Nonsuch sailboats: one idea, built the whole way through
A Nonsuch is a catboat hull carrying a single sail on a freestanding, wishbone-rigged mast — no jib, no genoa, no standing rigging at all. That one idea, not a succession of model changes, is the whole story of the brand: every Nonsuch from the 22-footer up to the 36 is the same concept scaled to a different length. It came from a specific partnership — a former ocean racer who wanted a simpler boat for himself and fellow Toronto sailors, a designer who translated dinghy-racing and windsurfing instincts into a big-boat rig, and a master boatbuilder who carried a C&C-trained eye for finish detail and hull quality into his own yard. Built in Ontario from 1977 into the mid-1990s, the line grew to nearly a thousand boats before the yard that built them closed for good.
Origins and ownership
George Hinterhoeller began boatbuilding in 1946 as an apprentice in his native Austria and arrived in North America in 1952 with, in his own words, a box of tools, his training, and next to nothing in his pockets. In 1959 he built the Shark 24, his own design — a boat Practical Sailor later called one of the most noteworthy in the 50-year history of fiberglass sailboats. A decade later, on September 26, 1969, his company joined designers Cuthbertson & Cassian and boatbuilders Bruckmann Manufacturing and Belleville Marine Yard to form C&C Yachts; Hinterhoeller became C&C's president in 1970. By 1975 he had had enough of what the company had become and resigned, re-establishing Hinterhoeller Yachts at Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, and beginning Nonsuch production in 1977. In 1982 Brock University awarded him an honorary doctorate for his contributions to sailing, yacht construction, and job creation.
Hinterhoeller Yachts was bought in 1990 by Stan Stewart of Strategic Associates. In April 1994 a fire destroyed the Niagara-on-the-Lake plant; production wound down through the early 1990s, with the yard closing in the mid-1990s in the fire's aftermath. George Hinterhoeller died from complications of a stroke in the spring of 1999.
The designers
Gordon Fisher, a former ocean racer, wanted a shorthanded one-design boat for himself and fellow sailors out of Toronto's yacht clubs on Lake Ontario. He brought the idea to designer Mark Ellis, and together they approached Hinterhoeller to build it. Ellis, who had left C&C's design department in 1973, drew his inspiration for the Nonsuch from the Laser, Finn, and International 14 racing dinghies he sailed on the St. Lawrence River and the Great Lakes. The signature wishbone rig came from a different sport entirely: Ellis was an avid boardsailor, and the concept of managing sail shape with a wishbone boom on a freestanding mast came from windsurfing rigs — an idea already proven on much larger boats by Garry Hoyt's Freedom line and by 19th-century Herreshoff designs. Ellis died in 2025.
Construction through the eras
Nonsuch hulls and decks were fiberglass over balsa core, including much of the area below the waterline, to save weight, with an external lead keel hung on stainless-steel bolts and a through-bolted, butyl-bedded hull-to-deck joint capped with an aluminum toe rail. The unstayed rig needed no chainplates, but it demanded different engineering elsewhere: heavy bulkheading forward and two molded-in box structures in the forepeak absorbed the compression loads of the freestanding spar, which on the original 1979-model 30 was a one-piece tapered aluminum mast. Around hull number 125, the 30's drivetrain changed from a Volvo saildrive to a conventional shaft-driven, 27-horsepower Westerbeke diesel. Starting in 1983, a more conventional "Ultra" interior — a Pullman double berth forward and a larger saloon aft — was offered as an option alongside the original layout. Late in the line, a carbon-rigged 30 derivative called the 324 appeared in only a handful of examples before the yard folded.
Lines and generations
The 30 opened the line in 1978 and defined it: by one count it made up 522 of the 975 Nonsuches eventually launched, more than half the entire production run. The 26, launched in 1981, scaled the concept down; the 33 (1988) and 36 (1983, roughly 70 built) scaled it up — the 36's first two hulls were built as "Nighthawks" by Express Yachts before that company's bankruptcy, after which Hinterhoeller finished the run. The 22, introduced in 1984, shrank the concept further and needed a mid-production redesign to fix headroom and coachroof-height problems that scaling down had introduced. A handful of larger 40-footers were also built, sometimes labeled Nereus 40s. The carbon-rigged 324 closed out the line in 1994.
Who Nonsuch is for
A Nonsuch suits a sailor who wants the size and comfort of a small cruiser without the sail-handling of one — one sheet, one halyard, no headsail to change or reef, across a size range that runs from the 22 up to the 36. It's a single concept applied consistently rather than a lineup of distinct designs, so the choice a buyer is really making is one of length and interior layout, not of rig philosophy.
