Contest sailboats: a three-generation Dutch family yard building semi-custom bluewater cruisers
Contest Yachts has never changed hands. Founded in the Netherlands in 1959, the company has passed from its founder to his son and now to his grandson, and each generation has been credited with extending, rather than replacing, the one before it. That continuity runs alongside a construction identity built on formal certification and, more recently, a proprietary infusion process the yard says it developed itself. Design responsibility has moved through a longer list of outside naval architects, but ownership has not moved at all.
Origins and ownership
Ed Conijn founded Contest Yachts in 1959 after a visit to the United States exposed him to fiberglass construction; the company's first product was the Olympic-class Flying Dutchman dinghy, and its first move into keelboats came in 1959 with the Contest 25, an eight-metre boat with berths for four. Three hundred of that first keelboat were sold during what were still early days for GRP volume production, a field Contest led. Ed Conijn led the company until 1970, when his son Fritz took over; in Fritz's first decade the yard grew its largest boat to 48 feet, then one of the largest series-built sailing yachts anywhere, and every new Contest leaving the yard began carrying Lloyd's Register certification, a first at that level of the industry. Fritz led until 2003, when his son Arjen, the third generation, took the helm. Arjen has said his grandfather was the visionary who saw how the new fiberglass technology could be used in boatbuilding; he has also described sailing his own Contest 25 since he was a teenager, a boat that shares his own birth year.
The designers
Contest's first design partner was Gerard Luyten, willing to test the new technologies of the 1960s. Van Essen and Das followed, drawing a yacht with an aft cockpit but no aft deck, then Doug Peterson added regatta experience to the yard's cruising pedigree. Design work passed next to Dick Zaal, whose name attaches to Contest hulls across roughly two decades in the yard's own model records, from the 32CS in 1978 to the 41 in the mid-1980s, and then to Georg Nissen before the partnership with judel/vrolijk & co. The yard also formed a second, parallel design relationship with Wetzels Brown for interiors, begun with the 2012 flagship Contest 72CS after an owner asked for a small superyacht rather than a family yacht; Wetzels Brown designer Gillian Brown said the resulting design became a template for later Contest yachts. Rolf Vrolijk of judel/vrolijk & co called the newer naval-architecture partnership "groundbreaking," suited to true semi-custom performance cruisers for distance bluewater cruising.
Construction through the eras
Many early Contests were solid fiberglass boats with mahogany joinery; a former Yachting Monthly editor, Des Sleightholme, once called the Contest 25 "well-built and handsome." Contest yachts are classified by Lloyd's Register as "All Oceans." Sail-World has credited Contest as the first series-builder to adopt vacuum injection moulding; Arjen Conijn has separately described the resulting single-shot vacuum infusion process as "unique, own-developed." Cruising World, visiting the yard, reported that all parts, including hulls, decks, and bulkheads, are vacuum-infused and cored, with infused hull sections thinner than hand-laid equivalents yet just as strong, saving weight and resin. Teak decks are built on a mold and glued onto the fiberglass deck rather than screwed down, avoiding fasteners that could let moisture reach the core, and hull-to-deck joints are glued and then further strengthened with bolts. In a 2016 count, Cruising World reported the Medemblik yard building 12 to 15 sailboats and power boats a year with a team of 80 boatbuilders.
Lines and generations
The range splits broadly between the numbered classics of the 1960s through 1990s and the later CS-series semi-custom cruisers, which Sail-World has described as spanning 42 to 85 feet, pairing judel/vrolijk & co naval architecture with Wetzels Brown interiors. The Contest 57CS, launched to mark the yard's 50th anniversary, was a Georg Nissen design created in response to owner requests for a smaller version of the Contest 62. The Contest 67CS marked the first design from judel/vrolijk & co in the yard's history. More recently, the 19-metre Contest 63CS premiered at the Cannes boat show and was nominated for European Yacht of the Year and the British Yachting Awards. Across the CS line, the yard has taken customization further than model options: it has worked directly with Bentley Motors' own designers and fabricators to synchronize car and yacht interiors, and has fulfilled owner requests as specific as a full-size bathtub and a drop-down television screen aboard a Contest 59CS.
Who Contest is for
Three unbroken generations of family leadership, Lloyd's-certified construction, and a semi-custom build process willing to take on requests as specific as a Bentley-matched interior suit buyers who want one yard's standard rather than a brand that has changed hands or philosophy along the way. Contest has also formalized its reach beyond the Netherlands, partnering with the Ancasta Group to launch a dedicated Contest Yachts UK sales operation at the Southampton and Cannes boat shows, and develops its range in continuing partnership with judel/vrolijk & co, Wetzels Brown, and Lloyd's Register.
