Ta Chiao sailboats: a Kaohsiung export yard that became Robert Perry's proving ground
Ta Chiao (Big Bridge) Bros. Yacht Building Co. — also known as Ta Chiao Enterprises, Ta Chiao Shipbuilding, or Ta Chiao Yacht Building — built its name in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, on a run of heavy-displacement cruising ketches sold under the CT prefix, which Good Old Boat's builder reference gives as standing for "Cruising Trader." The yard introduced fiberglass construction in 1965, per Taiwan Panorama, and went on to produce a line of designs credited mostly to one American naval architect before diversifying into large custom yachts later in its history.
Origins and ownership
Good Old Boat's data sheet for the CT-34 records that model's 1970 introduction as coming "under owner C.S. Chen" — the earliest documented reference to who ran the company. A Jordan Yacht Brokerage account of the CT-54/56 program likewise identifies "Mr. Chen" as Ta Chiao's president, discussing the yard's cooperation on tooling for those models. That same account corroborates the yard's name directly: Ta Chiao means "Big Bridge" in Mandarin, matching Taiwan Panorama's rendering of the full company name. Beyond that ownership detail, the sources are silent on the company's founding.
The designers
Robert Perry did the bulk of Ta Chiao's design work. His own site credits him with the CT-48, CT-54, CT-56, CT-65, and the Scorpio 72, and Perry has said that early in his career it was "either work with Taiwan builder Ta Chiao or starve," since most American designers wouldn't yet trust a Taiwan-built boat. The CT-54/56 design took shape while Perry was working for Jay Benford, a ferro-cement builder in Seattle, and the project was already underway in Taiwan around the time Perry opened his own design office. It became his first fiberglass design, and he asked Ted Brewer to help with the structural engineering and look over his shoulder as he worked — collaboration substantial enough that the class's longtime US distributor considered the 54 more a Brewer design than a Perry one. Perry later described the CT-54 as his own version of the boats Bill Garden drew, an influence he said he'd had to fight against when he was younger.
Other models drew on different designers. The CT-34, introduced in 1970, was loosely based on Philip L. Rhodes's 1920s design for the wooden Dog Star. The CT-47 and CT-49, both dating to the early 1980s, were designed by F. Michael Kaufman together with Robert A. Ladd. Ron Holland designed the RH-43 — also sold as the CT-43 or Ron Holland 43 — with production beginning around 1985. Later still, Ted Fontaine designed the 28-metre yacht Cabochon in her entirety; Ta Chiao launched her in 2004, built to Lloyds HCC standards.
Construction through the eras
Ta Chiao's CT-54 illustrates a construction shift the yard made partway through the model's run. A Jordan Yacht Brokerage review describes the CT-54's hull as solid fiberglass with encapsulated ballast and keel-stepped masts, built between 1975 and 1986 before the original mold wore out. Midway through that span, the yard's deck construction changed from its original build to a plywood-cored, multi-layer fiberglass sandwich, a shift the review ties to fixing moisture problems that had dogged the earliest boats — the kind of mid-run correction typical of a yard scaling up fiberglass work through the 1970s and into the 1980s.
Who Ta Chiao is for
Ta Chiao's core output was heavy, teak-trimmed cruising ketches built for owners headed offshore — over 500 hulls in the yard's peak production decades, per Good Old Boat. That reputation for durable, if labor-intensive, bluewater boats sits alongside a second identity: Good Old Boat reports the yard remains in operation, focused on custom and semi-custom builds up to 100 feet, a path that produced the Ted Fontaine-designed Cabochon in 2004.
