Klassiske Linjer nr 10 1999 - Klassisk Treseiler Klubb

Rasmussen, sailing one of his yachts on the Weser.
As A & R worked for both, the
German Navy as well as US
customers, as Jimmy
Rasmussen started intensive
business with the US already in
the twenties and as he also had
good connections to the
British, the yard fortunately did
never suffer from any bombings
or severe losses during either
of the wars. As Rasmussen’s
instinct for business and his
flexibility always helped the
yard to survive economic
decreases and depressions,
either by changing from
building leisure boats to the
construction and delivery of
boats for the marines or even
by starting the production of
wooden toys and handcarts
after WW II, the whole enterprise
grew steadily over the
years and survived its first fifty
years in a rather healthy state
while other boat yards founded
in the same decade did not
survive the historic and economic
confusions of two wars.
A & R, giving work to about
800 people in the late fifties,
always followed the concept to
do special work on an extraor-
dinary high quality-level, in
delivering elegant yachts and
cruisers of all sizes including
the famous Concordia series,
boats for the Navy, working
boats for German authorities or
– still later on – passenger
ferries and even catamaran
passenger-ferries which nowadays
connect Hamburg with
several towns down the river
Elbe. Starting with the wooden
sailing-yachts we still sail (and
love), A & R started to work
with modern materials like
aluminium already in the
thirties; they delivered one of
the first (if not the first) sailing
yacht with a 5 hp auxiliary
engine already in 1909, in the
fifties they started working with
laminated wood and in the
eighties "modern" A & R begun
to work with modern (nonrusting)
steels. They always
returned to wood as an important
material in boat-building,
e.g. when developing a special
(wooden and therefore nonmagnetic)
mine-searcher for
the German marines. Already in
1907, the first year of the yard’s
existence, A & R was not "
absolutely handy-craft", but the
machinery was of such a high
quality that some of the equipment
was still in use 70 and
more years later.
A & R always refused to build
"plastic" boats, but a series of
tests and research in the yard’s
own laboratories on epoxyglassfibre-
and epoxy-carbonmaterials
helped today’s A & R
to gain a special Navy order in
the seventies, followed by the
order for rotor-wings for wind
energy units which have been
continuously produced since
1993 (two subsidiaries have
been founded to deal with this
business).
Over all the years designing
and building of sailing yachts,
leisure-boats of all sizes, has
steadily decreased. Although
small leisure-boats and especially
dinghies (until 1962 they
built 832 units of the 4,12 m
rowing and sailing-dinghy
called "B-Jolle") made up a
comparatively high portion of
all leisure boats A & R built
over the centuries (until the
early seventies they built 2,626
smaller keelyachts and jollyboats),
the number of leisure
boats being built did no longer
exceed 1/3 of the yard’s whole
output (notabene: during the
periods from 1919 to 1939 and
from 1950 to 1972 which totals
to about 50% of the time of the
yard's existence the number of
leisure boats built well exceeded
50% of the yard's output!).
Building and repairing of
sailing yachts decreased steadily
after WW II: wood was challenged
by plastic as a building
material for leisure boats,
expensive high-quality boatbuilding
met decreasing prices
for modern materials (which A
& R refused to handle in the
boat-building sector) – factors
that led to a dramatically
decreasing request for wooden
(leisure) boats in the sixties
(the number of yachts A & R
built decreased dramatically
and steadily from 115 in 1960
to only 4 in 1970), and factors
that enforced Herman
Schaedla, Rasmussen’s grandson
and nephew (see KL No.
9!) and todays’ owner and
director of A & R to take leave
of everything dealing with the
sailing of smaller yachts.
Instead of that A & R has
concentrated on building
special units for the Navy as
well as for private customers
and authorities’ use on the one
hand, and on building and
repairing of large motor- and
sailing-yachts on an international
level on the other hand. For
this reason the name has been
slightly changed in 1969 from
the original "A & R boat- and
yacht-yard" to "A & R ship- and
yacht-yard", and for this reason
they invested about 13 Mio. DM
in the yard’s renovation and
expansion during the seventies:
a special lift has been installed
to allow repairing of larger
ships, the equipment for shifting
boats and ships on the area
has been renewed, and A & R
bought a large area formerly
KLASSISKE LINJER NR.10 MAI 1999
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