Wibo sailboats: a Dutch family yard's series, not a shipyard of its own name
Wibo is not the name of a boat builder — it's the name of a series of steel cabin sailboats built by one family's yard in the small Dutch town of Woubrugge. The Woubrugse Jachtwerf G. van Wijk en Zoon, not any company called "Wibo Yachts," built these boats; roughly 2,200 of them are now sailing worldwide. The line's story is inseparable from the family that ran the yard and the steel-boat era that produced it.
Origins and ownership
The yard's roots reach back to 1847, when Bouw van Wijk's great-grandfather founded Scheepswerf De Dageraad, also known as Scheepswerf Boot, in Woubrugge, building wooden barges and tjalks for the sailing freight trade. In 1902 the yard switched to building tjalks and clippers in iron, along with inland vessels, pusher boats, and coasters up to 65 meters in steel. In 1930, Gerrit van Wijk and his wife Jo Boot left De Dageraad to found their own yacht-focused yard on the north side of Woubrugge — the Woubrugse Jachtwerf G. van Wijk en Zoon. Their son Bouw van Wijk became owner in 1958, and it was under him that the yard introduced series production of steel cabin sailboats, in various models, under the Wibo name. Van Wijk started the Wibo boats in collaboration with the Boot family's own shipyard, and the name itself is a portmanteau of the two families: "Wi" from Van Wijk and "Bo" from Boot. Van Wijk built more than 3,200 wooden and steel sail and motor yachts in total for clients at home and abroad, of which roughly 2,200 were Wibo sailing yachts. Away from the yard, Bouw van Wijk raced competitively, including in the Regenboog class, and was a keen ice sailor; he retired after more than 40 years at the yard and died at 90.
The designers
Van Wijk's yachts were built to designs from both Dutch and internationally known designers, though only one name is documented on the Wibo line in citable form. E. G. van de Stadt's own design-office records credit him with Wibo models from the 930 onward, built in steel by Van Wijk in 1972; his firm's earliest-dated Wibo credit is the 820, built in 1973. The Wibo 830, dated from 1969, predates that documented involvement, and no citable designer is recorded for it.
Construction through the eras
The Van Wijk yard's steelwork predates the Wibo line by decades — it traces to the 1902 shift from wood to iron and steel at the predecessor yard, and continued through the coasters and inland craft the family built before turning to yachts in 1930. With Wibo, Van Wijk applied that steel background to series-built cabin sailboats: the 830 was constructed in single-chine steel with a fin keel, and the 930, credited to van de Stadt, likewise had a steel hull, finished inside in mahogany.
Lines and generations
Van de Stadt's own records trace a run of Wibo designs across the 1970s and into the mid-1980s: the 820 (1973) and 835 (1974) at the smaller end, the 930 (1972) and 945 (1976) in the middle, the larger 1050 MS (1975) and 1100 (1978), and the 990 built later still. Sized from the 27-foot 830 up past 32 feet, the range grew steadily larger across roughly a decade and a half of production.
Who Wibo is for
Wibo suits buyers drawn to steel cruising sailboats with a documented, single-family production history rather than a recognizable brand name — the kind of boat found through the story of the yard that built it rather than through the marque itself.
