Faurby sailboats: hand-built Danish cruisers from a yard that builds in tens, not hundreds
Faurby is a small Danish yard with roots dating back to 1976, based in Lunderskov in southern Denmark, not far from Kolding. According to itBoat, it consistently produces no more than 10 to 15 yachts a year - a scale at which the yard's methods stay deliberately manual, down to interiors where, as Faurby puts it, a person rather than a computer cuts every piece of wood. What was once a single line of slender Baltic cruisers became a two-range brand: the merger with fellow Danish builder Nordship brought a family of deck saloon yachts into the fold alongside Faurby's own performance cruisers.
Origins and ownership
Niels Peter Faurby founded the shipyard, and good Scandinavian cruisers have been launched under the Faurby brand since 1976. In 2010 the company was taken over by Thomas Dan Hougaard, who described the yard's philosophy in terms of longevity rather than fashion: "We do not want to be modern and do not want to be a classic. We want to be out of time; we want to build boats that will look good and sail well even after 20 years."
The defining ownership event of the modern era is the combination with Nordship. The two brands have belonged together since 2018, though they initially kept separate management. Yachting Monthly traced the practical logic: Faurby needed more space and Nordship had too much, so the yards began sharing sheds and then workforce, and the two brands were eventually brought under one company umbrella to eliminate duplication and increase buying power with suppliers. With the departure of Lars Buchwald as managing director of Nordship Yachts, Faurby Yachts took over the business and the entire brand portfolio under Hougaard's management, and in 2025 Nordship fully joined forces with Faurby, continuing as the DS line under the Faurby name. YACHT reported that Nordship's deck saloon models - the 360 DS, 420 DS, 450 DS, 500 DS, and 570 DS - would be built and marketed under the Faurby brand. As Yachting Monthly told it, the Faurby name, taken from the brand's founder, was judged the more distinctive of the two: the Nordship yachts became the Faurby Deck Saloon range, and the original Faurbys became the Performance Cruiser range.
The designers
Niels Peter Faurby's name is on the drawing board as well as the door: the Faurby 393, a large sailboat from the late eighties, is credited to him as designer, as is the Faurby 396 that followed in 1998. The 396 also produced what itBoat calls the yard's most famous yacht, the Jesper Bank Edition, created in close collaboration with Jesper Bank - the Danish yachtsman, two-time Olympic gold medalist, and seven-time America's Cup helmsman - with the designers working to remove weight from the base 396 wherever possible.
The Deck Saloon range carries a different design signature. Yachting Monthly credits the 360 DS to Buchwald & Borghegn, with the build by Faurby Yachts, and notes the boat began life in 2009 - as the Nordship 360 - with a design by Nordship founder Lars Buchwald. YACHT likewise lists the Buchwald/Borghegn partnership as the 360 DS's designers.
Construction through the eras
Hand-laid fibreglass sandwich construction goes back a long way at Faurby: on the Faurby 330, both hull and deck are hand-laid fibreglass in sandwich construction, the 393's hull and deck are likewise fibreglass sandwich, and lead fin keels with bulbs recur across the 330, 363, 393, and 424.
The modern method is distinctive enough that Yachting Monthly spelled it out in its review of the 360 DS. The hull is hand-laminated in vinylester resin, with solid laminate below the waterline and a foam core above; Faurby does not use vacuum infusion, reasoning that at its small build numbers it can be more confident in lamination quality by hand. Structure is the other signature. On every Performance Cruiser except the smallest model, the 335, a galvanised steel frame takes the load from the keel-stepped mast and keel, and the keel blade uses a substantial internal steel structure rather than a solid steel or lead fin, concentrating ballast as low as possible in the lead bulb. The same idea runs through the Deck Saloon side: the 360 DS's hull and deck are laminated as a GRP sandwich with a foam core, its hull is reinforced with a continuous steel frame, and its keel is bolted to that galvanised frame - which Yachting Monthly found makes the boat extremely strong and stiff while keeping heavy systems low and central.
Stiffness also comes from the joinery itself. Bulkheads, semi-bulkheads, and furniture are laminated to the hull to create a strong, light grid structure, and an interior marine plywood structure laminated to the hull runs throughout the yacht. The interiors those structures carry are handmade.
Lines and generations
The Performance Cruiser range - formerly known simply as the Faurby Yacht Range - is the original bloodline, the boats Yachting Monthly characterises as slender, elegant, and fast Baltic cruisers. The lineup reaches back to the 999 of 1976 and runs through the 393, 330, 360, 363, 396, and 424 into the 335 and 460, with the 370, 400, and 420 arriving in 2020.
The Deck Saloon range brings its own history. Nordship Yachts was founded in 1978 under the name Buchwald Yachtværft; founder Lars Buchwald started out building accommodation and working as a subcontractor for several well-known Danish shipyards, acquired the rights to the Nordship boat program in 1988 and launched an extensive development program, and in 2008 - the yard's 30th anniversary - moved to the Lunderskov site the two yards would come to share. Where Faurby built slender and fast, Yachting Monthly notes, Nordship built luxurious deck saloons, and the merged range preserves both characters under one name.
Who Faurby is for
Faurby suits sailors who want the qualities that only low volume makes practical: hand lamination the yard trusts more than machinery, furniture that doubles as structure, and interiors cut by hand. Since the Nordship merger, that approach spans two distinct temperaments - the slender, fast Performance Cruisers and the more luxurious Deck Saloon yachts - so the choice within the brand is less about build quality than about which kind of sailing the boat is shaped for. Hougaard's stated ambition, boats that are "out of time," sums up what the yard asks buyers to value: longevity over fashion, in numbers small enough that itBoat could report the company's pride that all of its yachts are still on the move.
