Lemsteraak sailboats for sale

Buying a used Lemsteraak: a class, not a brand

A used "Lemsteraak" listing describes a boat built to a Dutch traditional-sailing type and class, not a single manufacturer's product. No company brands boats "Lemsteraak" as its own marque; many separate, unconnected shipyards have turned out boats to the type since the 19th century, and the boats that turn up for sale carry that same spread of builders. What actually varies from one listing to the next is the yard that built the hull, the construction era and material behind it, and whether the individual boat carries current SSRP registration against the class's own proportional standard. Buying used, in other words, means buying a specific boat's documented build history -- not a brand name.

Which era to target

Construction era marks a real dividing line in this class. Boats built in wood predate 1900; steel became the standard hull material after that, a transition the De Boer yard in Lemmer had already begun in 1899. A boat's documented builder narrows the era further: any Lemsteraak built by the original De Boer yard necessarily dates to 1876-1960, the yard's full working life, while a boat from Skipshelling Blom could date from 1957 to the present, including recent, CFD-optimized builds. The pleasure-yacht naming history matters too -- boats of the boeieraak lineage only picked up "Lemsteraakjacht" as a common name after World War II, so a name attached to an older boat is worth checking against its actual build history rather than assumed. Because SSRP registration measures a boat's hull proportions against a fixed standard rather than its age, an older or original boat is not automatically in class -- confirm current Stamboek status directly rather than infer it from a boat's vintage or its seller's use of the name.

What to inspect across the range

Class rules fix the hull material in steel but leave the fittings above it in wood by requirement -- the mast, leeboards, and rudder. That split means a proper survey needs to cover two different disciplines at once, a traditional wood-fittings inspection alongside a steel-hull corrosion inspection, not just one or the other. Because today's builders work "to its own design," as Skipshelling Blom describes its own construction, rather than to one shared factory specification, boat-to-boat construction detail varies by yard even within the same type; treat a documented builder as a starting point for what to expect, not a guarantee of it.

Navigating the lineup

Size and era are a more useful way to compare listings than any individual model name, since the type spans a wide range on its own -- from simple fishing aken of around 12 meters up past 17 meters at the pleasure-yacht end of the range. Documented individual boats bear out how much builder and decade vary within that range: one hull built by Stofberg in 1987, another by Engelaer in 1995, another by SRF Harlingen as recently as 2015-2016 -- different yards, different decades, sold under the same type name. Treat the builder, era, and material behind a specific listing as the starting point for comparison, and use the full model directory on this page to work through what is actually on the market.