Reinke sailboats: a self-build design line, not a shipyard
"Reinke" names the self-build plans catalogue of Bremen-based naval architect Kurt Reinke, not a production shipyard. Over his life he drew roughly two dozen designs for boats and sailing yachts, including a few motorboats, and YACHT (Delius Klasing) credits him as the father of the German amateur boatbuilding scene. His stated aim, per YACHT, was that anyone should be able to build a long-distance yacht — a "Langzeit-Yacht," his own term — using his construction drawings, books, documents, and personal advice. Over five decades, hundreds of yachts from seven to seventeen meters, mostly steel or aluminum, have been built to his plans by sailors, dreamers, craftsmen, and shipyards alike, a spread the design system enabled precisely because it was never tied to a single builder.
Origins and ownership
Kurt Reinke proved the system on his own boats, owning three of his own designs over his life, most recently an 11MS. Two decades before YACHT profiled the marque in 2019, the designer had already died, and his angular metal boats had become especially popular among bluewater and long-distance sailors — among them Heide and Erich Wilts, who owned three Reinke yachts in succession, each named "Freydis." At the time of that 2019 profile, YACHT reported that Kurt's son Peter Reinke was still selling the self-build plans his father had developed. By 2022, in YACHT's later reporting, both Kurt Reinke — who had supported his community of self-builders with information, advice, and further design work "with almost superhuman commitment" — and Peter Reinke had died. Kurt's grandson Sverre Reinke, then 29 and living in Hamburg, was taking over distribution of the plans together with his sister Kyra Reinke, a business economist, and her partner Elmar Krüger, an electrical engineer; both Kyra and Elmar worked at a shipyard for large ships on the Weser. Sverre told YACHT that times had changed and that few people still have the space, facilities, or expertise to build their own boat — one reason the siblings said they were in talks with shipyards and hull manufacturers to partner with, and why the reinke-yacht.de site had been reorganized with an official company registration underway.
Construction through the eras
Kurt Reinke's self-build system was called HD, for "Hobby Design": a builder could construct one of his designs entirely themselves, hull and interior, or order just the hull from a shipyard or from a private hull manufacturer in Reinke's partner pool of self-builders, leaving only the interior fit-out to complete at home. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, dozens of Reinkes went up this way, in barns, meadows, gardens, and backyards, per YACHT. A parallel trade grew alongside plan sales: through the 1980s and 1990s, some former self-builders themselves turned into hull manufacturers, welding hulls for other Reinke owners — YACHT documents one such hull built at the Rehberger yard in southern Germany. By 2022, YACHT reported, that welding trade had thinned: yards building aluminum yachts had grown rare, existing order books were full, and most of the hull manufacturers from Reinke's early years had already retired.
Lines and generations
Buildable in either steel or aluminum, Reinke's designs established themselves as robust, popular long-distance cruising boats. One recurring feature across the deck saloon designs is a raised seating area — Kurt Reinke reportedly insisted the crew shouldn't have to sit "in the basement." The line's twin bilge-keel hull style, known as the Kimmkieler, stood out enough that Sverre Reinke and his family singled it out as a construction style they wanted to revive. Individual designs carry their own names rather than a shared numbered line — owner Wolf Kloss's "Santa Maria," which sailed off Cape Horn, is a Hydra.
Who Reinke is for
Buying a Reinke means buying into a self-build plan set, not a shipyard's build standard — the boats that reached the water were shaped as much by their individual builder and welder as by Kurt Reinke's drawings. That variability suits the crowd who has always sought these boats out: bluewater and long-distance sailors, the kind YACHT found the design line still attracts two decades after its designer's death.
