Fellowship sailboats: a Dutch family yard's polyester breakthrough, told in its own words
"Fellowship" is not a company -- it is a model line built by Jachtwerf Gebr. de Kloet BV, a Dutch yard whose own name records its origin: Gebr. is short for Gebroeders, Brothers, and the business was indeed built by two of them, Henk and Teun de Kloet. What can be said about the brand comes almost entirely from the yard's own account of its history, so the sales figures and success stories below should be read as the builder's telling of its own story rather than as independently verified claims.
Origins and ownership
Henk de Kloet founded Jachtwerf Gebr. de Kloet BV on 12 March 1959, when he was 18 years old -- young enough that he needed permission from Her Majesty the Queen simply to start the business. His brother Teun joined soon after, and together they built sailboats of seven meters and up under contract for other yards. After two years the brothers formalized the partnership and continued under their own name, Jachtwerf Gebr. de Kloet BV -- Gebr. being Gebroeders, Brothers, a name that records the business's two-brother foundation from the start.
The brothers' own design ambitions produced the Fellowship 27 -- one of the very first polyester S-frame (S-spant) sailboats -- and that boat specifically, not the line as a whole, is credited to Teun de Kloet by name.
Ownership passed to the next generation within the family: Martin de Kloet, Henk's son, joined the yard as an employee in 1993, and took over its leadership in 2005 as Henk and Teun gradually withdrew. The yard was hit by the financial crisis in 2009, which the company describes as producing a dramatic drop in sales. In 2012 a separate company, Alufleet BV, was founded for the construction of aluminum boats, and in 2024 Jachtwerf Gebr. de Kloet BV merged with Alufleet BV.
Construction through the eras
The yard's earliest work was wooden rowboats and workboats, which quickly grew in popularity and gave the brothers a foothold before they moved into building sailboats under contract for others. That early experience fed into the Fellowship 27, a sharp materials leap from the wooden boats the yard had started with. The Fellowship 28 that followed carried the same fiberglass construction forward, built with a fiberglass hull and deck on a fin keel. In the early 1980s the brothers diversified further, acquiring a stainless-steel construction business that, at the time of the acquisition, made stainless-steel parts exclusively for the watersports industry.
Lines and generations
The Fellowship 27 launched the line's commercial fortunes in dramatic fashion: the brothers put everything they had into a demonstration model and brought it to a boat show in Friedrichshafen, southern Germany, where, by the yard's own account, it was an overwhelming success, with as many as 10 units sold during the show. After 200 examples of the 27 had been built, the Fellowship 28 was introduced; the yard's own history credits it with more than 650 units sold, mostly to Germany. The line's commercial run continued with the Fellowship 33. Alongside these, the yard's catalog broadened in the early 1980s with the Midget 26, a family sailboat the yard says it sold worldwide, including several units to Japan, followed later by the Midget 31, the open sailboat Sailhorse, and the Efsix.
Who Fellowship is for
Fellowship is a name for buyers drawn to a specific, well-told lineage rather than a marketing brand: a Dutch family yard that moved from wooden rowboats to one of the earliest polyester S-frame sailboats, then built a three-model run -- 27, 28, 33 -- sold largely into the German market. The Fellowship 28 is the model most closely associated with the line's commercial success, a fiberglass, fin-keeled cruiser from a yard whose two founding brothers are named in its own title.