Cruising the coast of Taiwan: A culture rich in seafaring history

Beyond the forbidding entry rules of Taiwan is a culture rich in seafaring history and stunning landscapes, finds Cameron Dueck

We were still five miles from port when we realised that clearing into Taiwan might not be as simple as we’d hoped. Our VHF radio crackled into life and a stern voice from the port authority asked who we were, where we were coming from, and where we were going.

It was mid-October, and we’d just sailed 340 miles from Hong Kong across the Taiwan Strait, double-handed. The crossing was mostly upwind and rough, affirming the strait’s nickname, the Black Ditch. Strong currents, choppy waves and sporadic rain was not how we wanted to start what we planned would be a multi-year cruise, but packing up our home and saying goodbye to family had taken longer than we planned, so we took the weather we were given.

Our cruising plans were vague, but we wanted to overwinter in Taiwan and then sail Teng Hoi, our Hallberg-Rassy 42F, north to Japan. Taiwan is a familiar destination for Hong Kongers, sharing enough common culture to feel neighbourly, but enough differences to make it interesting. Taiwan would offer a relatively soft start to our new cruising life, or so we thought.

We were pleased with ourselves as we closed in on Kaohsiung, on Taiwan’s south-western coast. This was the longest crossing we’d made as double-handers, and we were in a jubilant mood, showering and preparing for port, when the radio call came in.

I answered the port authority’s questions, adding that we’d submitted all of our pre-arrival paperwork via MTNet, Taiwan’s maritime administration website. We lowered our sails and were motoring past the massive stone seawall when they called us again, asking us to wait outside the harbour while they checked our online documents.

After a few hours of bobbing in the sea, the port authority invited us to moor at a coastguard security dock for further inspection. We were 2m from the dock, about to cast our mooring lines ashore, when they changed their minds and ordered us to turn around and leave port, sending us into the evening dusk.

“We are a small vessel with only two crew, and we are tired from a long crossing. You are putting us into danger by sending us back to sea,” I told them over the radio.

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We slowly idled out of the harbour, hoping the officials would quickly change their minds.

“Can’t your motor go faster than that?” they radioed back. “Speed up, and go at least five miles out. Wait there until we radio you.”

I did as I was told, knowing that they held all of the power. We drifted in circles among anchored cargo ships as night fell, all the while making desperate phone calls to marinas asking for assistance. Finally, thanks to a flurry of activity behind the scenes by sympathetic agents and officials that overheard our radio traffic, we were called back into port.

Six hours after our first attempt we secured our lines in the darkness, assisted by apologetic marina staff.

“Welcome to Taiwan. It shouldn’t be this way,” one of the staff said, bowing deeply in apology.

We’d had a small glimpse of the decades-long fear and defensiveness towards the sea that has hobbled Taiwan’s own yachting culture, and plays a role in deterring foreign cruisers from visiting.

In the days to come we’d learn that unclear instructions on the government website contributed to the confusion. We also realised we’d made a mistake by attempting to clear into a major international port, so we were treated like a cargo ship rather than a yacht. And finally we conceded that we should have hired an agent, as we’d been advised to do, to help us navigate the clearing in process.

A rich culture

Once the dust had settled we sailed north to Tainan, Taiwan’s oldest city and former capital, still with a keen appetite to explore Taiwan.

Taiwan is geographically well placed as a stopover for boats heading north in the western Pacific. From the Philippines it’s only 200 miles across the Luzon Strait to reach Kenting, a small port on the southern tip. Taiwan is also only a three-day voyage from Hong Kong, offering a safe harbour before continuing on to Japan. However, while many yachts en route to a North Pacific crossing to Alaska make stops in Japan, far fewer call at Taiwan.

Over the course of the winter in Tainan we would learn more about what has stymied both domestic sailors and visiting cruisers, and we’d also experience the rich culture, warm people and stunning landscapes those cruisers are missing when they bypass Taiwan.

During the martial law period from 1949 to 1987, amid fears of a possible invasion by Communist China, the Taiwanese lived as if they were a land-locked country with heavy restrictions on all maritime activity. Ordinary Taiwanese were prohibited from going to the beach outside of a few designated resort areas. The coastline and outlying islands were militarised, with land mines and gun placements instead of beach umbrellas and marinas.

Heavy industry then took over the coastlines with unsightly, polluting factories and petrochemical plants.

When martial law was lifted the coastline returned to national attention, with new parks created on outlying islands. But the government’s view of pleasure boats has taken longer to change.
“The bottleneck is at the government level, especially the coastguard and maritime bureau,” said Keith Chen, director of United Project Center, Horizon Yacht, one of the biggest yacht builders on the island. “They have a historical habit of controlling everything, but they don’t understand pleasure boats or how to manage them. The measures they take sometimes actually make owning a boat harder, not easier.”

Until 1999, boats had to return to the same port that they departed from, and they were not allowed to go to sea for activities other than fishing. Day trippers had to show a fishing rod upon boarding in order to comply with the law. The political clout of the fishing industry in small ports also hinders maritime recreation. They have slowly ceded control but many ports remain hostile towards pleasure vessels.

“We have more than 400 fishing and commercial harbours around Taiwan but most of them don’t allow pleasure boats to dock, even though more than half of them are almost empty and no longer active in fishing,” said Peter Pan, owner of Taiwan Marine Sailing School in Kaohsiung, and a key local contact for visiting yachts.

In contrast, Japan has in recent years opened its hundreds of small fishing ports to cruisers, providing basic, but safe and accessible mooring across the country.
Shaped by seafarers

These restrictions are ironic given that Taiwan’s history has been shaped by seafarers. In 2024, Tainan celebrated the 400th anniversary of the arrival of Dutch maritime traders who, in 1624, sailed in to the swampy delta of the Zengwun River at the settlement of Tayouan, where they built Fort Zeelandia. A rebuilt version of the fort still stands, and Dutch architecture marks many of Tainan’s historical districts, while its museums tell the story of how the oceangoing Dutch turned Taiwan into another link in their global trading empire.

One of Asia’s most famous sailors, Zheng Chenggong, also known as Koxinga, was a Ming general and pirate who drove the Dutch out of Tainan in 1661. He still looms large over the city, both figuratively and physically. Since then, Taiwan has gone through Japanese and Chinese rule, and on to a fragile independence while developing a booming semiconductor industry. Tainan’s wealth of historic architecture and traditional cultural practices defines the city, and as we explored its narrow, twisting alleyways it was easy to let our daydreams carry us back in time.

At Chihkan Tower, the oldest building of Tainan’s historic West Central district, a statue of Koxinga watches tourists clamber over the weathered stone walls. Koxinga’s son Zheng Jing built the nearby Confucius Temple, Taiwan’s first education institution, to honour his father. The compound is decorated with intricate calligraphy, while a granite stela carries instructions for all who pass to dismount from their horses to show respect.

At night we explored Tainan’s night markets, which are central to local nightlife and culinary culture. Tainan Flower Night Market was crammed with grazing visitors, inhaling the pungent tang of tofu mixed with the heavy scent of deep fried squid. Crowds jostled through the narrow lanes, creating the threat of being speared by a wayward skewer and joining quail eggs and grilled beef on a wooden spike.

Exploring inland

We had hoped to cruise up and down Taiwan’s coast, but once we learned of the challenges in finding moorings we instead made plans to travel inland using Taiwan’s excellent and affordable high-speed rail network, which can whisk a traveller from one end of the island to the other in hours.

Going inland quickly leads you to the mountains that form a towering wall running the length of the island and attract waves of hikers on the weekends.

The jewel of the mountains is the Alishan National Scenic Area, filled with trails, farms, small resorts, and home to the indigenous Austronesian people that call themselves the Tsou, literally meaning man or human being.

Alishan’s forests are known for their giant Taiwan red cypress and yellow cypress trees, with some trees believed to be more than 2,000 years old. As we hiked the broad network of trails the tall, straight cypress swayed back and forth high above us, dropping a thick carpet of needles onto the shady forest floor. The giant trunks creaked like ships masts as they moved, their music joined by the rattle of branches and the sighing wind as it filtered through the forest. As we climbed higher, the trees faded to grey in the thick, gloomy mist that rolls in every afternoon.

These mountains are famed for producing teas such as alpine Oolong tea and Jinxuan tea. But interspersed among the tea fields are a growing number of coffee plantations. The British brought coffee plants to Taiwan in the late 1800s, and the crop gained renewed attention about 20 years ago. Today there are dozens of artisan growers and roasters dotting the hillsides.

While hiking is the most popular way to see the interior, cycling has become a national pastime along Taiwan’s coastline, so we were free to explore.

We were cycling novices – most of our experience came from the tiny folding bikes we carried on our boat – but we rented touring bicycles and set off all the same. Our ride began in Taipei, at the northern end of the island, from where we headed south down the west coast to make a counterclockwise loop.

Taiwan is about 200 miles long, and about 80 miles across at its widest. The west coast has hot, flat plains planted with rice and vegetables, interspersed with semiconductor factories and oil refineries.

At the southern tip of Taiwan we crossed the mountains and turned north, where we were struck by the sharp contrast between coasts. The east coast is green and wild, with roads and towns hemmed in against the sea by the soaring mountains. The mountain barrier has protected this coast from the waves of colonial rule and maritime trade over the centuries, and even today it feels quieter and less developed than the rest of the country.

Two weeks after setting out we returned to Taipei, exhausted, road weary, but exuberant. Our plans to sail around Taiwan had been thwarted, but we’d still seen the island in its entirety.
While difficulties finding affordable mooring stymied our initial attempts at exploring Taiwan by boat, we were also kept on the dock in Tainan by that old familiar foe of sailors everywhere – an engine breakdown.

We’d arrived with a long list of upgrades and repairs we wanted to make to our boat, though an engine overhaul was not on that list. Taiwan was a leading international boatbuilder in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Then a sharp appreciation in the NT dollar raised the price of Taiwanese-built boats, and the global financial crisis in 2008 further weakened the industry. Today, the few remaining builders are focussed on large custom motor yachts for export. Still, we hoped to find freelance shipwrights available for hire.

Our hopes were soon dashed as we learned that, due to the limited number of cruising sailors, boat repairs in Taiwan are either a DIY project or an expensive haul-out at one of the big builders. However, with enough contact-building, research and begging for favours we managed, over the course of five months, to install a diesel heating system, make some glassfibre repairs and undertake a significant engine overhaul.

Hopes of change

Along the way we made friends within the tight-knit community of passionate sailors in Tainan and Kaohsiung, all of whom desperately want to grow the sport and attract more visiting yachts. We were invited to a small marine industry conference to share our jarring experience of clearing into the country, and the industry professionals all expressed the same hope: that someday Taiwan will become a sailing destination.

“Sailing can totally change this country, not only for the economy and sport, but culturally. We need to go back to the ocean as our ancestors did,” Pan said.

We also learned more about how to go about cruising to Taiwan’s outlying islands, even as our broken engine kept us port-bound. Each destination required the filing of permits and requests, sometimes by post, again validating the use of a local agent.

Penghu, a small archipelago of 90 tiny islands located about 45 miles north-east of Tainan, is a popular destination with a small private marina, but it is too far from the main island for a day sail. Green Island, about 15 miles off the east coast, was a penal colony for political prisoners during the period of martial law, and offers another cruising option once a permit to moor in the port has been secured.

But with a limited number of outlying islands available for day cruises, Bob Chiang, who runs Sailing Forward, a Tainan-based sailing school using J/80s, chose to instead focus on developing a racing culture.

“The west coast of Taiwan has good, steady wind all year around, which makes for very good racing. And for racing you don’t need islands or bays nearby, you just need open water and wind. So my dream is to bring more of a club racing culture to Taiwan, especially using smaller boats,” Chiang said.

Spring escape

By April our engine was repaired and the winds were beginning to turn southerly. We bid farewell to our new friends in Tainan and turned south to round Kenting at the tip of the island. Suddenly it felt like we were cruising again, a feeling that was made complete by a glittering mahi mahi on our fishing line.

As we sailed away we reminisced about the people we’d met and the adventures we’d had. We were already entertaining ‘next time’ scenarios of the islands we’d visit and coastlines we’d explore, now that we’d learned how better to manoeuvre Taiwan’s maritime rules.

Once around the southern cape we turned north, catching a lift on the powerful Kuroshio Current. The sun was out, and we had steady wind on the quarter. The Taiwanese coast slowly faded away behind us, but its mountain peaks towered up out of the haze for hours in a long, lingering goodbye.

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