Farewell Mr. Hallberg-Rassy, inventor of modern bluewater

Gone at age 87 is a boating legend, Christoph Rassy. Rassy has created a worldwide iconic brand of cruising sailing. A brand that immediately brings to mind solidity, safety, handcrafted construction, finishing to the smallest details, wood worked by shipwrights of the highest level. A brand of boats that need no words to describe them-just “it’s a Hallberg-Rassy.”

“An extremely good person,” Fabrizio Dall’Olio of Dalmar Yachts, who has been selling Hallberg-Rassy in Italy for more than 40 years and got to know Christof Rassy well, told us. “Affable, sometimes on his own, very determined. In fact, he was the one who invented modern bluewater.”

Born in Germany in 1934, he migrated to Sweden in the 1960s with a dream of building the best sailboats possible.

The Hallberg-Rassy Story

It is worth going through the Hallberg-Rassy story because, like all successful human affairs, it is full of episodes, “crossovers,” choices.

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Harry Hallberg had been building boat since he was 14 years old

The company’s history began with Harry Hallberg in 1943. What is now called Hallberg-Rassy Varvs AB was originally two shipyards. Harry Hallberg, who lived between 1914 and 1997, began his career as a boat builder at the age of 14, building wooden boats. In 1943 he opened his shipyard in Kungsviken on the island of Orust in Sweden.

In the beginning, he built his wooden boats more or less “off the top of his head.” Various possibilities were discussed with the client and solutions came accordingly. The plans hardly existed at all. At that time it was said that“someone who cannot build a boat without drawings cannot call himself a true boat builder.”

The first boat built in series was a Folkboat. He also had good success with the Kungskryssaren (Swedish word for “the king’s cruiser”), not to be confused with the Finnish king’s cruiser, which has nothing to do with Hallberg-Rassy. The Kungskryssaren was built in the mid-1950s. Both the Folkboat and the Kungskryssaren were also built by other shipyards.

Harry Hallberg’s most “apt” contribution was to have realized early on the advantages of fiberglass and to build boats in series. In 1963 he was one of the pioneers of mass production of vtr sailboats and was the first successful builder of fiberglass hulls with standard wooden superstructures. His P-28 (boat, indeed, of 28 feet) was a great success, even outside Sweden. Most of the first 100 examples were sold in the US.

Enter Cristoph Rassy

Christoph Rassy was born in 1934 and grew up in Bavaria on Starnberger Lake. As a young man, he built model boats and even real boats in his spare time. He wanted to learn more about boats and became an apprentice in a small wooden boatyard in southern Germany.

He dreamed of building bigger and better boats and wanted to live by the sea. He thought Sweden, a large country with lots of water, was the right destination. As a result, he wrote to many Swedish shipyards, asking for work. A boatyard wrote that would take him in, and in 1960 Christoph moved, penniless and with a bicycle as his only possession, to Nötesund, Sweden, to build boats.

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The Kungsviken construction site (and the roads cross)

To earn more money, young Mr. Rassy built boats for himself in his spare time. Fsce used to hold regattas with these boats, win and sell them at a profit.

Soon Rassy wanted to set up his own business. As luck would have it, this coincided with the change of location of a major boat builder. This boat builder was Harry Hallberg. By the mid-1960s the Kungsviken yard had become too small for the Hallberg, which built a new site in Ellös, 10 kilometers southwest on the island of Orust. When Christoph Rassy started his business, he bought the old Hallberg shipyard in Kungsviken.

Harry Hallberg and Christoph Rassy were competitors.

Yes, during the years 1965 to 1972, Harry Hallberg and Christoph Rassy were competitors. In the beginning, Christoph Rassy built one-off boats. The first boat to become part of a series was the “Rasmus 35,” designed in 1966 by Sweden’s then leading designer of elegant yachts, Olle Enderlein.

The first two were constructed entirely of mahogany and took a year each to build. This boat was in many ways ahead of its time. It was an ante-litteram “bluewater” with a powerful engine and a central cockpit protected by a sprayhood. This is a solution that has remained with Hallberg-Rassy yachts to this day; indeed, it is its defining feature.

When the Rasmus was introduced, it immediately tickled skepticism. Some thought the boat was too big. In those days 35 feet was considered a huge size for a boat. And with a sprayhood, too! This was a combination never seen before that is taken for granted on a good cruising boat today.

At the same time Harry Hallberg was building his boats in Ellös. Smart and attractive boats at a reasonable price due to mass production and fiberglass hulls.

Two shipyards became one: Hallberg-Rassy

Harry Hallberg retired in 1972. Once again, fate intervened; Christoph Rassy was looking for larger premises. Ellös now produced the “Mistral 33” with a mahogany superstructure, the 1/2-ton “Mistress 32,” the best-selling “P-28,” and the small 24-foot yellow “Misil II,” all designed by Olle Enderlein, except for the P-28 which was designed by Harry Hallberg.

In 1972 the Rassy shipyard in Kungsviken purchased Harry Hallberg’s shipyard in Ellös. Since the Hallberg brand was by far the best known with its four designs and the Rassy shipyard had only the Rasmus, the new company was called Hallberg-Rassy. Harry Hallberg and Christoph Rassy, however, were never partners.

An anecdote: there was a prospective shipowner who in 1972 was undecided between buying a Mistral 33 from the Hallberg yard or a Rasmus 35 from the Rassy yard. The Rasmus had a center cockpit and the Mistral had an aft cockpit. The interested shipowner asked a Hallberg agent why he should choose the Mistral: “Since the boat has a stern cockpit, there is no risk of water splashing into the aft cabin,” was the reply. The prospective buyer then went to the Rassy shipyard to see the Rasmus.

Here is, more or less, the discussion between him and Christoph Rassy:

Client: Why not a boat with an aft cockpit, so that there is no water splashing in the aft cabin?
Rassy: Who recommends it to him?
Client: Hallberg people in Ellös.
Rassy: They will never say that again.
Client: Why not?
Rassy: I bought the Hallberg shipyard this morning.

Eventually the owner chose a Rasmus and still happily owns it.

Birth of a myth that still endures today

Like Hallberg-Rassy, success was not long in coming. First and foremost, the Monsun 31, launched in 1974: 904 examples built until 1982. In 1975, meanwhile, the site area was doubled.

Then came the Hallberg-Rassy 41, full of innovations for the time, the center-cockpit boat par excellence: more than 100 boats built between 1975 and ’79.

The Hallberg Rassy 38 (800 examples from 1977 to 1989), the 352, the 312 (690 units sold), the 49-footer, the 34, the collaboration with Frers since 1988 (there are at least 3,500 Hallberg-Rassy signed by him, out of the approximately 10,000 made to date) .

All steps that helped create the Hallberg-Rassy myth. Because Mr. Rassy is leaving, but Hallberg-Rassy and his boats remain.

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