Cleverness, rhetorical skills, talent, and luck made the Dane, born in Aarhus in 1906, to Sweden’s mostly known naval architect. A portrait of the unwavering representative of the elegant and sleek Scandinavian yacht design.
25 m Yawl Agneta – Photo courtesy by Yacht Broker Sandeman
The following four anecdotes describe the self-made man who came from modest circumstances, the passionate sailor, the sales-minded and also self-confident Dane.
Aboard Agneta in the Solent: In the early 1950s Reimers transferred the 25-metre Yawl Agneta from Stockholm to the Camper & Nicholson yard in Gosport on behalf of the Italian industrialist Giovanni Agnelli. On the last few miles in the Solent, the designer enjoyed a special treat. Squeezing through a fleet of other sailing yachts under well-filled canvas, Reimers leaved the steering wheel and headed for the bow, accompanied by his sons. As if the autopilot had been switched on, the slender, shimmering red-brown mahogany planks raced straight through the water. The applauding local sailors had never seen such a show.
In the Stockholm Skärgård: “As a teenager, I occasionally sailed with Knud in the Stockholm skerries,” recalled Swedish Star Clippers shipowner Mikael Krafft in Monaco. “It didn’t matter how long we had been travelling, how late or how cool it was, or whether anyone was hungry or thirsty. Knud enjoyed being on the water to the full. The return to land had to be forced under some pretence, and it was often midnight, which of course wasn’t a problem with the long summer days in the north, at least not for Knud.”
The S30 Sailor: In the 1970s, sailors waited out a storm in Stockholm’s outer archipelago. They discovered a yacht entering the crowded basin of the harbour under sail. In the centre cockpit, a couple of advanced age stopped the boat with their headsail cleverly pushed against the wind and then let the cloth slide on deck while the motorless boat drifted through the basin. It were Effi and Knud Reimers with their S30 cruising Square Metre Boat. Shaking their heads, the observers of the tricky manoeuvre took the rope and asked the skipper about the somewhat dangerous manoeuvre. “Why? You’ve noticed that it works. You just need to sail the right boat and practise a little,” said the bold senior.
The prominent representative of Scandinavian yacht design loved to demonstrate the advantages of his designs. They were so well-balanced that they kept course on their own and nearly turned on a dime, even in a narrow harbour basin. Reimers was a self-confident, eloquent prankster, being always up for a joke or a spicy comment.
On the Reichenau island on Lake Constance: Visiting the Beck & Söhne yard, where boat builder Friedrich Winterhalter was relaunching the 30-square-metre-class with a series of Reimers’ ‘Bijou’ type boats, the old aesthete stood shocked in front of a spacious mass-produced Dehler. It offered as much headroom and berths in eight metres as Reimers had managed to squeeze into 16. “I would rather break my pencil than draw such a horrible boat,” said Reimers.
He was prolific designing sailing boats, motor yachts and cargo ships. He rewarded himself and the yachting world with the design of the slim, elegant and fast skerry cruisers, the ultimate achievement of his life. They had little freeboard. Reimers’ deck edges were just slightly curved and full of tension. They never came with the exaggerated sheer line of some of today’s retro designs. With the shape of their spoon bow and the stretched stern section hovering above the water, they are still sailing aesthetically from another world into our days.
Largest variant of the ‘Beautiful and slim’ theme
Reimers sought his fortune in the American market – Swedesail archive
Apart from their length, the only extravagance of many of his boats, his designs have a subtle charm. This explains why Agneta, his largest variation on the ‘beautiful and slender’ theme, is only noticed by enthusiasts in the harbours of the Côte d’Azur, Liguria or the Tuscan archipelago. It is the understated, simple elegance that makes Reimers’ designs an example of Scandinavian design.
A characteristic feature of his cruising yachts, such as the 10-metre cabin cruiser Bacchant IV or the S30 Cruising Square metre boat, is the stepped deckhouse with the gabled pair of windows facing each other. The stepped superstructure offers the necessary headroom in the entrance area of the cabin, where standing height is required for stripping off oilskins, working at the cooker and navigation station. Reimers enjoyed calling the rear step ‘Groghytte’ because you can tip a shot there in peace after a hair-raising mooring manoeuvre.
75 Square Metre Boat Bacchant on Lake Michigan – Photo Classicsailboats.org
In addition to his talent for designing attractive boats, the Dane’s career was based on his eloquence. Born in 1906 in Århus, Denmark, Reimers grew up in modest circumstances. His mother died young. His father made a living as a typesetter at the local newspaper. When Reimers applied to train as a seaman on board the five-masted training ship København, he was not accepted due to his short-sightedness. On the next voyage, the square-rigger disappeared in the South Atlantic. Sometimes wearing glasses has decisive advantages.
Double the hourly wage for a dirty job
In the 1930s, Reimers repeatedly advertised in the States – Swedesail archive
In 1926, he began an apprenticeship at Friedrich Krupp-Germaniawerft AG. The strong dollar against the Reichsmark made the Kiel shipyard a sought-after supplier of large yachts at the time. He then learnt to draw boats in the design department of Abeking & Rasmussen under the guidance of his fellow countryman, Danish-born Henry Rasmussen. The late twenties were the era of wooden yacht building in Bremen Lemwerder. Boats were built here for both locals and Americans. At that time, Prince Heinrich, the shipowner Erich Laeisz and the industrialist’s son Hugo Stinnes had R-yachts and 30 m2 class skerry cruisers drawn and built on the left bank of the Weser. Reimers needed a neat white shirt for this clientele. As the costly purchase, being essential for his professional advancement, was not covered by his meagre salary of 55 Reichsmarks, the Dane scrubbed the railway carriages from below, This dirty job paid double the hourly wage.
This is how Reimers advertised in the USA in 1931- Swedesail archive
He quickly completed a degree in shipbuilding engineering at Bremen’s Technical University. In August 1930, Reimers began working as a draftsman for the renowned regatta sailor and yacht designer Gustav A. Estlander in Stockholm. The sudden death of Estlander in December of the same year made Reimers the successor to the sought-after designer. The twenty-four-year-old took over the office in mid-January 1931. Members of the Royal Danish Yacht Club lent him the crowns to purchase Estlander’s design office, including a considerable customer base.
Now the shrewd Dane no longer had to make a living by secretly plucking carrots from Bremen’s vegetable gardens or scrubbing railway carriages from below. Now he designed race boats for Eric Lundberg, Sweden’s most successful sailor. At Lundberg’s Valiant Reimers placed the mast on the deck for the first time instead of sticking it through, a space-saving and dry solution that was unusual at the time. This distributed the pressure of the rigging over a large area via a mast bridge amidships. The engineer would retain this over the coming decades. For Lundberg’s Korybant, Reimers experimented with a rotating profile mast as early as the 1930s.
“The best gift for your son or daughter: a 30 m2skerry cruiser from Sweden. An Estlander or Reimers skerry cruiser is the best thing you can do for your child’s education.” Advert in the american magazine Yachting, August 1931
Lines in a slightly varied manner
In 1937, he designed the famous Bacchant II for Lundberg. At the end of the 20th century, the 19.40 metre long, 75 m2 skerry cruiser, which was less than three metres wide, made a name for itself in regattas on Lake Michigan as a seriously sailed classic. It was berthed in the Milwaukee Yacht Club for a long time. The longest 75 m2 skerry cruiser in its class was the forerunner of the modern Cruising Square Metre Boat that Reimers designed four decades later in the 22, 30, 40 and 55 m2 sizes. Lundberg’s next project, an Atlantic record on board a 25-metre 150-m2 boat, did not come to fruition. But the lines are preserved in a slightly modified form on the Yawl rigged sea cruiser Agneta. In 1948, Reimers designed this boat for the Swedish steam turbine inventor Oskar Wiberg.
Fidelis at Sydney – Hobart Race 1966 – Photo Cruising Yacht Club of Australia
Since his training on Henry Rasmussen’s drawing boards at the end of the 1920s, Reimers remained with the skerry cruiser, varying the beautiful, slender lines over the following decades. He became the most internationally recognised designer of the originally Swedish boat type. In 1938, 124 boats designed by Reimers were built in 24 different countries. Like Rasmussen, whose contacts in the States secured business in difficult times, Reimers never relied on the domestic market. He sought and found his fortune anywhere in the world where there was taste and money to build and operate attractive boats. In America, the finesse of Reimers’ planks was compared to the cool elegance of Swedish actress Greta Garbo.
Masterpiece of the boat builder Friedrich Winterhalter
After the war, Reimers designed many boats for Swiss sailors. In 1959, he assisted his Danish compatriot, Sven Hansen, aboard the Sparkman & Stephens-designed Anitra to victory in the Fastnet Race. The following year, he designed Scandinavia’s first GRP sea cruiser: the 8.30-metre Fin-Gal. In 1967, the Reimers Bijou, built by Friedrich Fredi Winterhalter on Lake Constance, heralded a revival of the classic 30 m2 skerry cruiser. Later there would be an attempt to revive this tradition with a new mould for cost-saving series production, The Reimers Pokal is still sailed annually on Lake Constance. During the 1970s and 1980s, Reimers combined increased expectations of life on board and comfort with the elegance of traditional lines in the family-friendly S30 (12.50 metres, nominally 30 m2 upwind), the Jubilee S40 (14.40 metres, nominally 40 m2 upwind) and Swede 55 (16 metres, nominally 55 m2 upwind) cruising variants of the classy Skerry cruiser.
In times when many production boats are developed from the inside out in hectic production cycles and far from any sailing tradition and almost exclusively from the perspective of comfort and sales, the legacy of Reimers is lasting. It reminds us on the importance of aesthetics and sailing. This is why his boats are loved all over the world, whether they are preserved as classics (including those from the early fibreglass era), even by mean of two new builds by Thomas Bergner in Northern Germany or the Beck & Söhne yard on Lake Constance.
Legendary: the small and large porpoises
Knud Reimers is mostly known to Anglo-Saxon sailors as the designer of the Tümmler, a double ended 8.30-metre sailboat. He designed the original 20-m2 version in 1934 and a 9.80-metre version with an additional 10 m2 of sail area in 1937. The aim was to create a seaworthy, easy-to-handle boat. The result was the lightweight, slim, pointed boat with a small sail area. Reimers was inspired by the type of boat from the windy Koster Islands at the Skagerrak. The small and effective sails are notable thanks to their stretched profiles.
“Handling a light displacement of this type is pure joy,” said the English ocean sailor and publicist Adlard Coles, summarising his experiences with his Porpoise, Zara. In 1946, he bought ‘Cohoe’, a slightly modified Albatross, and used the large Porpoise variant intensively for racing. In 1950, Coles won the Royal Ocean Racing Club championship despite the rough conditions. By taking part in the Newport–Bermuda Race, he aimed to demonstrate the suitability of small, light sea cruisers for blue water sailing. With the famous nose pushed over the stem, Coles complied with the Cruising Club of America’s minimum length requirement of 35 feet. In the same year, ‘Cohoe’ won the first Atlantic regatta sailed from west to east after the war. Coles recounted his experiences with both types of Tümmler in his book Heavy weather Sailing.
Knud H. Reimers in his Stockholmer office – Foto Reijo Rüster/Swedesail archive
The small porpoise underwent its baptism in a race that began in Melbourne, South Australia, in 1969. Gale-force winds of 74 knots meant that only 14 of the original 100 boats arrived in Geelong, including three Porpoises. It is estimated that more than 300 of both types were built. In Switzerland’s light wind area, the 28-square-metre Porpoise is known as Hocco.
One off designs by Reimers (excerpt)
Cherie II Reimers’ first 22 m2 Skerry Cruiser design 1933
Budapest 1 30 m2 Skerry Cruiser 1933
Hocco, Tumlare variant for lakes 1934
Valiant 30 m2 Skerry Cruiser 1934
Bacchant II 75 m2 Skerry Cruiser 1934
Solgun Reimers first 15 m2 Skerry Cruiser 1939
Siska 40 m2 Skerry Cruiser 1939
Korybant 30 m2 Skerry Cruiser 1939, first Square Metre Boat with desk stepped mast
Roulette II 30 m2 Skerry Cruiser 1936, Reimers’ own boat
Roulette VII 30 m2 Skerry Cruiser 1938, Reimers’ own boat
22 m2 Skerry Cruiser 1941
Vanja VI 30 m2 Skerry Cruiser 1944, prototype of Reimers new sqm boat design with plough shape cabin, fuller bow- and counter, V-shaped stern sections
Agneta 24 m Yawl 1948
Silver 22 m2 Skerry Cruiser 1983
Four 30 m2 Skerry Cruisers 1987: Natt och Dag, Gryning Ejfi, Maya
Series manufactured boats by Knud Reimers (excerpt)
Tumlare 1933: ≈ 300 boats
Stortumlare, Albatross 1937: 11 boats
Udell 22 one design 22 m2 Skerry cruiser for North America 1955 (11 × 2,01 m): 11 boats in wood and later in fibre glass
Erdmann Braschos: Ein Ästhet auf ganzer Linie, Yacht Classic 1/2011
Erdmann Braschos: Knud H. Reimers, Klassiker! 2/2015
Erdmann Braschos: Knud Hjelmberg Reimers. Kapitel in Privatdruck: Santa Cecilia. Eine Art Glück. Privatdruck über ein 35 Fuß Salonboot. Hamburg 2016, 96 Seiten, gebunden. ISBN: 987-3-00-055045-4
Knud H. Reimers, Sail Yacht Society, SYS Zeitung Segeljakten Nr. 3 2022 (Swedish)
Erdmann Braschos: Knud Reimers. Ästhet auf ganzer Linie. Kapitel im Buch Yacht Design. Die großen Konstrukteure, Bielefeld 2023. ISBN 978-3-667-12770-9
Top photo by Reijo Rüster/Stockholm, Swedesail archive: 69-year-old Knud H. Reimers in his office in Stockholm’s Östermalm district. Published July 1, 25, updated November 24, 25. → Subscribe Newsletter and you won’t miss future articles.
