Mulder Design

From Amels to His Own Drawing Board

He started as a production manager at Amels Shipyard in 1974, then moved to Damen Group, where he ran the high-speed vessel program for military and commercial craft. That gave him roughly five years of hands-on production and high-speed hull experience before he ever drew a yacht under his own name, a different route into the trade than a design school graduate who goes straight to a styling desk.

Mulder Design opened in Amstelveen, a suburb just south of Amsterdam, where the studio still has its office today at Schweitzerlaan 62. His first superyacht followed seven years later: the 38-metre tri-deck Tropic C, delivered by Heesen Yachts at Oss in 1986. She is still afloat today under the name Sea Axis, per Heesen's own account of the studio's history.

The Record Years With Heesen

Octopussy was commissioned by the American entrepreneur John Staluppi, who wanted the fastest motor yacht in the world and got it: Heesen's build to Mulder's design beat the previous record, held by the King of Spain's yacht Fortuna. It was the start of a client relationship that has now run to nine yachts over more than three decades. Staluppi has called Mulder "the world's best naval architect."

Sources differ on exactly how many Heesen hulls carry Mulder's name from this period. Heesen's own 2024 tribute to Mulder states he designed six yachts for the yard, then names eight: Tropic C, Wheels, Mirage, Bonita, Teeth, Lady Christine, Obsessions and Blouzy (also spelled Blowzy elsewhere). This research could not resolve that discrepancy or independently verify build years and lengths for the middle ones, Mirage, Bonita and Teeth, so a buyer chasing a specific hull's provenance should ask Heesen or Mulder Design directly rather than rely on a published headcount.

Octopussy broke a speed record the King of Spain held, Moonraker broke Octopussy's, and forty years on the same small Amstelveen office is still cutting steel, this time stretching a rebuilt 24-metre hull into the 30-metre explorer Ursus.

Chasing the Record Past Heesen

Moonraker reached 66.7 knots during Norwegian sea trials in 1992, making her the fastest megayacht of her day; she combined a GRP hull with a warped-bottom form and a distinctive trim-tab system. The World Is Not Enough followed in 2004, a 42.4-metre Millennium Super Yachts build powered by two Paxman diesels and two Lycoming gas turbines for a reported 20,600hp, credited in different accounts with speeds up to 67 or 70 knots.

What is not accurate, and is worth correcting here, is any claim that The World Is Not Enough still holds the record today. BOAT International's own current register of the fastest superyachts in the world places Foners, a 1999 build, on top at 70.10 knots, a position it has held for more than two decades, and ranks The World Is Not Enough third. Mulder Design's speed pedigree from this era is real and independently documented, but a reader should not take a past headline of "world's fastest" at face value without checking the current register.

What Moonen Actually Built With Mulder

Superyacht Times lists Mulder Design as the naval architect of record on My Issue, with Moonen credited for styling, a narrower role than the full naval-architecture-and-exterior packages Mulder Design has supplied for Vicem Yachts or, decades earlier, Heesen. It is a real, sourced connection, but a single hull from 2001 does not support treating Moonen as a standing Mulder Design partner the way Heesen or Vicem are.

The wider point matters for a buyer or a yard weighing the studio's range: Mulder Design's client list runs across Heesen, Benetti, Vicem Yachts, Cheoy Lee, Rossinavi, Gulf Craft and, on this single hull, Moonen, and the studio's own marketing names most of these yards without always separating a full naval-architecture-and-styling commission from a single narrower engineering job. Ask which role Mulder Design actually held on any specific hull before assuming the fuller relationship.

Two Unrelated Companies Named Mulder

The two share a common Dutch surname and both work in Dutch yacht building, which is presumably why they get conflated, but the founders are different men from different families, the companies were founded 41 years apart, and Mulder Shipyard both designs and builds its own 15 to 50 metre range in house rather than supplying naval architecture to outside yards. Mulder Shipyard's own history page makes no mention of Frank Mulder, Mulder Design or Bas Mulder, and Mulder Design's own materials make no claim on Mulder Shipyard's fleet.

For a buyer researching either company, the practical test is the boat in front of them: a Mulder Design credit names Frank or Bas Mulder as naval architect or exterior stylist on a yacht built by someone else, Heesen, Benetti, Vicem or Balk among them; a Mulder Shipyard credit names Mulder as both designer and builder of its own semi-custom range. The two should never be cited interchangeably, and this page covers only the design studio.

A Family Studio, Now Run by the Second Generation

A second son, Mike Mulder, joined in 2009 after a career in yacht charter, giving the studio a commercial as well as technical family presence. Frank Mulder's retirement did not end his public role: on 28 January 2024, BOAT International Media gave him its Lifetime Achievement Award at the Superyacht Design Festival in Kitzbuhel, an honour that has previously gone to Tim Heywood, Martin Francis and Frits de Voogt.

BOAT International's editor-in-chief Stewart Campbell said of the award, "it takes a hell of naval architecture knowledge to deliver the numbers he was able to deliver over the years," and the Design Awards co-chair Cecile Gauert called Mulder "a great naval architect, a true Dutchman, who was very much addicted to speed for many years." Both are named, on-the-record assessments from people who cover the industry professionally rather than the studio's own marketing, which is worth more than a press release.

Nine Boats for One Client

Spectre is the best-documented recent example of what Mulder Design actually delivers today, because BOAT International covered the build with named, on-the-record quotes rather than press-release copy. Staluppi described his brief plainly: "I want a boat that cruises 20 knots, can go places, is spacious, good and comfortable." Frank Mulder, still working alongside Bas at the time, told the magazine that typical 69-metre yachts cruise at 17 knots where Spectre cruises at 20, and that "if you build five to seven per cent lighter, you save five to seven per cent fuel," pointing to weight-saving rather than raw horsepower as the real engineering lever.

On sea trial, Staluppi told BOAT International Spectre "handled unbelievably with the ride control, it's incredible," and praised the elevator and the 110 square metre tender garage. Spectre went on to win four international awards including a 2019 World Superyacht Award before she was sold. A nine-boat run with one owner is an unusual credential in superyacht design, closer to a long working marriage than a client list, and it says as much about Mulder Design's ability to deliver what a demanding repeat owner actually wants as any award does.

The Hull Under the Name, and What It Is Not

The confusion is understandable, since both terms describe semi-displacement hulls aimed at cruising efficiently at higher speeds than a conventional displacement yacht, and both have appeared on Heesen-built boats at different points, but FDHF belongs to Van Oossanen, not Mulder Design, and this research found no evidence Mulder Design has ever held rights to it. Mulder's own account of its approach traces instead to decades of hard-chine, warped-bottom hull development going back to Octopussy and Moonraker, refined on Spectre with, per Frank Mulder's own account, no measurable pitching at speed and a cruise speed three knots faster than a typical yacht of Spectre's size.

In a trade interview with Powerboat World, Bas Mulder described the studio's working method as starting from performance and feasibility rather than styling trends: "if a client comes in to discuss one of our concepts, there is no question that it can be built," and he named cars and architecture, not other yachts, as his real design references. He also said plainly that the studio sometimes runs short-staffed against its current workload, an admission a small independent office makes that a large in-house design department at a big yard rarely will.

What the Studio Is Actually Doing Right Now

On Ursus, only the middle section of the original hull survived; Balk Shipyard fitted new bow and stern sections to Mulder's design, adding six metres of length, a relocated tender garage and a diesel-electric propulsion system with Veth azimuth drives, and the yacht ran sea trials ahead of a February 2025 delivery. Away from refits, Mulder Design's current naval architecture runs through Vicem Yachts' composite Vulcan series in Turkey (46, 35 and 32 metre hulls) and a 2024 tie-up with the Turkish yard Ares Yachts on the 70-metre Project Opal, alongside smaller production work including the Flynt Revolante 48 dayboat and the all-electric Lumen E10.

The studio's own yachts page also lists a long run of unbuilt concepts, among them a 60 and 50-metre Apex Concept, a 65-metre study and a 72-metre Aventurine, the 115-metre White Coral and the 50-metre project Sharp, none of which this research found a confirmed yard or keel-laying behind. That mix, a small but real flow of new-build naval architecture and refit work against a larger volume of published concepts, is normal for an independent studio this size, but a prospective client should ask specifically which category any current Mulder Design project actually falls into before assuming a rendering means a contract.

What It Costs, and Who Should Call

What is documented is the range of roles the studio will take: full naval architecture and exterior styling, on Vicem's Vulcan series and historically at Heesen; naval architecture supplied into a yard's own styling, on Moonen's My Issue; and design and engineering on a major refit, on Ursus at Balk Shipyard. SuperyachtNews' own directory entry for the studio lists that flexible service model explicitly, alongside a named contact, Kim Struik, at the Amstelveen office. Nothing in this research turned up a public account of how a letter of intent, a milestone schedule or a design-fee percentage actually works at Mulder Design specifically, unlike the roughly 1 to 5 per cent of build cost that is the general market band published elsewhere for the naval architecture trade as a whole.

The studio is the right call for an owner who wants a genuinely fast hull from an office with an independently verified, decades-long record of setting speed benchmarks, who is comfortable working with a small family-run practice rather than a large in-house design department, and who is prepared to ask specifically which role Mulder Design would hold on their project and what it costs, since neither is published. It is the wrong call for anyone who wants one dominant current flagship program to point to; the studio's present work is spread across one active refit, naval architecture for several different yards and a long list of unbuilt concepts, not one flagship new build carrying its name alone.

Para quién es: Owners who want a naval architect with an independently verified, decades-long record of setting real hull-speed benchmarks on delivered, named yachts across aluminium, GRP and composite construction, and who are comfortable that the studio's current public output is split between one active refit, naval architecture supplied into other yards' new builds and a long list of unbuilt concepts, rather than a single dominant current flagship program.