Vitters Shipyard

A Subcontracting Yard That Became an Institution

Vitters Shipyard was founded in 1990 by Jan Vitters to build hulls for the megayacht trade, and turned to complete sailing yachts once Louis Hamming joined the business, delivering its first full yacht, the 29 metre aluminium sloop Aphrodite I, in 1993. The yard is based in Zwartsluis, a small inland town in the Dutch province of Overijssel, and has stayed family run and privately held ever since, employing roughly 80 engineers, craftsmen, foremen and project managers across a business built on subcontracting.

That subcontracting model, unusual when Vitters pioneered it in the early 1990s, treats specialist outside suppliers as an extension of the yard rather than a threat to it: composite hulls have come from Green Marine of Lymington in the UK, which Vitters bought outright in 2010, masts and rigging from Southern Spars, and interior fit-out from outfitters such as List. Vitters also entered a management partnership with Claasen Shipyards of Zaandam in 2016, keeping both names distinct while sharing project capacity. The approach has since become close to standard practice across the large-sloop end of the industry Vitters helped define.

From Aquijo to a New Shed at Home

Vitters' order book has run from long legged cruising sloops to genuine outliers. In 2016 the yard delivered Aquijo, an 86 metre steel hulled, aluminium superstructure ketch built jointly with Oceanco for round the world sailing, at the time among the largest sailing yachts afloat. The following year came Svea, the largest J Class yacht ever built, and across the 2000s and 2010s Vitters launched a run of well known 40 to 55 metre sloops including Adele, Mystere, Marie, Unfurled, Missy and the carbon hulled Sarissa, once billed as the largest carbon fibre sloop built in the Netherlands.

Large hulls still leave Zwartsluis by water rather than by road: Vitters completes final assembly and crane launches at a site in Amsterdam before sea trials in the North Sea. The yard broke ground on a new, larger shed at its Zwartsluis home in the mid 2020s, intended first for the outfitting of a 68 metre classic styled sailing yacht, alongside a service and refit outpost opened at STP Shipyard in Palma de Mallorca to support the fleet it has already delivered.