Formosa sailboats: heavy-displacement, clipper-bowed cruisers from Kaohsiung
Formosa Boat Building Co. was established in 1969 in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, building clipper-bowed ketches, cutters, and sloops from 37 to 57 feet for long-distance voyaging. The yard's reputation is inseparable from its best-known model, the Formosa 46 — a Taiwan-built enlargement of the Kelly Peterson 44 that the yachting community nicknamed "cheaterson" for the design credit its original architect never received.
Origins and ownership
Formosa was founded by Bob Lane, described as a former yacht broker from California. Under Lane, the yard specialized in the clipper-bowed ketches, cutters, and sloops that defined its output through the 1970s. In its later years, Formosa faced rising costs, quality-control issues, and an industry-wide shift toward lighter production boats. Lane departed the company in 1976, and Formosa closed in the mid-1980s.
The designers
Formosa's boats drew on designs by naval architects Robert Perry and William Garden, aimed at seaworthiness, heavy displacement, and traditional aesthetics for long-distance voyaging. Garden is credited with the Formosa 41, a full-keel, canoe-sterned ketch built through the 1970s that became one of the more common Formosas on the water.
The line's most debated model is the Formosa 46. DesignIndex describes it as an enlarged copy of the Kelly Peterson 44, itself designed by Doug Peterson for Jack Kelly Yachts and introduced in 1976. In the early 1980s, Formosa Yachts — identified by Jordan Yachts as a distinct Taiwan yard from Queen Long, which built the Kelly Peterson 46 — began building its own two-foot-extended version, marketed as the "46 Formosa." Jordan Yachts writes that sources say the extended version "reportedly cut out Doug Peterson and certainly Jack Kelly" from the design's origin story; it's this history that earned the boat its "cheaterson" nickname among the yachting community — coined, per DesignIndex, because Peterson never received copyright credit for the design.
The wider range
The largest model was the 51, a solid-fiberglass ketch — laid up 1¼ inches thick below the waterline — of which roughly 120 hulls were built, many exported to the U.S. West Coast through Bob Lane. Good Old Boat flags condensation and teak maintenance as perennial concerns on the model. The 47, designed by Claude Puvieux and dated to 1980, carries a fiberglass hull on a fin keel with cast-iron ballast. The 43, from the same era, rounds out the range with a teak deck and fin keel.
Who Formosa is for
Formosa suits buyers drawn to traditional, heavy-displacement offshore cruisers — clipper bows, teak-heavy interiors, and full keels built for passage-making rather than speed. Jordan Yachts, weighing Formosa against Queen Long — which it identifies as the finest yard in Taiwan and builder of Hylas Yachts — has called Formosa "a lower quality yard." That reputation is worth knowing going in, even as models like the 41 remain, per Good Old Boat, among the more common Formosas in the fleet.
