TES sailboats: a Polish marque named for its founder, built by someone else
TES is a Polish sailboat brand founded in 1980 by Tomasz Siwik, a sailor, constructor, and designer. The name has nothing to do with an acronym: Siwik built it from his own initials, shortened by one letter into something short and easy to say, pronounced "TeeS." What sets the brand apart structurally is that TES Yacht — the Gdynia-based company that owns the design and the brand — doesn't build the boats itself. Production belongs to a separate company, Jacht Plast, based in Drzewica.
Origins and ownership
TES Yacht's first boat, the TES 590, launched in 1981, a year after the company's 1980 founding — a date corroborated independently by the builder's own company history, by Żeglarski.info (quoting Siwik directly), and by a 2010 Canadian Yachting review.
International demand grew steadily from there. Foreign interest picked up substantially after TES appeared at the 1998 Düsseldorf boat show, where the yard sold more than a dozen boats to Switzerland and considerably more to Germany; Siwik personally shipped yachts to customers in Canada, France, Spain, Italy, and Russia. A 2010 review also described a formal arm on the Canadian side of that trade: TES Yachts Canada, run by Mark Janczarski, with dealer North Lakes Yachting representing the line in Port Credit, Ontario. German-speaking owners maintain a dedicated fan forum for technical advice and sourcing spare parts, and TES yachts have gone on to sail across much of Europe as well as farther afield, including Australia and Canada.
Tomasz Siwik sold the company in 2019, and new owners — described by Magazyn Wiatr as entrepreneurs and sailing enthusiasts — took over the brand that spring, a change the magazine credited with giving the company new dynamism while nurturing and developing Siwik's own designs. Following the sale, Siwik took on an advisory role and began co-designing new models. One of the last foreign orders he personally fulfilled beforehand was shipping a TES 246 to France, and he said he was pleased that his company's yachts had been recognized outside Poland.
Construction through the eras
Jacht Plast's fiberglass hulls carry a design signature that runs across the TES range: multiple keel configurations built to order rather than one fixed underbody. The flagship TES 246 Versus could be specified with a lifting centerboard fin, a false keel paired with a lifting centerboard, or a traditional fixed ballast keel. The TES 28 Magnam offered a similar choice between an inland centerboard version and a sea-going ballasted-keel version, while the TES 678 BT is built around a pivoting swing keel that lifts to allow sailing in both coastal and inland waters.
Lines and generations
Four sailing models carry documented years. The TES 550 Master, from 1998, won the shipyard's first audience award, at the "Jacht dla Ciebie" ("Yacht for You") fair. The TES 32 Dreamer followed in 2002, taking the Audience Award at the Boatshow fair in Łódź. The TES 28 Magnam debuted in 2008, winning the "Gwóźdź Targów Wiatr i Woda" prize shortly afterward. The TES 246 Versus, launched in 2017 and named the yard's flagship, won the Sailing Yacht category at the Mazurskie Targi Sportów Wodnych (Masurian Water Sports Fair) that year, the same year Siwik was named Yacht Designer of the Year. The TES 678 BT rounds out the sailing range, though no launch year for it is established. Separately, in 2016 TES put its first motor yacht, the ILUMINATUS, on the water — a departure from the sailing line rather than an addition to it.
Who TES is for
A TES buyer is choosing a design house with a long, single-founder pedigree — one that has kept its founder involved through a change of ownership rather than cutting him loose. The brand's own history shows a company built around configurability, offering more than one keel arrangement across its main models, and an export record that reached well past Poland, from Switzerland and Germany to Australia and Canada. It suits sailors drawn to shoal-draft, adaptable European cruiser-racers with a compact but well-documented design lineage, rather than buyers looking for a mass-production marque.