Shipman sailboats: two boats sharing one bought name
Two entirely unrelated companies have built boats called Shipman. The first was Shipman Sweden AB, whose Shipman 28 cruiser-racer came out of Visby in the late 1960s. The second, decades later and an ocean away in design terms, was Seaway, a Slovenian yacht group that bought the rights to the name for a carbon-fiber luxury range with no design lineage back to the original. Neither inherited the other's boats, customers, or history — only the name passed between them, and only because Seaway paid for it.
Origins and ownership
Shipman Sweden AB built the original Shipman 28 first in Visby, Sweden, in 1968, with production established in Ireland shortly afterward and continuing through the model's run; around 1,300 were built in total, and many were still being raced, particularly in the Baltic and in Ireland, according to the Irish Shipman Association's own history of the class. That same association frames the brand as one continuous story, describing Shipman as still in business, now producing much larger, ultra-high-tech carbon-fibre cruiser-racers — a continuity the corporate record behind the modern boats doesn't support.
The modern Shipman is a different company. In 2003, after clients had turned down the idea, the Slovenian group Seaway built its own carbon sailboat and bought the name "Shipman," reasoning that an established name would help launch its first boat brand — a deliberate purchase, not an inheritance of the Swedish firm. Seaway itself was founded in Ljubljana in 1989 by brothers Japec and Jernej Jakopin, six years after the brothers founded their design office, J&J Design, in 1983; a manufacturing facility in Bled followed in 1994. Per an SKF Evolution profile of the company, Seaway went on to become the world's largest builder of carbon sailing yachts.
Seaway was declared bankrupt in March 2015, reported by the Slovenian Press Agency under the headline "High-End Yacht Maker Goes Bankrupt." By late October 2016, Vladimir Zinchenko had already relaunched boat production at the former Seaway facility under new name and management. J&J Design's own later project records list the Shipman client simply as "SVP."
The designers
Olle Enderlein, the Swedish designer behind the Shipman 28, drew more than 40 sailboats in the 1960s and '70s, including a number of Hallberg-Rassys as well as the Swan 36 and the Najad 34.
The modern range's design office was J&J Design, the Ljubljana firm Japec and Jernej Jakopin founded. For the Shipman 59, J&J brought in outside expertise, designing the boat jointly with Guillaume Verdier and Doug Peterson.
Construction through the eras
The Shipman 28's original design carried a trim tab on the aft end of its fin keel, an unusual way to adjust helm balance for a production boat of its era. The modern range's construction is a different story entirely: applying carbon/epoxy technology to production boatbuilding gave birth to the Shipman carbon range starting in 2002, with J&J's brief a new line of carbon deckhouse, shorthanded performance cruisers.
Lines and generations
On the classic side, the Shipman 28 remained the brand's only model throughout its run. The modern, Seaway-era lineup grew considerably wider: J&J's own project archive credits the firm with the Shipman 50, the 63, the 59 (designed with Peterson and Verdier), and a flagship 80, plus a preliminary 78 for a client later listed simply as "SVP." Over 50 of these carbon deckhouse yachts were built in total. The 50 and 63 both won the European Boat of the Year award — the 50 in 2004, per J&J's own project archive (an SKF Evolution profile instead credits 2003, but this account follows the designer's own record), and the 63 in 2006, when it also took national Boat of the Year honors in both Slovenia and Croatia. The 59 was later named Slovenia's Boat of the Year in 2015.
Who Shipman is for
Because these are two unconnected companies wearing the same name, a used Shipman first tells a buyer which era, and which market, it belongs to. The classic Shipman 28 suits someone drawn to Olle Enderlein's Baltic and Irish cruiser-racer heritage from the late 1960s. The modern Seaway-built range answers a different brief entirely: J&J Design's carbon-deckhouse, shorthanded performance cruisers, scaled from the 50 up to an 80-foot flagship, for owners after contemporary carbon-fiber performance rather than vintage pedigree.
