Harbour Trust

Ruth and James aboard Annie E Evans 1953, Thames Estuary.

Last year James was given the honour by being invited to become Patron to Queenborough Harbour Trust by one of its founder members, Eddie Johnson.

In the 1970s Queenborough was a popular venue for meetings of Wharram catamarans (organised by the PCA). Eddie as a boy attended these with his father on their Wharram catamaran. Queenborough harbour, with its shallow waters is ideal for Wharram catamarans and the Harbour Trust is trying to attract more people to keep their catamarans there.

While in the London area for the OCC Award, James and Hanneke will be visiting Queenborough on Friday 19th April and will be talking about the Lapita Voyage, including showing the film, at the Queenborough Yachtclub.

Eddie Johnson, who is the Rear Commodore of this yachtclub, is inviting Wharram owners/builders and others in the South East to attend this lecture. Please contact him if you are interested in coming to the lecture and meeting James and Hanneke: edcjohnson@aol.com

www.queenborough-harbour.co.uk

Hui Wharram 2013 Spring Rendezvouz scheduled

We will be holding the Spring Wharram Rendezvous (a Hui Wharram) May 17-18-19, 2013 in Islamorada, FL (Florida Keys) at the world famous Lorelei Cabana Bar.

A “Hui Wharram” or “Hui-o-waa-Kaulua-Wharram” (Hawaiian) is a group or gathering of Wharram boats.

There is no easier way to fulfill your sailing dreams – from sailing the trade winds or the local shores – than with a Wharram Sailing Catamaran. Wharrams range from 16’ to 63’ and are mostly home built of plywood. Stable, rugged, fast, FUN, comfortable, inexpensive to build, operate and repair!

Come, see and enjoy the boats. Just have fun. We talk about Wharrams and nearly any other boat. We tell sailing stories…some may even be true. We compare notes. We share pictures. We look at plans. We take pictures of each other’s boats and get some really good (and a few bad) ideas. We eat and drink and just have fun. Bring a boat if you have one but everyone is welcome … no boat needed! FREE! No registration, no costs, no plan (a perfect Keys event!)! Join us for a Dutch-treat dinner on Saturday night at the Lorelei…lots of door prizes!

For details send an email to floridawharramrendezvous@hotmail.com.

The dream of building and sailing your own boat...

Over 72 pages showing details of all currently available self-build boat designs and the Wharram boat building philosophy.

This is THE starting place for satisfying your dream of building and owning your self-build catamaran. It contains all the basic information about all currently available self-build Wharram designs, with much basic building and historical development detail. There are photos and basic layout diagrams of the designs.

We would always suggest you buy the Design Book first, as it gives the opportunity to "browse" all designs to see what may really suit your needs before investing in either Study Plans, which contain more detail of each specific design, or the full set of Building Plans.

Wharram Study Plans are intended to provide more detail than is available in the Design Book. In particular, they will help you decide if a particular boat design is for you.

The most important part of the Study Plan is the Materials List, which will list the major boat building materials requirements so you can cost your project in your own area.

We feel sure that after studying these plans you will appreciate the quality and detail of the Building Plans, which, for the more recent designs, are more like a course in wooden boat building than just a plan set.

Amatasi 27 Study Plan.

Craft Length 27ft - 8.3m.
Contents:

2 x A2 Plan Sheets
Materials List
1 x A3 Colour photo sheet
Competition article
Information page

Building Plans not yet available

Photos of Amatasi (23)

Double Canoe designed for Eco fishing, youth groups and Coastal Trekking.

Winner of Classic Boat Design Competition 2010. (Read more)

£12.50

See all photos (97)

Length Overall:	30'	9.15 m
Beam Overall:	16' 4"	5.00 m
Waterline length:	25' 5"	7.75 m
Draft (incl. LAR keel):	2' 1"	0.65 m
Weight:	2200 lbs	1000 kg
Loading capacity:	2200 lbs	1000 kg
Sail area:	385 sqft	35.8 sqm
Building Time Estimate:	900 hrs

The ideal low budget self build ocean cruiser.

With a sleeping capacity of 6 (two doubles in the hulls) and spacious level deck area, TIKI 30 makes an excellent low cost charter boat.

It is our largest self-build boat design that is capable of being towed behind a vehicle. This means keeping the build weight down, and simple but adequate accommodation. This is not a high cost, luxury boat, but an elegant, versatile, 'double canoe' sailing boat, providing basic comfort for 'Living on the Sea'.

£660.00

See all photos (39)

Length Overall:	21'	6.40 m
Beam Overall:	12'	3.66 m
Waterline length:	18'6"	5.64 m
Draft:	1'2"	0.35 m
Weight:	790 lbs	360 kg
Loading capacity:	1000 lbs	460 kg
Sail area:	208 sqft	19.25 sqm
Building Time Estimate:	400 hrs

The Tiki 21 was designed in 1981 as an easy to build Coastal Trek catamaran, using new epoxy/glass stitch & glue techniques. In 1982 the new and then quite radical Tiki 21 was given first prize by Cruising World magazine (USA) in their design competition for a ‘Trailable Gunkholer’. Since then, 925 Tiki 21 Plans have been sold (June 2010).

In 1991-97 Rory McDougall sailed his self-built Tiki 21 'Cooking Fat' around the world, sometimes alone, sometimes with a companion. She was, and still is, the smallest catamaran to have circumnavigated. In 2010 Rory entered 'Cooking Fat' in the Jester Challenge (single handed 'race' across the Atlantic for small boats - under 30ft) and came into Newport, Rhode Island a close second after 34 days.

The Tiki 21 has stayed popular as a simple, easy to trail Coastal Trekker all over the world. Her unique soft Wharram Wingsail Rig has been used on all subsequent Tiki and other Wharram designs (30ft - 65ft) and is very popular with the owners of these boats.

Winner of the Cruising World Design Competition - Read full article here..

£365.00