Hoek Design

Six Years Under Oil Rigs Before One Behind a Drawing Board

Hoek grew up racing, starting at age five in a sailing family, and his competition record is not a marketing footnote: Dutch Skutsjesilen champion in 1986, multiple Dutch Lemsteraken champion as both helmsman and tactician and Dutch IMS 3 champion in 1994, alongside years racing one-tonners and IMS 40s. His interest in the traditional Dutch leeboard Lemsteraak predates the firm by about six years, he was drawing them on the side while still employed at ITC, the salvage and heavy-lift company where he also completed an MBA with a marketing specialisation.

The studio grew out of that side work rather than a clean break. Hoek has described the transition simply: people discovered he was no longer fully employed and started offering him commissions. He set up formally in Edam in 1986, at Grote Kerkstraat 23, close to the heart of the Dutch yacht-building industry, and the address has not changed since. The MBA is worth noting alongside the naval architecture degree: the semi-custom Truly Classic range that became the studio's commercial backbone is as much a business model, a proven hull sold and re-sold with a customised interior, as it is a styling exercise.

The Truly Classic Semi-Series

The concept pairs 1930s exterior styling with an underwater hull shape worked up through computer-driven analysis rather than copied from an old lines plan, and Claasen Shipyards in Holland has been the main builder of it for decades. Claasen's own account of the partnership, quoted by CharterWorld, credits Andre Hoek by name and puts the tally at nineteen Truly Classics built there. Individual hulls have real, checkable histories: Atalante, a deep-ocean family cruiser racer and the first Truly Classic 127 delivered; Heartbeat, whose owner was reportedly impressed enough to buy the yard itself in 2008; Copihue, which has circled the world more than once; Mulligan, known for being exceptionally fast for her type; Kealoha, a sloop-rigged example; and Velacarina, recognisable by her green hull.

For a buyer this is the practical route into a Hoek design: rather than commissioning a one-off from a blank sheet, the naval architecture, keel and sail plan are largely settled, and the customisation runs to layout, deck arrangement and interior finish. It is also the range a buyer is most likely to meet secondhand, since a semi-series with nineteen-plus hulls afloat turns over on the brokerage market in a way a one-off superyacht does not.

Lionheart, Topaz and Svea did not just win design awards, they raced each other and other J-Class yachts on the water, at Falmouth, Palma and Newport, which is a harder thing for a naval architecture office to fake than a rendering.

Adele and Marie

Adele launched in 2005 for owner Jan-Eric Osterlund, with Hoek Design credited for the exterior profile, the interiors and the naval architecture. She carries a large sail area on a narrow, easily driven hull, and her ketch rig gives many sail combinations, which trade press has credited with making her both fast and well balanced across a wide wind range; she sleeps up to 10 guests with 7 crew. This is not a purely professional relationship for Hoek either: his own biography lists Adele among the yachts he has personally crewed, including Arctic, Antarctic and Pacific expeditions aboard her.

Marie followed in 2010, sharing Adele's hull, keel, rudder and sail plan but built with an entirely new, customised interior and deck layout: the main deckhouse was enlarged and the forward deckhouse removed to free up the arrangement. An extensive weight-saving programme, composite rigging, high-modulus carbon spars and furling booms, sharpened an already capable platform, built in Alustar to ABS and MCA specification. Marie has since won the Loro Piana Caribbean Superyacht Regatta in her class, real racing results rather than a boat show trophy.

The J-Class Revival

Lionheart is built to an original 1936 lines plan drawn for the Ranger syndicate by Starling Burgess and Sparkman & Stephens but never built at the time; Hoek Design evaluated and optimised it before Claasen Jachtbouw launched her in July 2010 at 43.4 metres, unusually in all-aluminium for a J, with a 17 metre overhang that made her the largest J afloat for years. She has since raced competitively rather than just posed for photographs, wins at Menorca, Palma and Sardinia, the 2017 J Class Superyacht Regatta, the J Class America's Cup event in Bermuda and the inaugural J Class World Championship in Newport, Rhode Island.

Topaz, project name J8, is built to an unbuilt Frank Paine 1930s lines plan and, at 26.8 metres of waterline, has the longest waterline and highest keel aspect ratio of any J to date; her hull was built by Bloemsma Aluminiumbouw and finished by Holland Jachtbouw, launching in June 2015. Svea, to a 1937 lines plan by the Swedish designer Thore Holm, began as a hull and deck laid down at Claasen for an owner who then withdrew; Vitters took over the unfinished structure for a new owner, the American software entrepreneur Thomas Siebel, and completed her in roughly fourteen months, launching in January 2017 as the largest J built to date. A fourth design, J9, based on an original Frank Paine lines plan, was reported as structurally ready to build as early as the mid-2010s; this research found no confirmed keel-laying, yard commitment or delivery date for her as of September 2026.

What Is Not a Hoek Design

Rainbow, launched by Holland Jachtbouw in 2012, was designed by Dykstra Naval Architects, who also carried out her later refit; Ranger, launched in 2003, is likewise not a Hoek Design project. Both race regularly against Lionheart, including at the Falmouth J-Class regatta, and turn up in the same press photographs, which makes the distinction easy to lose for anyone skimming a picture caption rather than a credit line. Velsheda, the original 1933 J that races alongside Topaz and Svea in Newport, is a Camper & Nicholsons yacht from a different era entirely, not a Hoek design of any kind.

The clearest case for care is Eleonora, the 2000 replica of Nathanael Herreshoff's 1910 racing schooner Westward, built by the Dutch yard Van der Graaf. Andre Hoek's own biography lists her among the yachts he has personally crewed, alongside Adele, Marie and Lionheart, and he clearly knows her well, but this research found no independent source crediting Hoek Design as her naval architect; every design credit traced in this research runs to Herreshoff's original 1910 lines and to Van der Graaf as the replica's builder. A separate vessel carrying a similar name, Eleonora E, sank at anchor in Tarragona in 2022 and should not be confused with either boat.

The Pivot to Power

Seven was built in high-tech epoxy composite, with twin MTU engines driving waterjets to a reported top speed over fifty knots, and a brief that called for large on-deck living space with the galley at deck level over an owner's suite, guest cabin and two crew cabins below. Trade press reporting on the delivery described her ride as notably free of spray and comfortable in chop for a boat at that speed. Off the back of that first project the studio has since sold two further motoryacht concepts now under construction, a 56 metre exploration yacht and a 23.4 metre chase boat.

The Royal Hakvoort project, yard number YN 256, is a more deliberate test of the same instinct applied to a much larger, more conservative motor yacht: a retro-styled 45.2 metre hull with a brief that specifically called for wheelchair accessibility alongside sustainability, hybrid propulsion giving a claimed 3,500 nautical mile range and a 14 knot top speed with up to eight hours of silent at-anchor running, an elevator serving all three decks, wide side decks and a saltwater pool that doubles as a tender garage or a party deck. Her hull was technically launched in October 2024, with delivery scheduled for 2026.

The Studio Today

The studio's own account of its team describes stylists, naval architects, marine engineers, hydrodynamicists, interior architects, graphic designers and economists working under one roof, and names Martijn van Schaik, a recent senior naval architect hire from Seahorse Naval Architects, as a current addition. On the wider question of how many yachts the office has actually designed since 1986, sources disagree by an order of magnitude, some trade profiles put the figure at just over 100 ocean-going yachts, others at several hundred boats; this research could not resolve the discrepancy, and it most likely reflects whether the smaller Dutch traditional craft Hoek drew before and around the 1986 founding are being counted alongside the yacht-scale fleet.

Alongside the Truly Classic range, the studio's own site describes a related Pilot Classic family running from a 10 metre day-sailer built as part of a series at the Dutch yard Jagt up to a 46 metre currently under construction at Royal Huisman and a 20 metre under construction at Metur in Bodrum, Turkey. This research treats that specific pairing of yards and sizes as the studio's own account rather than independently verified, since no third-party press coverage of either hull was found to confirm it.

What a Commission Costs, and What Nobody Publishes

The studio also runs a separate brokerage arm, Hoek Brokerage, which lists and resells classic yachts including some of its own past designs; a prospective buyer should treat that as a distinct business from the naval architecture practice rather than assume a brokerage listing price reflects what a new commission would cost. Nothing found in this research states a day rate, a fixed price for a Truly Classic hull new from Claasen, or the cost of a flagship one-off on the scale of Adele or a J-Class build.

On copyright and contract structure, Hoek Design publishes nothing specific either. The professional default across naval architecture, set out in standard trading conditions used across the industry, is that the design office retains ownership of the drawings and licenses the client one hull, so an owner planning a second build or a heavy structural refit elsewhere should ask directly, in writing, whether that licence extends to reuse. J9, reported as structurally ready to build since the mid-2010s and still without a confirmed yard a decade on, is a useful reminder that a design being finished is not the same as a hull being ordered.

Who Should Call Edam

The strongest argument for the studio is the one hardest to fake: three built J-Class yachts, Lionheart, Topaz and Svea, have actually raced and won against each other and against boats from rival offices, and Adele's clean sweep of the International Superyacht Design Award, the World Superyacht Award and the Showboat Award in a single year, 2006, is a result other classic-styled studios have not matched. The Truly Classic semi-series gives a buyer who wants that look and does not need a full custom commission a proven, de-risked route in at a scale from 56 to 116 feet, with nineteen hulls' worth of real-world track record behind it at Claasen alone.

The honest caution is just as specific. This remains a small office built around one recognisable aesthetic and a handful of Dutch and Turkish yards, with no published fee scale, a disputed staff count and at least one long-running design, J9, that has sat ready to build for close to a decade without a keel laid. An owner who wants the modern-classic look, built by people who have actually raced and crewed the yachts they draw, has good reason to call Edam. An owner who wants a fully contemporary profile, or a large public portfolio of active new-build projects to review before committing, will find less to go on here than the studio's design-award cabinet suggests.

لمين هو: Owners who want a fast, genuinely racing-capable sailing yacht that reads as a 1930s classic above the waterline and is fully modern below it, whether through a semi-custom Truly Classic or a flagship one-off like Adele or a J-Class, rather than anyone set on a fully contemporary profile or a large public portfolio of active new-build projects.