Ohlson sailboats: a Swedish design office, not a shipyard
"Ohlson" names a design credit, not a builder. Brothers Einar and Carl-Eric Ohlson ran a Gothenburg naval-architecture practice, Ingenjörsfirman Bröderna Ohlson AB, from 1951 to 1999, and by their own account never owned or intended to own production facilities of their own. Their designs instead went out to whichever yard would take them — 68 identified yards across eleven countries, spanning wooden sloops planked on the Swedish island of Örust to fiberglass hulls molded in Kent, England. A boat carrying the Ohlson name can trace to almost any of them.
Origins and ownership
Einar and Carl-Eric Ohlson grew up in Hälleviksstrand, in the north-west of Örust, and in the mid-1930s apprenticed to their uncle, boat and ship builder Hjalmar Johansson. Einar settled in Gothenburg in 1934, and in 1951 the brothers registered their design office there as Ingenjörsfirman Bröderna Ohlson AB. Their 5.5 Metre design Hojwa won bronze at the 1952 Helsinki Olympics, with Carl-Eric himself crewing, and commissions flowed in heavily afterward; at every Olympics from 1952 through 1968, a crew sailing an Ohlson-designed boat reached the podium. Across that Olympic-class era the office delivered 57 designs in total.
When Carl-Eric resigned in 1957, the practice became a joint-stock company with Einar and his wife, Wallis, as the two main shareholders, and Einar ran it alone from there. He kept working into old age, finally stopping only in 1999 — the year the office closed, 48 years after it opened — and died five years later. Across its history, 54 distinct boat models have been identified as Ohlson designs, credited to one brother alone or to both together. Consistent with never owning a yard, the practice "encouraged their designs to be built by as many yards as possible" rather than concentrating production in one place — the reason a Sweden-finished boat might carry a "Bröderna Ohlson AB" plaque, tied to the firm's own address in Västra Frölunda near Gothenburg, even though the design office behind that name owned no factory.
Construction through the eras
In the US, sailor and Ohlson customer George O'Day handled sales until the end of the 1950s; when he stepped back, Richard "Dick" Sheehan put himself forward as the new representative, and it was Sheehan who commissioned a run of ocean-going yachts built in whatever material a given yard offered. One was welded in Corten steel by Frans Maas in Breskens, the Netherlands; another Sheehan later ordered was double-planked in wood by Poul Molich in Hundested, Denmark; and a 45-foot yawl had its hull welded in aluminum at Royal Huisman in Vollenhove, with a version also built in Sweden. Closer to home, the production wood boats followed a more settled path: the Ohlson 35, offered as sloop or yawl and planked in mahogany on oak, was built in series at two Örust yards — the Gustavsson brothers' shipyard in Brattås and the Martinsson shipyard in Svineviken, near Kungsviken — which had delivered 145 of them by 1966. A lengthened successor, the Ohlson 37, went to the same Gustavsson yard for traditional planking in 1967 and was likely the last wooden Ohlson brought into the United States.
The change that defined the office's later years was the Ohlson 38, first delivered in 1967-68. Its hulls, and where required its decks and superstructures, were laminated in GRP at Tyler Boat Co. in Tonbridge, Kent — at the time probably the largest contract GRP manufacturer in the world — with the design leaning on experience from the highly competitive 5.5 Metre class and Einar Ohlson using Gothenburg's own test tank to tow a model hull and refine it. From Tyler, finishing then fanned out by customer: wooden fittings were completed at Svinevikens Båtvarv, Bröderna Carlsson & Söner, in Sweden; full-GRP boats went to Olsöner in Kungsviken, the yard that later became Malö Yachts, with one report putting the count around 20; three hulls went to Matthiessen & Paulsen in Arnis, Germany, two of them finished in wood; and in the UK, Alexander Robertson & Sons in Scotland fitted out five before Tyler took over finishing itself — probably at least half of the later run — selling roughly 50 hulls directly, some for home completion, rebadged as the Tufglass 38. In all, 128 Ohlson 38s were built, the last known example around 1982.
Lines and generations
Once the 5.5 Metre design work tapered off, Einar Ohlson turned out a quick succession of smaller boats from 22 to 35 feet, especially models up to 29 feet, several of which were built in the hundreds — a far larger production tier than the flagship 38, if a less documented one. At the other end of the range sit larger, less common designs from the same period: 41- and 44-foot boats drawn in the mid-to-late 1960s. Between those poles, the Ohlson 38 remains the design the office is best remembered for — the boat built across the widest spread of yards and countries of anything to carry the Ohlson name.
Who Ohlson is for
A buyer drawn to Ohlson is buying into a Swedish design pedigree that traces to Olympic 5.5 Metre racing, not a single builder's construction standard. The same name can mean an Örust-planked wooden sloop from the mid-1960s or a Tyler-hulled, Kent-to-continent-finished 38 from the following decade — each shaped more by which of 68 yards actually built it than by the Ohlson name on its stern.
