Scanmar sailboats: a single Swedish yard's line, opened and closed within one company's era
Scanmar sailboats were the entire output of one Swedish partnership: six models, one dominant hull designer, and a production run that opened in the mid-1970s and ended abruptly when the yard behind it went bankrupt in 1991. The whole arc — founding, expansion, and collapse — belongs to the Börjesson Brothers' wharf in Bjästa, and to the two Swedes, Nils-Erik Olofsson and Rolf Magnusson, who shaped what came off it.
Origins and ownership
The line was created on Nils-Erik Olofsson's initiative. He had the boats built at the Börjesson Brothers' wharf in Bjästa, south of Örnsköldsvik, and sold them through his own distribution company, Scanmar Boats, based in Saltsjö-Boo. The partnership predated the Scanmar name: in 1974 Olofsson had already designed the Compis, also built by Börjesson Brothers. According to a local account in the Örnsköldsviks Allehanda, the Börjesson Brothers' wharf itself traced back to 1926, when the same family, then running a glove factory in Bjästa, decided to add wooden boatbuilding to even out summer work against a winter-heavy glove season.
Olofsson's hold on the company loosened through the 1980s: in 1984 he sold Börjesson Brothers 50 percent of the Scanmar company, and in 1986 he sold them the remaining half of Scanmar Yachts, forming Yachts of Scandinavia. Besides the Scanmar line, Börjesson Brothers also built the Örnvik, Omega, and Maxi boats. The same local account describes reorganizations under new owners and managers between 1987 and 1991 that ended in bankruptcy that year; separately, the glove side of the business had by then moved its manufacturing to China, and the resulting lack of factory work is also credited with closing the wharf in 1991. On the American side, Pelorus Yacht Sales began importing the line to the US market in March 1984, headquartered in Hellertown, Pennsylvania with its main sales office in Rock Hall, Maryland. By the late 1980s roughly half of Scanmar-built boats were reportedly heading to the US, and the loss of that market in late 1990 is credited with helping end both Yachts of Scandinavia and the line itself; Pelorus Yacht Sales itself closed in October 1991.
The designers
Rolf Magnusson, a native of Karlstad who began his design career in 1965 with a boat for the Koster Class Association competition, designed the hulls across nearly the entire line; he also designed and sewed many of his boats' sails in his own sail loft. Olofsson handled the interior layouts. The sole exception to Magnusson's hull work was the Scanmar 25, designed instead by Bernt Andersson. Good Old Boat's designer archive separately credits Magnusson with the 33 (1980), 31/31A (1983), 40 (1986), and 345 (1987), consistent with the builder's own account. After selling Scanmar Yachts, Olofsson went on to design and build the Scanyacht line at his own factory in Saltsjö-Duvnäs; its flagship, the Scanner 391, is described as bearing a strong family resemblance to the Scanmar 33.
Construction through the eras
The Börjesson wharf's own methods shifted well before the Scanmar name existed: new assembly halls and timber-drying facilities were completed in 1965, and when the fiberglass era arrived shortly after, the yard converted quickly, finding early success chiefly with its Örnvik line. An early construction pattern is visible across the Scanmar 33, 31, and 35: straightforward fiberglass hulls, with the 31 and 35 specifically built on iron keels. Construction shifted with the later boats — the 1987 Scanmar 345 moved to hand-laid fiberglass in a sandwich hull and deck, with a mahogany interior, and the range-topping 40 carried teak decks with bulkheads bonded directly to hull and deck.
Lines and generations
Six models were built across the line's life, from the 25 up through the 31, 33, 345, and 35, to the range-topping 40. The 33 has its own origin story: Magnusson's earlier Contrast 33 prototype, shown at the Långedrags Exhibition in Göteborg, struck Olofsson as a bit too small, so Magnusson offered to design a roomier boat to his specification — the birth of the Scanmar 33, of which about 500 were eventually built. The 31 followed in smaller numbers, under 200 hulls, and the 40, the largest and last of the line, at only around 20. A planned Scanmar 37 never reached production before the company folded.
Who Scanmar is for
Scanmar suits buyers drawn to a small, fully closed Swedish production run with a clear single-source design pedigree — Magnusson's hulls and Olofsson's interiors — rather than a marque with any ongoing factory support. It's a line for someone comfortable sourcing parts and history from a builder that hasn't existed since 1991, in exchange for a compact, well-documented roster where every hull's designer and era are on record.
