Saare sailboats: an Estonian yard's road from a Finnish design partnership to its own brand
Saare is the yacht brand of an Estonian shipyard on Saaremaa — Saaremaa means "island country," and saare means island, the source of the name. The yard has operated continuously since 1991, first as a subcontractor and design partner for other Nordic brands, and from 2007 under its own name, passing through German ownership from 2016 without becoming a different company along the way.
Origins and ownership
The shipyard, Saare Marine Industrie, was founded in Nasva in 1991, at the founding of the Republic of Estonia, as an Estonian/Swedish joint venture; its first products were the EXCEL sailing yachts, built for a Swedish shipyard. From 1993 the company operated as Saare Paat AS under Estonian owners, working as a subcontractor for various shipyards in Sweden and Finland. Peeter Sääsk joined in 1997 as an IT consultant, moved into project management, and eventually became CEO of Saare Paat AS.
In 2007, Sääsk and Finngulf founder Stig Nordblad conceived the idea of an own-brand shipyard over lunch at the Helsinki Boat Show, and the resulting center-cockpit Saare 41cc carried the Saare name forward from that year. A German distributor — who had earlier declined to represent Finngulf — was asked that same autumn to represent the new Saare brand instead, ordered a 41cc, and exhibited it at Hanseboot in 2008; the global economic crisis that same year meant it then took almost two years to sell the first Saare.
Finngulf's first bankruptcy, in 2011, also caused trouble for Saare — a bankruptcy Invest in Estonia's account of managing director Peeter Sääsk situates against the backdrop of the 2007/2008 financial crisis. Per Sääsk, Saare escaped catastrophe only because it had already begun developing its own yacht models; once the Finngulf contracts stopped, the company concentrated production on the Saare 38 and Saare 41 and came out the other side as an independent sailboat producer.
Ownership changed again in 2016: the German partner, Yachtsport Eckernförde, bought the entire shipyard — 3,000 square meters of hall, about 10,000 square meters of land, and all tools, designs, and trademark rights — from majority shareholder Saare Kalur, which left the boatbuilding business and the ownership circle entirely. The company has operated since as Saare Yachts OÜ, with Peeter Sääsk and Thomas Nielsen — the same German distributor who had represented Saare since its founding and helped develop its boat models — as managing directors. Per the yard's own account, it now combines an Estonian shipyard, a Finnish designer, and German owners with more than 30 years of experience trading sailing yachts.
The designers
Karl Johan Strahlmann, a Finnish designer, drew the yachts the Estonian yard built for Finngulf, and Nordblad brought him along when he and Sääsk set up the Saare brand; together they developed the center-cockpit Saare 41cc, the new brand's first model. No Frills Sailing, reviewing a later Saare model, credited the same designer — rendered Karl-Johan Strahlmann in that account — with shaping the Saare style once the brand's German ownership took hold. Blue Water Sailing's Cruising Compass likewise traced a debt of influence back to Nordblad, writing that much of the expertise from the Finngulf yard migrated across to Saare's Estonian base when he helped set the brand up.
Construction through the eras
During the Finngulf partnership the yard's main hull material shifted from wood to GRP, with interior, furniture, and finishing also produced in the same factory. Under the Saare brand, the yard builds every hull and deck by vacuum infusion, using vinyl ester laminating resin rather than standard polyester, and backs the work with a five-year guarantee against osmosis damage; it is also one of very few shipyards that glues the hull-to-deck joint all the way around rather than only in places. Saare has worked with lithium batteries on board since 2018 and has used Flexiteek PVC decking as a teak alternative for years. The Saare 38 carries the practice forward in sandwich form, with a Divinycell foam core that stiffens the hull and deck and improves insulation against sound and temperature; its interior was initially finished entirely in classic Khaya mahogany, with more recent boats also finished in light oak, some with horizontal grain. Yachting Monthly, reviewing the 38, noted that its fixed windscreen and high, wide coamings help shelter the crew from the worst of the elements. The 41ac, for its part, carries a low-mounted lead keel with a high ballast content.
Lines and generations
Before the Saare brand existed, the Finngulf partnership itself produced over 220 complete yachts from 28 to 46 feet at the Estonian yard over 13 years, several of them recognized as best-in-class at trade fairs in Finland and elsewhere. Saare's own lineup opened with the center-cockpit 41cc in 2007; an aft-cockpit sibling, the 41ac, followed, sharing the 41cc's hull, keel, rudder, and rig but built in versions that vary by customer request — in 2012 one 41ac was sailed from Estonia to Eckernförde in what the yard describes as an almost constantly stormy autumn crossing, with winds up to 43 knots. The Saare 38 came next, the yard's second own-brand design, developed together with Finnish consultants; the first three were sold to Finnish buyers straight from the drawings, with only the fourth hull delivered to Germany, and most 38s since have been collected directly from the Kuressaare shipyard and sailed home across the Baltic. The Saare 46 CC, also built as a custom order and referred to in at least one account as the Saare SC, anchors the top of the range. The yard also builds the smaller Saare H-boat and, outside sailboats entirely, a line of classic-form GRP motorboats under the Stormer name.
Who Saare is for
Saare suits a buyer drawn to a small, continuous Estonian yard rather than a mass-production brand: one company that moved from Finnish-designed contract production to its own line under a Finnish designer and German ownership, without a break in identity across any of the transitions. Blue Water Sailing's Cruising Compass summed up the post-2007 output simply as a range of high-quality cruisers, and that range runs from the center- and aft-cockpit 41 through the second-generation 38 to the custom-order 46 at the top.