Rethana sailboats: a small German yard whose clearest paper trail is its own end
Rethana was a small German builder of two closely related fibreglass monohulls, the 25 and 27, each with a keel-and-centerboard configuration. No first-party Rethana website and no magazine test of either boat has surfaced. What survives instead is a documented designer credit for one model and a German commercial-register history for the company behind the name — a history that begins, oddly, about two decades after the boats themselves.
Origins and ownership
The legal entity behind the Rethana name was Rethana-Werft GmbH, based in Laatzen and registered with Amtsgericht Hannover, with a stated business purpose covering the manufacture, sale and repair of sailing yachts along with trade in trailers and accessories. Its story on record is a short one: insolvency proceedings at Amtsgericht Hannover concluded with a final ruling on 1 August 2006, and the company was struck from the commercial register on 11 May 2007 for lack of assets. The 25 dates from about 1979 and the 27 from 1978 through 1986 — roughly two decades before the earliest register entry found for Rethana-Werft GmbH. No source bridges that gap: it may reflect an earlier business that used the Rethana name before the GmbH's incorporation, or an imprecise build-year record. Either way, the boats and the registered company are not confirmed to be one continuous entity.
The designer
The Rethana 27 was designed by German naval architect Horst E. Glacer, named in a Weser-Kurier profile as one of his many production-built designs. That same profile credits Glacer, who led the German Sailing Federation's technical department from 1970 to 1972 before working independently from home, with 250 individual designs over his career. Nothing in the record identifies a designer for the Rethana 25.
Construction
Both boats were German-built fibreglass monohulls with a keel-and-centerboard configuration. The 25, at roughly 24.9 feet LOA, dates from about 1979; the 27, at about 27.2 feet LOA, ran from 1978 into 1986.
Who Rethana is for
Given how little else survives — no first-party site, no editorial boat test, a company record that documents only an end — buying into the Rethana name means judging a specific boat on its own condition rather than a maker's reputation or support network. Rethana suits buyers comfortable making that trade for a small, keel-and-centerboard cruiser from a marque whose fuller history is largely lost.
