The MOANA NUI Project

by Christophe Mercier
(France)

I am Christophe Mercier, journalist, photographer and researcher, and after investigating many years in the Pacific area for UNESCO, on the revival of traditional Pacific Navigation, I have created a project named « MOANA NUI » web site in French, English version soon online).

This project's goal is to build some ancient Polynesian catamarans replicas, with which we are going to make an expedition across the Pacific, as well as take participants on board, who will finance the project by their participation.

Thus, the goal is to make build 2 Polynesian catamarans for the 1st year, then 1 catamaran each year for 4 more years, which makes 6 catamarans in total.

As the expedition will depart from the Philippines, we are looking for boat builders in Asia (closer to the expedition departure place)

We would for sure provide the plans, but as an example of what we are looking for we invite you again to look at the web site www.moananui.net, and moreover, we can are send some images, and a web site video link of such Catamaran Built in Senegal, Africa.

We can also send some images of traditional building techniques we have identified in India (coconut fiber rope lashing of hull planks...), to show you the kind of ancient techniques we are looking for.

Each catamaran should be around 60 ft. LOA.

As you can see, these catamarans have nothing modern in them, no facility, and that's much more a kind of prehistoric replica we are looking for...

But a very seaworthy replica!

And it has to be very long lifetime, last for at least 30-40 years, and easy to maintain.

We are waiting for your comments on such building techniques as far as length of life, seaworthiness, waterproofness, and maintenance are concerned...