Rhetorical skill, talent, and luck made the Dane, born in Aarhus in 1906, to Sweden’s mostly acknowledged yacht designer. A portrait of the unwavering representative of the elegant and sleek Scandinavian line.
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 two-master ‘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 enjoys a special treat. Squeezing through a fleet of other sailing yachts under a well-filled canvas, Reimers leaves the steering wheel and heads for the bow, accompanied by his sons. As if the autopilot had been switched on, the slender, shimmering red-brown mahogany planks race straight through the water. The applauding local sailors have never seen such a show.
In the Stockholm archipelago: ‘As a teenager, I occasionally sailed with Knud in the Stockholm archipelago,’ recalls 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 waiting out a storm in Stockholm’s outer archipelago discover a yacht entering the crowded basin of the harbour under sail. In the centre cockpit, a couple of advanced age stop the boat with their headsail expertly pushed against the wind and let the cloth slide on deck while the motorless boat drifts through the basin. It’s Effi and Knud Reimers with their S30 cruising Square Metre Boat. Shaking their heads, the observers of the tricky manoeuvre take the lines and confront the skipper with the somewhat dangerous manoeuvre. “Why? You’ve noticed that it works. You just need to sail the right boat and practise a little,” says the bold senior.
The prominent representative of Scandinavian yacht design loves to demonstrate the advantages of his designs. They are so well-balanced that they hold their course on their own and practically turn on a plate, even in a narrow harbour basin. Reimers is a self-confident, eloquent prankster who is 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’d rather break my pencil than draw such a horrible boat,’ says Reimers.
He is successful designing sailing boats, motor yachts and cargo ships. He rewarded himself and the yachting world with the design of the slim, fast skerry cruisers, the ultimate achievement of his life. They have little freeboard. Reimers’ deck edges are just slightly curved and full of tension. They never have the exaggerated jump of some of today’s retro designs. With the shape of their spoon bow and the stretched stern section hovering above the water, they sail 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 ‘beautifully 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 provides the necessary headroom in the entrance area of the cabin, where standing height is required for stripping off oilskins, at the cooker and navigation station. The joker called 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 is 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 applies to train as a seaman on board the five-masted training ship ‘København’, he is not accepted due to his short-sightedness. On the next voyage, the square-rigged sailor disappears with man and mouse in the South Atlantic. There are sometimes decisive advantages to wearing glasses.
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 great era of wooden yacht building in Lemwerder. Boats are 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 carpentered on the left bank of the Weser. Reimers needs a neat white shirt for this clientele. Because the costly purchase, which was essential for his professional advancement, could not be covered by his meagre salary of 55 Reichsmarks, the Dane scrubbed the railway carriages on the side. From below, because 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 has to make a living by secretly plucking turnips from Bremen’s vegetable gardens or scrubbing railway carriages. Now he designs regatta boats for Eric Lundberg, Sweden’s most successful sailor. In Lundberg’s ‘Valiant’, Reimers placed the mast on the deck for the first time instead of sticking it through, a space-saving, dry solution that was unusual at the time. He 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 serious sailing 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 square metre sizes. Lundberg’s next project, an Atlantic record on board a 25-metre 150-m2 boat, never came to fruition. But the lines are preserved in a slightly modified form on the sea cruiser Agneta. In 1948, Reimers designed this yawl 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 stayed 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 his existence in difficult times, Reimers never relied on the domestic market. He sought and found his fortune anywhere in the world where there was the taste and money to build and operate attractive boats. In America, the finesse of Reimers’ planks is 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 the Swiss. In 1959, he assisted his Danish compatriot, Sven Hansen, aboard the Sparkman & Stephens-designed ‘Anitra’ to victory in the Fastnet Regatta. 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-square-metre warping cruiser. This tradition continues to this day with a new mould for inexpensive series production and the annual Reimers Cup, which is sailed 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 square metres upwind), S40 (14.40 metres, 40 square metres) and Swede 55 (16 metres, 55 square metres) touring archipelago cruisers.
In an era where 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 work of Reimers, who passed away in 1987, serves as a reminder of the importance of aesthetics and sailing. This is why his boats are loved all over the world, whether they are sailed antiques (including those from the early fibreglass era) or new builds from Thomas Bergner in Schleswig-Holstein or the Beck & Söhne shipyard on Lake Constance. The estate of the hard-working.
Legendary: the small and large porpoises
Knud Reimers is mostly known to Anglo-Saxon sailors as the designer of the Tümmler, a pointed 8.30-metre sailboat. He designed the original 20-square-metre version in 1934 and a 9.80-metre version with an additional 10 square metres of sail area in 1937. The aim was to create a seaworthy, easy-to-handle boat. The result was the lightweight, slim, pointed gaff with a small sail area. Reimers was inspired by the type of boat found on the windy Koster Islands in the Skagerrak. The small sails, which are effective thanks to their stretched profiles, are notable.
“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 Porpoise in Schwerwettersegeln (Delius-Klasing-Verlag).
Knud H. Reimers in his Stockholmer office – Foto Reijo Rüster/Swedesail archive
The small porpoise underwent its baptism of fire in a regatta 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 the ‘Hocco’.
Literature
Variationen der schönen schlanken Linie, Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung 8/2010
Ein Ästhet auf ganzer Linie, Yacht Classic 1/2011
Knud H. Reimers, Klassiker! 2/2015
Knud Hjelmberg Reimers. Kapitel in Privatdruck: Santa Cecilia. Eine Art Glück. Privatdruck über ein 35 Fuß Salonboot. Hamburg 2016, gebunden, 96 Seiten. ISBN: 987-3-00-055045-4
Knud H. Reimers, Sail Yacht Society, SYS Zeitung Segeljakten Nr. 3 2022 (Schwedisch)
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. Updated June 23, 25. → Subscribe Newsletter and you won’t miss future articles.
