RUMORS about Formosa, CT, & 70s-80s Taiwan boats

[Tommys Sayers]

Ok, I have a 1987 Transworld 41 ketch, not a Formosa but a Taiwan made vessel. I have found no old newspaper in any core and no cheap wood, the glass was laid well and very thick, maybe a little too much chromic chloride as was the fad during the 70.-80s to lessen the use of petroleum products and seeing a few listers or boat pox is a sign of that, I have begun removing all the screws from my teak deck just to eliminate leaks, the decks were bedded so well that the screws are useless anyway, My only complaints were the weak attachment of the holding tank put in with small screws and a poorly designed battery platform, other that that it was not only well designed but very well put together. all my rigging and stainless fasteners and chain plates still in prefect condition at 35 years old.

[donradcliffe]

My old boss had a CT-41, and the deck to cabin joint rotted out. It was just plywood. He had it repaired and sold the boat.

[Bycrick]

I owned a Formosa 37’ from 1976 to 1999. Lots of cheap structural plywood. If it got wet, it delaminated. Top of mainmast and end of bowsprit rotted because of badly designed cranze irons. Black iron diesel tanks looked like big colanders. Most of the hull was very thick glass, very solid. Transom had a plywood core which was full of water; literally, not just wet. I actually did find some rolled up newspaper and corrugated cardboard used as a filler-former to apply glass underneath the hull-deck joint. It wasn’t structural. But I cruised for two years, SF to Costa Rica, to Polynesia and back to SF, without any major failures.

[Shrew]

In the building trades, years ago, concrete guys would throw a coin when pouring the foundation. Framers would put a coin in the first first floor wall. They also put an old newspaper in the wall before sealing it up. At least this is the case in the US in New England.

I've found both coins and newpapers in the walls of various homes over the years doing renovations. I always put them back, or somewhere else in the house walls.

I've had two friends who've found coins deep in the recesses of their boat doing work. These were not places, like the couch. These were in places loose change wouldn't accidentally fall.

Coring can't be newspaper, it needs to be structural. Are we sure we're not finding an errant piece of newspaper put into the build for good luck??

Also, Balsa, when thoroughly saturated looks like wet grocery bags or wet, brown newspaper. I'd be inclinded to think it was one of these explanations. Otherwise, how is newspaper goiing to structurally support a deck??

[Bycrick]

To be very specific. The hull-deck joint had a piece of wood between the deck molding and the hull molding. This wood was glassed over from the outside. The teak rail was screwed into the wood. On the underside of the joint, there was a trapezoidal area, varying in height from about 10” aft and forward to about 2” amidship, under the rail and between the deck and hull. This area had been filled with rolled up newspaper and covered with a strip of corrugated cardboard. They then layed up the bottom side with over 1/4” of glass between the inside of the hull and the bottom of the deck. So they had a very strong hollow trapezoidal box-section. The rolled up paper and cardboard were only used to support the first layers of glass until they cured. It had all gotten wet because they through-bolted some hardware the box-section.

[sailon46]

Back in the 80s I bought a Formosa 35. What a boat to sail to Catalina island. And then one day the rudder stock parted and no rudder action after that. Tommy’s was a guy down in the port of San Pedro and when he opened the rudder he showed me where the rudder post had been welded with a bolt nut as a spacer between the two members. That is why the rudder all of a sudden did not rudder. I think some China man had two pieces of metal to weld so he picked a nut from the shop floor and bingo he solved his problem that almost messed me up bad. Thank god it parted as I was pulling out of the slip in Terminal island, so I pulled back in.

[boatpoker]

Yes, the hulls are thick, they have to be as they are mostly chopped strand mat and hydrolysis is not uncommon. If the chainplates have not be redesigned and replaced don't trust them, there is no apparent consistency as to how they were installed. What people call "black iron" (thats just an old plumbing term to differentiate between steel and galvanized steel) are really just mild steel tanks that were improperly installed and if they have not been replaced, don't trust them. Deck core is cheap plywood, if you remove the teak and walk on deck it will be like walking on a mattress.

[Bycrick]

One can’t trust that anything is done "right," as opposed to maybe "well enough." The top of the spruce mainmast rotted, because of the poor design of the cranze iron. The top of the mast contained a well-made SS box that contained to two halyard sheaves, which rotated on an axle made of 1/2” SS rod, with a nut at each end. Simple, easy. It turned out that the two nuts had been hand-made from hex bar stock. But they’d apparently had both nuts before they made the axle. So they cut the threads on the axle to match the two nuts: one end was threaded SAE, the other end metric.

[Cheechako]

Really, when we say "Taiwan boat" it's like saying US boats are no good because someone had a bad experience with a Buccaneer.

There were really sloppy Taiwan yards and at the opposite end of the spectrum there are yards like Ta Shing. Ta Shing went on to only building 100 ft plus luxury craft.

A 1979 Chinese cell phone doesn't relate in any way to an iPhone!

[boatpoker]

Originally Posted by Cheechako

Really, when we say "Taiwan boat" it's like saying US boats are no good because someone had a bad experience with a Buccaneer.

There were really sloppy Taiwan yards and at the opposite end of the spectrum there are yards like Ta Shing. Ta Shing went on to only building 100 ft plus luxury craft.

A 1979 Chinese cell phone doesn't relate in any way to an iPhone!

it all depends on who is watching them do the work.

[Cheechako]

Originally Posted by boatpoker

it all depends on who is watching them do the work.

So true! I worked in Aerospace!

My boss had a plaque in his office that read: "Don't tell my mother I work here, she thinks I play piano in a whorehouse"

[Bycrick]

Even Ta Shing could and did cut corners on what was supposed to be an above-average boat. Hull #21. The winches and deck hardware around the cockpit were all poorly located. Why? The first boats were aft cockpit. When they changed to a center-cockpit design, all the hardware was mounted in the same place RELATIVE TO THE COCKPIT, even though the cockpit had moved forward. It appeared that some of the deck hardware had been attached to the deck molding before the deck was attached to the hull, When the installed bulkheads covered up the interior nuts, they just notched the bulkheads for clearance, then glassed over everything. The fuel tank access was completely covered because the companionway had moved. The negative bus bars behind the nav station were steel barrier terminal strips, with hand-cut brass jumpers. A lot of the wiring runs had been designed for the aft cockpit model. The wiring was installed before the finishing cabinet work, so lots of butt-splices and extended wires when they had to put cabinet work around previously installed wires.

The chainplates were mounted ar the wrong angle (ie, not in line with the wire) because they couldn’t easily drill the holes in the glassed-in mounting blocks. None of the through-deck holes for hardware or chainplates had the coring sealed. A fancy active bonding system installed improperly and effectively useless.

Maybe they were capable of doing things correctly, but that’s no indication that did it that way on any particular boat.

[Bill Seal]

Originally Posted by Bycrick

I owned a Formosa 37’ from 1976 to 1999. Lots of cheap structural plywood. If it got wet, it delaminated. Top of mainmast and end of bowsprit rotted because of badly designed cranze irons. Black iron diesel tanks looked like big colanders. Most of the hull was very thick glass, very solid. Transom had a plywood core which was full of water; literally, not just wet. I actually did find some rolled up newspaper and corrugated cardboard used as a filler-former to apply glass underneath the hull-deck joint. It wasn’t structural. But I cruised for two years, SF to Costa Rica, to Polynesia and back to SF, without any major failures.

Maybe using rolled up newspapers instead of polyurathane foam as gap fillers for tabbing is where the rumors came from. If you could crawl inside some highway bridges, you could probably find some old rotted plywood forms that were just left there.

BTW, spray foam makes an excellent gap filler for fiberglassing things to the hull.

[Bowdrie]

Personally, my experience has been with the cabin sides, particularly the areas below the fixed windows on the raised-deck sections of the doghouses, (the typical Garden designed clipper bow ketches that were built by many yards with several iterations/names).
But I've also seen the same issues with Grand Banks/DeFever/Choy Lee, and others, it's a "built in" problem area to be aware of that requires the owner to keep track of, and it's a curse that has surfaced over time to many boats no matter where they were built.
They did have a fascination with Teak, and much of the cabin/deckhouse issues can be traced to the practice of adding trim everywhere, then adding more trim to the trim, slathering on trim without adequate bedding, and/or poor quality bedding.
I won't get started on the billions of tiny brass screws with too small of slots for a real screwdriver to engage.

[Lowcountry]

I've owned two different boats built in Taiwan in the 1980's. The first, a Mason 44, was built in the TaShing yard and was supremely well-made. The second, my current Hans Christian 33, was built in the Shin Fa yard. Although the construction on this boat is still very good, it does not live up to that of the Mason 44. I can't speak to the craftsmanship of other boats coming out of Taiwanese yards in the 70's/80's, but will say that most anything from TaShing or Hansa yards is probably going to be pretty well-made. How any of these boats has held up 30-40 years later will have a lot to do with how they have been maintained by their owners.