Varianta sailboats: a Dehler model line, not a builder, across two distinct eras
Varianta was never an independent boatbuilder. It is a model-line name belonging to Dehler Bootsbau, used twice, roughly forty years apart, for two unrelated boats: a small 1966-1982 cruiser designed by Dutch naval architect E. G. van de Stadt, and a stripped-down modern revival — the Varianta 18, 37, and 44 — launched from late 2009, while Dehler was a HanseYachts Group brand. The two eras share only a name; nothing about one should be assumed of the other.
Origins and ownership
The original Varianta was designed for general cruising and beginner sailors rather than regatta racing, despite later becoming a popular one-design racing class — a tension that runs through its early history. It was also the boat that took Willi Dehler from a garage hobby, the Winnetou dinghy begun in 1963, into full-time production boatbuilding two years later. Willi Dehler knew Dutch designer E. G. van de Stadt, already renowned for his Randmeer dinghy, which had seen use as a school boat, through an old connection; according to Willi's son Karl Dehler, van de Stadt scaled up the Randmeer's hull and added a removable cabin to create the Varianta.
Owners drawn to regatta sailing organized around the boat almost from the start: an association formed with the Dehler shipyard's support as early as 1969, the German Sailing Association recognized the Varianta as a standard racing class in May 1971, and ten Varianta sailors met in Freienohl on 20 February 1973 to formally found the Varianta Class Association, with Willi Dehler himself among the founders. The boat was recognized as the first German production sailboat of its kind, and an active class scene grew up around it.
Construction through the eras
The Sauerland yard grew the original line in the years that followed: a four-berth Varianta K4 arrived in 1967, and a model-maintained Varianta 65, with a higher coaming and more living space than the K3 and K4, reached the market in 1972. Production of the van de Stadt-designed boats ended in 1982, at roughly 4,500 units built, Germany's best-selling cabin cruiser.
The name returned to the market under Dehler as a HanseYachts Group brand, built around a design philosophy YACHT summarized as "reduction to the bare essentials" — leaving out whatever costs money or consumes build hours. The clearest expression of that approach is the Varianta 37, built on the hull and modified deck molds of the long-running Hanse 370/375, a 2005 Judel/Vrolijk & Co design; the design credit our records carry for the Varianta belongs to that underlying Hanse hull rather than to a Varianta-specific commission. The 37 carries the Hanse 375's deep cast-iron T-keel and spade rudder, a solid glass laminate hull finished with a vinylester skin coat to guard against blistering, bulkheads tabbed to hull and deck on both sides, a stiffening grid pan bonded into the hull, and a foam-cored deck — yet it comes out roughly 600 pounds lighter than the Hanse 370, a difference credited entirely to its stripped-out interior.
Lines and generations
The revival lineup opened with the Varianta 18, presented in late 2009 and setting the direction for a low-initial-investment, stripped-down approach. The Varianta 44 followed in October 2010: a 13-metre yacht that Dehler built, in the magazine's words, to extend the original 1966 Varianta's idea of inexpensive, uncomplicated sailing to a much larger scale. The Varianta 37 joined the lineup in 2012. YACHT placed the 44 within "Dehler's Varianta family" alongside the smaller 18 — crediting Dehler, not Hanse, as the line's brand — while describing the similarly sized Hanse 430 as the Varianta 44's "Group sister," the two marques sitting as sibling brands within the same corporate group.
Who Varianta is for
Two very different sailors have owned boats carrying this name. The original Varianta suits someone drawn to a small, simply built 1960s-70s German cruiser-racer with a genuine, organized class scene behind it. The revival suits a buyer more interested in proven, mainstream production-yacht engineering — a Hanse hull, keel, and rudder — delivered with the fit-out deliberately left out to hold the price down.
