Aloha sailboats: one Canadian yard, five different designers
Aloha sailboats came from a single Ontario builder, Ouyang Boat Works, trading as Aloha Yachts — but the company never settled on one house designer. Instead it contracted a different naval architect for nearly every model in its lineup, a habit that shaped both the range's variety and, eventually, the company's undoing.
Origins and ownership
Before starting his own yard, founder Ti Ouyang worked at Whitby Boat Works in Ontario. His early home-built 16-footers, the Cormorant, were a direct spin-off of Whitby's Albacore 16 — proof of concept before he struck out on his own. Ouyang founded Ouyang Boat Works in Whitby, Ontario, in the late 1960s, and within about five years the Aloha lineup already spanned the 27 (8.2), 28 (8.5), 30, 32, and 34 (10.4). Spec sheets for the 27, 30, and 32 all list Ouyang Boat Works as builder and Whitby, Ontario as the plant's location; a 1982 photo in the Aloha Sailboat Owners Association's archive, however, places the works in nearby Pickering, Ontario, with no source describing whether or when a move happened. Per the owners association's own family history, the Aloha name honors a Hawaiian girl that Ti's son Mao Kang dated while at Loma Linda University.
The company's later years were rockier. When money ran short, the Ouyangs brought in a close friend and dealer, Canadian Yacht Charters, as a partner — and shortly afterward a boardroom disagreement saw Stan and Mao Ouyang leave as directors and get bought out. Ti Ouyang responded by starting a new venture, Odyssey Yachts, explicitly meant to compete against and undercut the company he had built. Per the family's own account, the Ouyang boatbuilding venture ultimately went bankrupt; Ti Ouyang later died at 84.
The designers
Ouyang's approach to design was to commission rather than staff: in the 1970s he contracted a roster of naval architects for the new Aloha cruising line rather than relying on one in-house name. Robert Perry's own design-studio archive credits itself with the Aloha, also known as the 27 and 8.2, launched in 1979. Mark Ellis's submission won the Aloha 32, introduced the same year and built until 1988, by which point the yard had completed roughly 700 examples. The Aloha Sailboat Owners Association's specification page for the Aloha 30 credits Ron Holland. Public sailboat-data listings additionally credit Ted Brewer together with Robert Walstrom, also rendered Wallstrom in some records, for the Aloha 34 — later renamed the 10.4 — and for the Aloha 28, which the lineup carried alongside the similarly sized 8.5.
Construction through the eras
Aloha hulls were solid, hand-laid fiberglass. The 32 and the 8.5 were both built with end-grain balsa-cored decks: on the 32, the deck fit the hull hatbox-fashion, landing on an inward hull flange where it was chemically bonded and through-bolted on four-inch centers, and the 8.5 followed the same formula, its balsa-and-fiberglass deck sandwich reinforced with plywood at stress points and its hull-to-deck joint finished with a black-anodized aluminum toerail. The 8.5's hull was molded in two halves, bolted together, and sealed down the centerline before lead ballast was lowered into the keel cavity and encapsulated, and its chainplates bolted to solid mahogany knees glassed to the hull. Ouyang Boat Works milled its own lumber on site and matched the teak on each boat by hand. The 27 took a different approach below the waterline, with ballast encapsulated inside a fixed fibreglass fin keel rather than bolted on externally.
Who Aloha is for
Aloha suits a buyer drawn to a small, design-forward Canadian builder rather than one signature hull shape — its models carry the fingerprints of Perry, Ellis, and Holland, along with Brewer and Walstrom on the earlier 28 and 34, rather than a single recognizable house style.
