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More than just a sailor and designer, James Wharram, originally of Manchester, England, is also both a free-thinker and an individual clearly dedicated to getting as much out of this life as possible. Although he made his mark as a multihull designer, builder and voyager who drew inspiration from the ancient catamarans and proas of Polynesia, such a distinction only scratches the surface of his story—as is evident in the tale of how he came to build his very first catamaran.
Looking back in time, my “I want to” [build and sail a double canoe across the Atlantic] seems ridiculous, a juvenile fantasy. I was 25-years-old, I had no inherited money, no trade, no profession; I was a dreamer. Ruth [Wharram’s then girlfriend and future wife, who passed away in 2013] sat quietly and replied, “I will help you, but only if you put all your best effort and all your abilities into the project.” Discipline had entered into my life. Then being practical she asked, “How much will it cost?” Around that time there was a small book on sailing by Weston Martyr called The £200 Millionaire, so I quickly said: “Oh about £200,” (£200 in 1954 being approximately equal to £5,500 in 2019, or about $7,500). We sold our Annie E. Evans to two river policemen and returned to England.
On the way back to my parents’ home in Manchester, we stayed in London to visit the Science Museum in south Kensington, with its marvelous collection of Chinese junks and Pacific canoe models. There I found exhibited a model of a 24ft double canoe with a beautiful hull shape made in 1935 by an old Polynesian islander in the Society Islands. I bought a photograph of this model and decided to use this boat as a base for my Polynesian double canoe. At 24ft it could be built within my limited budget.
The hull shape of the model was quite slender, so with this as a starting point I had to redesign the hull shape for loading up with sufficient stores to cross the Atlantic from Britain to the tropical isles of the West Indies, a voyage which would be of similar distance and sea conditions as a long Pacific sea voyage.
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