2017 Wooden Boat Festival

Taulua is a 36 foot catamaran, with a frame of freshly split ashwood and recycled pine, covered with a thick skin of paper, canvas and tar. The design of the hulls and sail of the boat are unique, combining modern technology in hydrofoil and aerofoil design and engineering calculation techniques with technology from across the ages. We built her in the Cotswold Hills in the west of England, UK and she was launched in the River Severn in 1982. That same year we sailed her across the Atlantic, and later through the Panama Canal and up the west coast of Central America to Mexico. An article about Taulua was published in Wooden Boat magazine in the Sep/Oct. edition 1986. The film is about the construction of the catamaran, from test sailing the scale model; felling, cleaving and steam-bending ash wood, making treenails, forging the steel fittings, and many other things such as sewing sails, moving and assembling the hulls and launching in the river. It has a voice-over description in English, and lasts one and a half hours.