The Floating Stories Lab is built around a floating research and storytelling platform—a 41ft Polynesian-inspired wooden catamaran, low-tech vessel designed to facilitate accessible and immersive ocean-based experiences.
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Based off the Wharram Designs Narai Mk IV model with custom modifications.
This classic double-canoe design reflects a deep respect for Polynesian voyaging traditions, embodying self-sufficiency, adaptability, and a connection to the natural world.
Length Overall: 12.35m
Beam Overall: 5.95m
Draft: 0.66m
Sleeping Capacity: 4 Double Bunks
Weight: 3 tons
Loading Capacity: 3 tons -
Constructed primarily from timber, plywood, epoxy, and minimal fiber-reinforced composite sheathing, the material choices offer a sustainable alternative to mass-produced fiberglass boats.
The boat’s simple, robust construction allows for ease of maintenance and long-term resilience, making it an ideal vessel for research, storytelling, and community engagement.
As we finalize material choices, we will update them here.
Plywood (as of April 2025)Okoume (West Africa) - 20 panels to create the bulkheads and backbone.
Tebo Pin Elite Maritime Pine (France grown and produced)*. (Supply chain issues, see video explainer here).
TimberMovingui (Origin West Africa, Sourced in France) - a 200+ year-old-timber was sourced as 20+ year-old legacy stock from a second-generation carpentry family business in Brittany, France.
EpoxyResoltech 1020 ECO part bio epoxy and 1026s hardener.
We also stress tested Change Climate Bio Epoxy, though cannot receive more due to supply chain issues. (See video here.)
Peel Ply (nylon)
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Boat Build Location: Cap Solidarité, Finistere, Bretagne, France
Start Date: June 1, 2025
Estimated Building Time: 2500-3000hrs
Estimated Launch: EU Summer, 2028
THE JOB LIST
Our monthly ‘Job List’ spreadsheet to keep us on track with the boat build. This is a publicly viewable sheet and volunteers are welcome to contact us if there’s a particular job you are interested in participating in.
Estimated boat launch: European Summer 2028.
Boat Build VIDEOs
1 Year in Under 8 Minutes, our latest YouTube video, has got some serious momentum on the platform, so if you haven’t seen it yet, we think it’s worth the watch. We also have important updates about our membership program to share.
Braving putrid temperatures and a two-day black out were a group of talented artists and academics who joined us in Finistere for the 2026 FSL ReTISS Citizen Science Creative Residency. No joke guys, it was a bloody hot week. Between field trip visits to the local Boat Cemetery, kayaking up the Goyen River to view these sites of decay from the water looking back, and debris collecting, the team worked together during creative interpretation sessions to co-create the Table of Curiosity, which FSL will begin touring next month to festivals, events and conferences across Brittany.
We wrap up Week 53 in the boat yard, sharing updates and great news about a BIG incoming donation of timber!
Welcome to the new Weekly Digest segment on YouTube, with real-time updates dropping on the channel every Sunday evening.
From glue-ups in the yard to hosting scientists across Brittany — a couple of big weeks here for FSL!
Is peel ply worth it? We answers your questions and share our processes using bio epoxy and peel ply on our 12m wooden catamaran build.
The Floating Stories Lab is celebrating its one-year anniversary as an association this month!
In the latest episode of the Boat Build Series on YouTube, we address our wet wood issue by building plywood drying racks, a wood drying chamber, and we tackle the task of scarfing ALL our movingui timber stringers and the starboard hull’s plywood backbone joins.
Our citizen science initiative Regenerative Tides: Sailing for Solutions joins UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development program. Plus more news from the boat yard and a new book alert!
Marc, a student from the traditional wooden boat building school Atelier l’Enfer, joined us for part of his work placement last week, helping us to leap ahead at a very important stage of the build: drawing, cutting and scarfing the backbone of our 12m Narai Mk IV catamaran.
We are thrilled to be welcoming the Hui to Audierne this summer and especially cannot wait to see Hanneke Boon’s Pahi 63 Spirit of Gaia and all the beautiful Wharram catamarans arriving to the harbour.
In this episode of our Boat Build video series, we talk through our French Maritime Pine plywood crisis and contemplate going to Africa to document the supply chain of FSC certified Okoume ply that we are now likely going to be using for the boat build.
In this episode, Simone and Remy show us the process of scarfing and then rounding the edges of the Movingui timber sheer stringers for our 41ft wooden catamaran.
Our latest video in the Boat Build series shares the experience of cutting our Movingui legacy hardwood planks, which was no easy feat!
Join us lofting our Wharram Narai Mk IV Wooden Catamaran plans on to drawing plywood, then testing European Maritime Pine and the Australian produced Change Climate 100% Bio Epoxy Resin with surprising results!
Milestone moment with our boat build, drawing the lines of our Wharram wooden catamaran.
We opted for a minimalist, inexpensive flooring with the objective of having a level, clean and dry base atop which to spend the next two years building FSL’s 41ft Polynesian-inspired Wharram Designs wooden catamaran.
Pour les nouveaux ici, il serait maladroit de poursuivre mon développement sans parler du cœur du projet, The Floating Stories Lab notre association loi 1901 créé par ma femme et moi en avril 2025 avec pour mission une vocation double : Construire une plateforme flottante, à savoir un catamaran de 12m afin de disséminer, d’embarquer et de sensibiliser à des sujets environnementaux en lien direct avec l’océan via des projets citoyens.
We have just come off a huge five days presenting the Floating Stories Lab booth in the Racing for the Ocean tent as part of The Ocean Race Atlantic’s Park City installation in Lorient, Brittany.