Atlantic sailboats: one name, at least six unrelated builders
"Atlantic" on a used-sailboat listing does not identify a single manufacturer. It names at least six unrelated companies, spanning Greece, the United States, the Netherlands, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and Germany, joined only by a common word for the ocean. A Greek yard founded by Marc Anassis in 1984 built cruising monohulls, including its own flagship, the Atlantic 55, before Anassis sold the company eight years and roughly 850 boats later. An entirely different Atlantic 55 belongs to Chris White, the American designer who trademarked "Atlantic Catamaran" for his own performance-catamaran series, beginning with a design in 1983 and continuing through the larger Atlantic 57. A Dutch yard, Jachtwerf Atlantic of Harlingen, builds custom aluminum cruisers to designs by Dick Zaal. Sweden's Wasa Yachts built a single rare flagship, the Wasa Atlantic 51. A UK yard built the Atlantic Clipper 36 to a 1968 Maurice Griffiths design. And Germany's Gade Marine built about 70 examples of a small Atlantic 23. None of these companies ever worked together, shared a design, or shared a hull. A seventh name sometimes filed alongside them, the Atlantic City catboat, isn't a company boat at all — a boat type named for a place, not a builder.
Origins and ownership
Marc Anassis started as a student of naval architecture in Athens before emigrating to Canada on the cusp of the boatbuilding boom of the early 1970s. He opened his own shop, Bay Craft Manufacturing, building small boats, and worked at C&C and for Eric Bruckmann, whom he has called probably the best builder he's ever known. Anassis then launched his own company, Atlantic Yachts, in Greece in 1984; it grew to 150 employees building the Atlantic 55 and other models before Anassis sold it eight years and about 850 boats later, around 1992.
Chris White designed the first Atlantic Catamaran in 1983. "Atlantic Catamaran" has been his own trademark ever since, used to identify the catamarans in his design series.
Jachtwerf Atlantic, in Harlingen, in the Netherlands, has for many years been run by brothers-in-law Wessel Veenstra and Fimme Baarda, who took over the yard in 2005 from Leo van Oostenbrugge.
Wasa Yachts, in Sweden, built its Atlantic 51 for loyal customers of the yard who wanted a larger, more capable boat than the existing Wasa range. Production numbers were low — a handful of hulls — and the boat is now rare on the market.
A boat occasionally filed under the same name, the Atlantic City catboat, is not a company product at all: it was built by Mark-O Custom Boats in the United States starting in 1980, is now out of production, and takes its name from the city of Atlantic City rather than from any of the builders above.
The designers
Design credit across the Atlantic name splits as many ways as the companies do. Chris White designed his own Atlantic Catamarans. Dick Zaal designs Jachtwerf Atlantic's aluminum cruisers, including its variable-draught models. Leif Ängermark, a Swedish naval architect, designed the Wasa Atlantic 51 as a fast, long, relatively narrow fractional sloop. Maurice Griffiths designed the Atlantic Clipper 36 in 1968, giving it a long keel and centreboard topped by a distinctive "galleon" poop deck and centre cockpit; the boat was sold in kit form as well as finished. Dieter Gade designed the small Atlantic 23 built by his own Gade Marine in Germany. Marc Anassis's Greek yard built its own designs, rather than working with an outside naval architect credited in the record.
Construction through the eras
Many of Chris White's first Atlantic Catamarans were built of wood and epoxy, and Chris White Designs says they have held up well over the years; the first A46, launched in 1986, carried a wood/carbon composite wing mast. Later boats in the series moved to epoxy, fiberglass, and carbon composites for strength, rigidity, and light weight. Across half a million sailing miles by Atlantic Catamarans over a 23-year span, the builder reports zero structural failures of the rudder.
Jachtwerf Atlantic builds its aluminum cruisers to the CE A norm, with solid aluminum construction and extensive preservation and insulation work as its case for longevity. Wasa's Atlantic 51 used a balsa-cored GRP hull, built with the one-piece molding techniques particular to that yard. The Atlantic Clipper 36's hull was fiberglass, over a long keel and centreboard. Gade Marine's Atlantic 23 was also fiberglass, on a swing keel.
Lines and generations
Soundings described Anassis's own Atlantic 55 — the Greek yard's flagship — as a "3:1 cruiser," with 15 meters of waterline, a 5-meter beam, and four guest cabins with en-suite heads. It shares only a model number with Chris White's Atlantic 55, a catamaran: Cruising World has described White's larger Atlantic 57 as an evolution of that 55 design, and half a dozen 55s have been built in total, including White's own boat, Javelin. White's original catamaran, the Atlantic 50, Arabella, is still sailing, having logged more than 75,000 miles as both a cruising yacht and a day-charter boat, and later Atlantic Catamaran designs evolved from the concepts it pioneered.
Jachtwerf Atlantic's range includes the 40, offered in Singlehanded, Coastal, and North variants; the 42, an aluminum cruiser with a lifting keel; the 43, with variable draft and dual balance rudders; and the 51, the flagship of the line.
Wasa built just one Atlantic — developed for existing Wasa customers who wanted more boat than the yard's 38, 40, or 370 — a performance-oriented hull with good light-air ability and, in the yard's own account, excellent seakeeping.
Who Atlantic is for
Because the name spans so many unrelated builders, the boat that actually fits a buyer depends entirely on which "Atlantic" is in front of them. Anassis's Greek monohulls and Chris White's catamarans both suit cruisers drawn to a distinctive, semi-custom-feeling yacht, in two entirely different hull forms. Jachtwerf's aluminum, lifting-keel cruisers suit someone bound for serious offshore or high-latitude sailing. Wasa's rare 51, the Atlantic Clipper 36, and Gade Marine's Atlantic 23 fit a buyer chasing a specific, scarce hull rather than a common class — someone prepared to research the individual boat, and the individual builder, before anything else.
