Woodbridge Brown

Woodbridge (Woody) Brown is best known as a surf legend, and pioneer of 'big wave' surfing, though he is one of the earliest interpreters of Polynesian traditional multihulls in the modern era. He met some Tongans on military service while surveying in the Christmas Islands, just after the end of WWII, and was impressed with the performance of their outrigger canoe. He had sailed previously and knew that there was nothing else to match these traditional craft, so he decided to build one when he got home to Hawaii.

He built his first catamaran MANU KAI in 1946 with a young local boat builder, Alfred Kumalae, after studying the traditional canoes of Oceania in the museum.

His second catamaran, a 38 footer (11.6 m) capable of 20 knots, also called MANU KAI, was built with the assistance of the young designer Rudy Choy. In 1954 Woody Brown and Rudi Choy designed and built the 40 ft (12.2 m) ALII KAI in the hope of winning the Trans-Pacific Yacht Race from California to Honolulu. In 1955, they made the first catamaran voyage between Hawaii and California to prove the seaworthiness of the design and qualify for the Trans-Pac race.

However, Woody Brown dropped out of the multihull scene and returned to Manu. Rudy Choy went on to found a famous design and boat building partnership in Los Angeles, and later also went back to Hawaii.