Catamaran built from timber mill offcuts

Nuku‘alofa –A 6.4-metre catamaran, built with offcuts from a sawmill on the Tonga island of ‘Eua, arrived in Nuku‘alofa recently.

The catamaran was the creation of 59-year-old Wolfgang Borner, a German who has been living on ‘Eua for six years.

The wood-working Wolfgang, has been managing the ‘Eua branch of Deep Blue Diving, a scuba diving operation, with its head office in Nuku’alofa.

Wolfgang said that he noticed the abundance of cedar wood on the island, so he suggested to the owner of Deep Blue Diving, Sam Tatafu, that he could build a lodge.

The ‘Ovava Tree Lodge, or Cedar Tree Lodge, was constructed and was completed last year.

“I then had free time and a lot of left over wood. Why not build a little catamaran?” he said.

It took him six months to build the catamaran with cedar, tanato and toa from ‘Eua, with the design based on a Polynesian-style wooden catamaran designed by James Warem, an Australian boat designer.

Wolfgang said that some of the special curved pieces of wood that he needed for the rudder were thrown away offcuts that he found at the forestry sawmill.

He has named the catamaran Kleines Boot after his favourite song when he was a teenager in south Berlin, Germany.

It took Wolfgang three hours to sail from ‘Eua to the island of Tau in the north east of Tongatapu.

He said that there were some good big rolling waves on the way, but he felt that the boat was a bit too small for deep blue water sailing.

Wolfgang’s next project is to build a 10.6-metre catamaran so that he could sail across open ocean blue water, to Ha’apai and Vava’u.

He said that Kleines Boot is ideal for sailing within Nuku’alofa harbour or between Nuku’alofa and the nearby islands.

There is a sleeping area for two people and six people can comfortably sit on deck. - MT