Wharram Women - then and Now

James on TANGAROA in 1955-56 with Ruth and Jutta Shultze Rhonhof

The current spate of Bluewater Cruising YouTube vloggers for some reason annoy me. They are usually well tanned, fit young couples on large plastic cruising yachts or catamarans who face the “adversities” of the ocean with Prozac smiles and saccharine cliches.  Or perhaps I’m just not as young and beautiful as they are anymore, and I’m trying to rationalise my jealousy.

However, this week I stumbled across a couple of videos of the same genre, but somehow less disingenuous. Six months after the death of James Wharram and almost 70 years since he set sail from Falmouth in a Polynesian inspired 23½ft flat-bottomed double canoe (now called a catamaran) that he had built himself at a cost of £200, his craft still have a low level cult following.

Kiana Weltzien is a young Wharram catamaran owner and she has made a couple of evocative short videos about her voyages

Sure, they still have a slightly annoying millennial sensibility, but by combining some authentic James Wharram footage she makes me think that she would have fitted in well aboard TANGAROA in 1955. ENJOY!