Banjer sailboats: a single Dutch motorsailer from a yard that built thousands
The Banjer is a Dutch motorsailer, one of several distinct lines produced by Eista Werf, a shipyard based at Nederhemert Zuid in the Netherlands that turned out many thousands of vessels between 1959 and 1981. Alongside sister designs like the Doerak motoryacht and the Rogger and Krammer motorsailers, the Banjer -- and specifically its best-known model, the Banjer 37 -- is the yard's most visible surviving name today, even as the company itself has long since disappeared.
Origins and ownership
Every ship to leave Eista Werf's yard, including the Banjer, was designed by Dick Lefeber, giving the marque a single design hand across its whole range rather than a rotating cast of naval architects. The Banjer 37 itself was modelled on the lines of a North Sea trawler and drawn up as a Dutch motorsailer in the late 1960s -- a working-boat silhouette wrapped around a cruising layout. Eista Werf sold its ships abroad through two agents, Intermarine and Stangate Marine, which is how Banjers came to be scattered well beyond Dutch waters. Owners who bought in went on to organize their own clubs, including a dedicated Banjer Motorsailer Club.
Construction through the eras
Yachting Monthly, reviewing the Banjer 37, described high, powerful bows and a 12-tonne-displacement GRP hull built to handle heavy conditions, with teak fitted out below decks. The magazine rated the build quality excellent, though it noted that equipment on its own review boat -- the gas water heater -- needed replacing, a reminder that wear on fittings, not the structure, is where age is most likely to show. Roughly one hundred Banjer 37s were built in Holland before production stopped there in 1981; building then continued briefly in Britain, for the big-rig version of the boat.
Who Banjer is for
A Banjer suits sailors after the look and manners of a working trawler rather than a lightweight racer -- the 37's trawler-inspired hull was built heavy and powerful-bowed for genuinely rough going, then finished in teak rather than left utilitarian below. Given the small production run and the builder's long absence, parts knowledge and history are most likely to come through the owners' clubs that Eista buyers organized rather than through the yard itself.
