After around two years of living aboard my James Wharram Design – Tangaroa 35, I’ve come to a couple of realizations.
Not revelations exactly—nothing dramatic or lightning-bolt in nature—just the slow, inevitable kind that sneak up on you when you’ve spent enough time with a thing that also happens to be your house. Kind of like when you’ve been sitting around the fire drinking with a mate for a few hours…then get up to take a leak and find yourself with a little stagger. It’s comes as bit of a surprise.
The first realization is fairly obvious: I genuinely love this design concept. I love the simplicity of these boats, their honesty. I’ve spent many years of my life teaching sea kayaking, canoeing, and general outdoor education. During this time I either lived out of my off-road van, or out of a backpack, or dry bags and canoeing drums. I always dreamed that the next logical step was to live on a Wharram catamaran, which in a true sense, is like living in two really, really big canoes.
These early, classic designs feel less like consumer products and more like tools. They’re basic in the truest sense of the word—unpretentious, functional, and, especially the early designs, they’re built like tanks. There’s nothing fragile about them, nothing fussy. They feel like boats that expect to be used, not living in a marina, but be parked next to empty beaches.
The second realization took longer to articulate, but it’s probably the more important one. These boats are extremely lifestyle-specific.
Now, what I mean by that is this: in most modern catamaran designs, a 35-foot boat is reasonably big. You can live on it comfortably. You get a proper salon, a protected center deck, a table you can gather around with five or six people, and a space that functions as a real interior room. You can enclose your world when the weather turns cold, wet, or miserable for days at a time—and when you live on board, that matters.
The Wharram designs in the 30–35 foot range, like all of James Wharram’s boats, are fundamentally different animals. They are not built to live inside. They are built to live upstairs, on deck, enjoying being a part of the environment.
They’re elemental boats. Outdoor boats. Boats that assume you’ll be on deck, in the wind, in the sun, in the salt, in the rain squalls, in the weather itself. Their natural habitat is warm climates, trade winds, and tropical rain showers. They utilize temporary tarps for rain protection, sun shade, and still allow airflow—not sealed cabins and climate-controlled interiors. The lifestyle they imply is more beach than marina, more barefoot than boat shoes, more tarps and canvas than fiberglass furniture.
Some of these smaller Wharram owners have fitted deck pods midship between the hulls, and by all accounts, many of them are very happy with the results. A well-designed pod absolutely changes the livability of these boats.
But this is where things get delicate.
It doesn’t take much to ruin the visual balance of a Wharram. A pod that’s a little too tall, a little too square, a little too boxy—and suddenly you’ve got what looks like a shed bolted into the middle of a boat. Proportion matters. Profile matters. Windage, matters. One of the core design principles James and Hanneke always worked to preserve was low windage profile and open decks, and it’s surprisingly easy to destroy that with good intentions and bad geometry.
On my own boat, I went a more conservative route. I built a helm station hardtop that covers roughly a 6’ x 8’ area between beams three and four. From the side profile, it doesn’t really change the look of the boat much at all, but functionally it’s been a gift. It gives constant shade in summer, which, with high summer humidity and heat here on the gulf coast, is not a luxury—it’s survival equipment. And I can attach canvas and clear panels around the edges for a little wind and rain protection when needed.
What it does not provide, however, is true enclosure.
When it’s genuinely cold here from Arctic fronts that roll south through winter—when temperatures hover not far above freezing for days on end—it doesn’t create a space you can live in. It helps. It improves conditions. But it doesn’t give you a warm room. It doesn’t give you a communal refuge. It doesn’t create that psychological sense of “inside” when the world outside is unpleasant.
And that brings me to the real point of all this.
If I were starting again from scratch, knowing what I know now, I would almost certainly be living on a Wharram design in the 40 to 55 foot range.
In fact, I find myself actively daydreaming about it—about finding another rebuild project in that size class and starting over again.
Every boat I’ve visited in that size range share the same revelation: that extra length changes everything. It’s not incremental—it’s transformational. That additional length creates a massive increase in usable internal volume down in the hulls. Storage, living space, systems space, breathing room. And more importantly, it allows for a genuinely livable midship pod between the hulls that still maintains a low profile, clean lines, and sensibly low enough windage.
You can create a protected communal space without turning the boat into a floating apartment block.
And that space matters more to me now than it used to—especially under way. A protected area where other people can exist comfortably while sailing, not just endure the passage. A place to sit, read, talk, cook, and be human while the boat is moving through the world.
The other realization is more philosophical than practical.
I’ve come to see the 30–35 foot Wharrams as oversized beach cats.
That’s not criticism—it’s admiration.
They’re essentially Hobie cats that grew up, went offshore, and learned how to carry a kitchen, a bed, and a pantry. You get all the fun, lightness, and simplicity of a beach cat, but with the luxury of sleeping in a real bed, cooking in a wraparound galley, and storing enough gear, books, tools, and projects to keep yourself occupied indefinitely.
They are brilliant at what they are.
But what they are is a lifestyle choice.
And my lifestyle has quietly evolved.
I still love the simplicity. I still love the elemental nature of the design. I still love living with less, moving lightly, and keeping systems simple. But I’ve also come to realize the value of protected space, communal warmth, and the ability to hang out up on deck comfortably with friends when the weather is cold, nasty shite, rather than romantically inconvenient.
So yes—if I were starting again, I’d go bigger. Not for luxury. Not for status. Not for comfort in the conventional sense.
But for livability.
For proportion.
The practicality of that extra length turns an outdoor life into a more balanced one—where you can still live in the elements, by choice, but you’re no longer owned by them.
Journey Island Style 