Bill Hardin and the yards that built his boats, from Japan to Kaohsiung.
1926 to the 1990s
Bill Hardin: the man behind the boats
William "Bill" Hardin (credited in builder databases as R. W. Hardin, William Hardin or Bill Hardin) was an American boatbuilder and designer, and one of the first Westerners to build yachts in Asia for the American market. Most of what we know about his life comes from W. A. Campbell III, who imported Hardin boats from 1977 and knew Hardin personally. Campbell's short history was published on CaptainWiki and archived in 2013.
According to Campbell, Hardin was born in 1926 and studied naval architecture and engineering at Long Beach City College in California. He was working with fibreglass as early as 1948, and by 1959 he was building fibreglass boats in Japan. In 1981 Campbell had dinner with him at the Hong Kong Yacht Club, where Hardin kept Hardin 45 hull number 100 for himself. Campbell says Hardin died in the Vancouver, British Columbia area in the 1990s. We have not yet found an obituary or public record that confirms the dates of his birth or death.
Campbell places Hardin with William Garden, Bill Crealock and Ernie Chamberlain as the pioneers who got Taiwanese yacht building going for the American market in the late 1960s and 1970s. Hardin worked closely with Garden, the Seattle (later Victoria, BC) naval architect, whose ketch designs he commissioned in Japan and built in Taiwan. He later drew his own boats, of which the Hardin 45 is the best known.
A note on Seattle: Bill Hardin is sometimes described as a Seattle designer. We found no source that places him in Seattle. The Seattle link in his story is William Garden, who trained and set up his design office there. Hardin's own documented bases are Long Beach, Japan, Taiwan and Hong Kong, with his final years spent near Vancouver. This stays open until a primary source settles it.
Design approach: the boats Hardin built and drew are traditional, heavy-displacement, long-keeled cruising ketches with generous teak interiors. In the Hardin 45 the priority was comfort at anchor and for living aboard, with a raised saloon full of light, rather than speed.
Sources: CW (W. A. Campbell III, CaptainWiki 'BoatType/Hardin', archived 2013); WP-GARDEN; GOB-JP; SBD-BUILDER; SG-BUILDER; BWB-H45
late 1950s to 1960
The Japan years: Garden ketches at Okamoto
Hardin's boatbuilding career in Asia began in Japan. In the late 1950s, a few American businessmen arranged for Japanese yards near Tokyo to build sailboats for export to the United States. One of them was Bill Hardin, who commissioned 35-foot and 40-foot ketches designed by William Garden from the Okamoto Shipyard. A Far East Yachts history dates this to 1957; Campbell says Hardin was building boats in Japan in 1959.
These first boats were wooden. Sailboatdata's notes say the original Sea Wolf was built in Japan in the late 1950s at Okamoto (spelled "Okomato" there), the yard Hardin worked with. A forum post says Hardin built Sea Wolfs in Yokosuka, but we could not read that thread to check it.
Hardin's Japanese venture ended in 1960. Good Old Boat says he effectively shut down Okamoto when he moved his operations to Taiwan. Soon afterwards Kawasaki bought the neighbouring yards, which carried on building Garden-designed Mariner ketches until the yen was revalued in 1971.
Taiwan pioneer: the Chen family yards and the Sea Wolf
In 1960 Hardin moved his building to Taiwan and partnered with the Chen family. The Far East Yachts history says this partnership later split into three groups: the CC Chen yard (Yankee Clipper and possibly Sea Tiger), the CT Chen yard (CT 41), and the Formosa yard. Good Old Boat likewise describes the move as going to three Taiwanese yards: two Chen yards and Formosa.
Campbell's account names the yard more precisely. Hardin started the CT (Ta Chiao) yard with two Chinese partners near Taipei in northern Taiwan, building three William Garden designs: the original Sea Wolf 40, the Sea Sprite and the Force 50. He left CT soon after and took his Sea Wolf moulds with him. The Force 50 moulds went to Hudson in the Taipei area. Sailboatdata names the Formosa partner as the Chen family's Formosa Boat Builders, where the Sea Wolf was built in both wood and fibreglass.
The Sea Wolf was widely copied. Some versions were direct copies of the boat: the Sea Tiger 41, Yankee Clipper 41, Atlantic Clipper 41 and Clipper 41. The Island Trader 41 and Transworld 41 came from different moulds but were derived from it, and the CT 41 was a related but different boat. The Force 50 was copied as the Formosa 51 and Island Trader 51. Campbell says this copying is why Taiwanese builders were so reluctant to hand out drawings.
Dates conflict. Good Old Boat and the Far East Yachts history put the move to Taiwan in 1960. Campbell describes the Taiwan industry taking off in the late 1960s and 1970s. Builder databases give 1966 as the Sea Wolf 40's first production year. Hardin may have started Taiwanese production in the early 1960s, with volume fibreglass production following later in the decade.
Hardin then moved to Kaohsiung, at the southern end of Taiwan, where labour and overhead were cheaper, and built a new factory. The company was Hardin International Co. Ltd. Campbell dates the move to about 1970. Sailboatdata and Sailboat Guide give Hardin International's years in business as 1977 to 1988, probably because those are the dates of its best-known boats, not of the company's founding.
At Kaohsiung Hardin designed and built the Hardin 45, in all-fibreglass construction. Hardin International was the only builder of the Hardin 45 itself. The first boats were imported to the US as the Bounty 44. Around 1980 Hardin revised the design (see the Hardin 44/45 chapter), and brokers came to call every boat of the family a Hardin 45. In the US the boats were sold through East-West Yachts of Marina del Rey, California, and Campbell imported them from 1977 until the factory closed.
Using the same hull moulds, Hardin also built about 20 to 25 boats for Island Trader (Marine Trading International) to that importer's own specification, with a different deck and coachroof. These were sold as the Island Trader 45. Sailboatdata says they were finished in New Jersey.
Other boats are credited to the Kaohsiung yard. The Sea Wolf 40 continued in production under the Hardin name, and a 1977 example is described as built in Hardin's Kaohsiung shipyard. Builder databases also list the Sea Bird 37, a Stan Huntingford and Hardin design first built by Cooper Enterprises in Canada in 1973. Owners also report a Hardin 42 trawler built around 1981 (see that model). One price guide says Hardin sailboats ran from 36 to 51 feet.
About 130 Hardin 45s had been built when the factory closed in the mid-1980s, according to Campbell and Sailboatdata. One owner's blog guesses there were about 160. Campbell says a couple of hulls were still unfinished at the closing and may have been completed and exported later. Sailboatdata gives 1988 as the end of the business.
Kaohsiung, Hardin's home port, today: the 2014 Taiwan International Boat Show (not a Hardin). Photo: 玄史生, Wikimedia Commons, CC0.
Hardin's move to Taiwan in 1960 was early. By the late 1970s, Good Old Boat says, more than 100 Taiwanese yards were building boats such as Tayanas, CTs, Transpacs and Masons, many of them heavy, teak-rich, traditional cruisers like the Hardin. In 1976 Taiwan's government organised its naval architects and marine engineers into the body that became the Taiwan Yacht Industry Association, and Kaohsiung became the centre of the industry.
The way the trade worked explains a lot about these boats. An American importer could contract with a yard and set the equipment, finishes and sometimes the scantlings and design changes, then sell the result under its own model name. Large importers who could not fill their orders from one yard used several. Campbell says this caused the quality to vary between boats sold under the same name, and made it hard to generalise about a model.
Taiwanese boats of the 1970s and early 1980s picked up the nickname "leaky teaky". The usual cause is the teak deck: teak planks were fastened with thousands of screws through a fibreglass and plywood (or balsa) core, and over the years water gets past the screws and rots the core. Owners also report leaking wooden window frames and leaking deck fills. Forum writers and a builder review suggest construction improved through the 1970s and early 1980s as the yards gained experience. We found no reliable source for when or where the nickname started.
Campbell, who had boats built in six Taiwanese and Chinese yards, says the rumour that roving work crews built parts of different boats as they moved from yard to yard was untrue: every yard he worked with had its own full-time workforce. He says the problems found in used Hardins can usually be traced to poor maintenance. He also advises Hardin owners to fit storm shutters over the large windows before any ocean passage. The factory offered fibreglass shutters as an option, but few buyers ordered them.
One design, many names: Bounty 44, Hardin 44, Hardin 45, Voyager
The Bounty 44, Hardin 44, Hardin 45, Hardin Voyager 45 and "Voyager 44" are one design from one builder. Campbell, Sailboatdata, Sailboat Guide and Bluewaterboats all agree on this. All were built by Hardin International at Kaohsiung.
The boat was first imported in 1977 as the Bounty 44. Around 1980 Hardin revised it: the draft went from 6'0" to 5'6", the transom was trimmed, the two aft hull portlights moved up to the aft cabin trunk, and the length overall grew to 45'2". Most people don't notice the differences, so brokers call all of them Hardin 45s. "Voyager" is a model name used in listings, but we found no source that says exactly when it was introduced.
The Island Trader 45 is a close relative but not the same boat. It used the same hull, built at Kaohsiung to the importer's specification, with a different deck and coachroof and smaller front windows. Sailboatdata's note that it was built "at another yard" contradicts Campbell, who says Hardin built it himself.
Where Shawnee fits: Shawnee is a 1978 hull. Her published specifications (44'6" length, 6' draft, 30,000 lb displacement, 8,500 lb ballast, 200 gallons each of fuel and water) match the pre-1980 Bounty 44 / Hardin 44 version, not the 45'2", 5'6"-draft boat that came after 1980. The 45' on her floor plan probably comes from later Hardin 45 sales material. This is our inference from the dates and dimensions; measuring the boat would confirm it.
Sources: CW; SBD-H4445; SBD-B44; SBD-IT45; SG-H45; SG-B44; BWB-H45; OLD-SITE (Shawnee Specifications page); local floor plan 'Dual-Galley_Salon-Layout.jpg'
1980 to today
Legacy: Hardins at sea
Hardin 45s have a reputation as solid, slow and comfortable liveaboards. At 32,000 lb with about a quarter of that in ballast, they are heavy boats that are weak in light air, and they were built for comfort, not pointing ability.
Owners have taken them a long way. One couple lived aboard their Hardin 45 Alegre from June 1980 and sailed her around the world in just over nine years, visiting 37 countries and covering about 38,000 miles. They summed her up as "pretty quick for a house". A single-handing owner reported about 10,000 miles on his Hardin 45, and said that in a 75 mph blow with breaking seas over 20 feet she stayed comfortable.
Owners have documented the boats' known weak points and repairs: chainplates glassed in behind the cabin liner and fitted with welded T-ends, which many owners move to the outside of the hull; teak deck leaks; and the large saloon windows, which need storm shutters offshore. Many Hardins, Sea Wolfs and Island Traders are still sailing and for sale around the world, from Florida and California to Mexico and Australia.
sailboat.guide, "Hardin International" builder page. Wayback 2025-04-23: http://web.archive.org/web/20250423034932/https://sailboat.guide/hardin (5 boats: Hardin 45, Sea Bird 37, Sea Wolf 40, Bounty 44, Island Trader 45; designer credits include Bill Hardin, R. W. Hardin, William Hardin, Harden/Huntingford, William Garden; data credited "sailboatdata.com / CC BY")
