For months now, we've been planning to relocate to Bretagne to begin building our Wharram catamaran. Having visited the region briefly a few years ago, we have fond memories and a desire to immerse ourselves in France's vibrant boat-building and sailing communities. We aim to explore Bretagne’s less populated, wild coastal spaces and improve our quality of life while constructing our wooden catamaran over the next few years. With the boys safely off to visit their dad in Japan for a month, Remy and I packed up our camping gear, our daughter Sahara, and our dog, and set off for Lorient in the Morbihan region of Bretagne.
This was no random visit. Hanneke Boon, Head of Wharram Designs, had previously hosted us on board her Pahi 63, Spirit of Gaia. She was sailing from the UK to Brest as crew on a traditional wooden monohull for the annual Maritime Festival, then planned on heading down to Lorient to meet French artist Benjamin Flao. Together, they planned to sail Benjamin's Wharram Designs Tiki 28 from Lorient to Douarnenez for the second part of the festival. We arranged to meet Hanneke in Lorient, where she would camp with us for the week before hopping aboard Benji’s boat. Our itinerary included a visit to the Billie Marine boatyard, where Benji was re-launching his boat. We wanted to see if this yard might be the right place for building our own Narai Mk IV. Perhaps most excitingly, Hanneke would be bringing our boat plans. But before all of that, we had some sailing to do ourselves.
Benoit Castel’s Hitia 17
The Wharram Catamaran Facebook Group is a fantastic online hub for wooden catamaran enthusiasts. Its 11.2K members are like a digital tribe—friendly and helpful. I have yet to encounter the sarcasm, bullying, and division that often plague many online sailing groups. A post I made some time ago about our plans to boat build in Bretagne was met with warm invitations from builder/owners based in the region to drop by when we came. Benoit Castel, true to his word, invited us for an afternoon of sailing on his self-built Hitia 17 at Plage de Kerguélen. After picking up Hanneke from the bus station in Lorient, we found Benoit next to his banana-yellow day sailor, readying it on the grass adjacent to the beach.
I look forward to the day when I can run my hands along the hulls of a Wharram and comment on its builder's technical prowess, pointing out interesting features that catch my eye. That's exactly what Hanneke did while Remy and I stood back, feeling a bit like novices. I may have muttered the standard "Wow, she's beautiful," which I genuinely meant, but the truth is, while we can pick up a surfboard and identify technical details like rocker, concave, and volume, we are still mostly clueless when it comes to boats, especially Wharrams. Despite our previous sailing classes and even a 3-day course, life's challenges—miscarriages, work, and a new baby—have kept us grounded for the past couple of years, and we haven't sailed in so long that everything felt foreign again.
The ocean is where we feel most at home, and Kerguélen Beach was turning it ON: gentle puffs of breeze, crystalline waters, white sand with Mica minerals glittering in the sun, and sail enthusiasts everywhere. Remy and Benoit rolled the boat down the simple boat ramp into the shallows, removed the practical two-piece wheel system, hoisted the mainsail, then the jib, and they were off. At one point, they sailed downwind towards shore with the gennaker out before heading back out to sea. As Hanneke and I played with Sahara and Sage in the cool shallows, discussing boat building and motherhood, I felt like pinching myself. We were doing it—still a long way to go, but after years of dreaming about creating a Floating Stories Lab, we were now well into the first phase of R&D, and the stars, at least for the moment, were beginning to align.
Of course, the wind dropped for my sail, but I didn't mind. It was glorious bobbing around in Breton waters, learning about Benoit's impressive history of building boats, particularly Wharrams. His Hitia 17 took about two years to build and was coated in a LOT of fiberglass, he informed me, knowing of our plans to try and avoid using this material, which is now known to negatively impact marine environments. Benoit's argument, similar to many other Wharram builders I've spoken with online, is that glassing over the wood on Wharrams extends the vessel's life by preventing damage and rot, which is, therefore, more sustainable overall.
The issue with fiberglass, however, is not so simple. Yes, extending the life of a GRP vessel should prolong the likelihood of it becoming abandoned, sunken, burned, or dumped in a landfill. However, GRP boats require maintenance over time, and recent studies show that GRP contamination is worse during the winter months, coinciding with increased boat maintenance activities. This suggests that activities like sanding and cutting of GRP boats are major sources of fiberglass pollution. The digestive glands of oysters and mussels investigated as part of the studies, crucial for processing nutrients in these water-filtering bivalve creatures, were particularly laden with these particles.
A wooden boat will rot at some point without some kind of protection. Kiana Weltzien's Mara Noka lasted five decades without a sheet of glass applied; when she began her extensive refit, she peeled back layers of tar and nylon sheeting, adding some layers of surfboard glass. Tar and nylon are not exactly our ideal replacements for fiberglass; we are more interested in exploring bio composites, such as flax*, but have much research to continue before we can confidently move away from GRP.
(*I’m currently writing an article for a sailing magazine, which goes into this in more detail, and will share with you all once published.)
My relaxing sail with Benoit came to an end, and it was my turn to help him pull the much heavier-than-she-looks Hitia 17 back up the boat ramp. “You'll have to build one of these first,” teased Hanneke. It might be my naivety, but I was tempted by her suggestion. What a brilliant way to get started in Wharram wooden boat building and have a fun family day sailor to practice on while we build our 41ft ocean cruiser, the Narai Mk IV.
To build a Wharram requires space, time, and money. As we are currently in transition between ‘spaces’ to live, have our hands full with kids and finding work, and need to build up economic resources, it’s safe to say we probably can’t add a Hitia 17 build to our endeavors. Never say never, though, as Remy always reminds me. And if not now, maybe someday.
Video: Benoit and Remy heading out for their sail. I am working on a YouTube video edit from our full trip to Bretagne, which will release here on Substack first to paid subscribers.
Coming up in further Substack issues, we visit the Billie Marine boatyard in Hennebont, Lorient, with Hanneke for the re-launch of French artist Benjamin Flao’s Tiki 28, and meet quite the character, Pascal Petit, building an all-GRP Wharram-inspired catamaran under a plastic tarp. We also unbox our Narai Mk IV plans with Hanneke, and make a potentially fateful decision to venture further to the Finistere region for the Douarnenez Maritime Festival.
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