Odin sailboats: a flooring business that became a yacht distributor
Anyone searching for "Odin sailboats" expecting a conventional production boatbuilder is looking for the wrong kind of company. Odin Yachten GmbH Lamprecht, based in Gunzenhausen in Germany's Middle Franconia, began as a business selling curtains, floor coverings, and home accessories, and its registered corporate purpose still reads like a merchant's rather than a manufacturer's: import and export, the worldwide distribution of yachts, trading in accessories and spare parts, and service work — manufacture is not part of it. The single model line the family put its name on was designed by the father, Volker Lamprecht, and finished rather than built from scratch in-house, with the hull moulded abroad and the fit-out completed at home — a distribution-and-finishing operation wearing a builder's name.
Origins and ownership
The company that became Odin Yachten was originally registered in Gunzenhausen as Heimdecor Lamprecht Bodenverlegung-GmbH — a flooring and home-decor business — before being renamed Odin Yachten GmbH Lamprecht, adding the family name to the yacht brand it had grown into. Volker Lamprecht ran that original curtains-and-flooring trade, which he continued to operate alongside the yacht business. His interest in motor-sailers was sparked in 1995, when the first US-built motor-sailer reached the market, and he began building yachts himself around 2001. It was Volker — not his son Timo — who designed the Odin 820, a boat the sailing trade press embraced immediately on its release. Timo Lamprecht, trained as an interior decorator (Raumausstatter) and having completed a commercial apprenticeship specifically so he could take over the family business, went on to serve as the company's managing director. Gerda Lamprecht was appointed managing director on 3 May 2018, and later took on the role of liquidator when the company entered liquidation and Timo ceased serving as managing director. The German commercial register lists Odin Yachten GmbH Lamprecht as dissolved and struck from the register — a closed chapter rather than a live concern.
Construction through the eras
Consistent with a distribution-and-finishing model, hull parts for the Odin 820 were made in Poland, with an experienced Bavarian ship's carpenter handling the joinery and interior woodwork before final assembly took place in the Fränkisches Seenland, the Franconian lake district where the company was based. The boat itself was built around a water ballast system that kept its roughly 1.5-tonne weight substantially lighter than comparably sized sailing yachts. British yachting journalist David Harding described switching an Odin from sailing to full motor mode as a two-stage process: about five minutes to strike sail, board, and rudder, then roughly another eight minutes to drain the ballast tank and reach top speed.
Lines and generations
Odin's range stayed small. Shortly after launching the 8.20-metre Odin 820, Volker Lamprecht brought out a second model roughly one metre shorter, and a model called the Odin nova later joined the range. The most consequential naming fact for a buyer, though, is that the 820 was sold in Europe under a second name, the Imexus 27 — the same boat, different badge — and the manufacturer announced that all future models would be branded Imexus rather than Odin. A listing search for one name alone will miss boats sold under the other.
Who Odin is for
Odin's water-ballast design points to a particular kind of owner: someone who wants to sail conventionally most of the time but drop sail and motor at speed when conditions or schedule demand it, without hauling around a fixed keel's weight to do so. That appeal reached beyond Germany: a Canadian distributor, Bernie Benovitch, arranged press rides on the 820 for boating journalists, and Odin Yachten struck a licensing deal with a Chinese boatbuilder, sending two demonstration yachts — one complete, one in components — to help the licensee learn to replicate the design.
