Portrait: The Vochezer family builds unique wooden sailing boats - in the mountains
Nils Theurer
· 27.09.2025
Even the cattle are amazed: in the middle of their pasture in the Allgäu, there is suddenly a trailer with a pretty, fully rigged, two-masted wooden sailing boat on it. And there's a crew too. Thomas and Jan Vochezer have taken a seat in the clinker-built sailboat, laughing happily, after pulling it out of a small shed where it had been built in the weeks before for the photo shoot with the tractor. It's a boat from the region, genuine in style, nothing for the club blazer perhaps. The curious looking cows fit into the picture. And that's not the only unusual thing about this boatbuilding company, which is based in Wangen, a town with a population of just under 30,000.
Other maritime family projects:
20 years ago, Thomas Vochezer started building wooden kayaks here, not far from the Alps and Lake Constance. For touring paddling not only on rivers and lakes, but also on the sea. At some point, he fitted the first one with a mast and sail. It wasn't long before sailboats followed. Vochezer also had a penchant for the unusual right from the start. His designs include retro classics, some of which are inspired by Scandinavian or North American cracks.
Vochezer starts building boats as a hobby
Like his Färing, which is now standing on the trailer in the hilly greenery. It is a type of boat that was once built on the Norwegian coast in various sizes, mainly for fishing and transporting goods, and whose origins go back to the Viking Age, says the boat builder.
Together with his son Jan, who shares his father's passion, Thomas Vochezer made the dyke from pine plywood planks. And he did so using the "Glued Lapstrake" construction method. This makes the hull of the six-metre-long centreboard boat extremely torsion-resistant and watertight.
"I love designing boats just as much as I love building them out of wood. So far, almost every one has been unique."
But how did it all begin? "Basically with a capsize, a failure," says Thomas Vochezer. He built his first Canadian in 2002. Made from cedar, glued together strip by strip. It remains one of the very few boats that he only builds as a hobby, in the cellar of his family home. However, the first boat turned out to be a paddle freighter. Boat number two is to be more suitable for touring. A sea kayak.
To do this, he orientated himself on a design by the renowned kayak designer Nick Schade. He draws the frames based on data taken from an outline table in Schade's manual. He tested the finished boat on Lake Constance. "It turned out that it unfortunately lacked stability. I tipped over and had to get out from under the water. And that happened several times."
From sailing canoe to sailing boat
It was precisely these capsizes that got Thomas Vochezer wet, but right in his element. The challenge lies ahead of him in the water. He is trying his hand at a new boat. And another one. And another. With success. Over the past 20 years, he has designed, put down on paper and built a total of 50 boats. Because he enjoys designing at least as much as the subsequent craftsmanship, "we actually only make prototypes," says Vochezer.
This also applies to his sailing boats, although he likes to orientate himself on existing designs. His parents had owned a Miranda Coupé, which was a good eight metres long and a typical Lake Constance yacht at the time. However, it always needed a crane for launching and retrieving, and then the family-in-law's Unimog had to be borrowed for transport to the lake. Far too much effort, Thomas Vochezer thought. He also wanted to get back on the water, but he wanted it to be less complicated.
Although his "little goat", as he christens boat number two, is not particularly stable in the water, it is still extremely graceful to look at. Word gets around. Others come and ask him for another pretty wooden canoe. At the time, Thomas Vochezer is not a boat builder according to the rules of the Chamber of Crafts: "I was able to open a business as an engineer, but as I have a non-trade qualification, I had to apply for a special licence." A specialised inspector came, "and he got an idea of the quality of my work. Since then, I have been registered in the trade register as an authorised boatbuilding company."
Vochezer thinks bigger
Around 2007, five years after the first canoe, Thomas Vochezer was in business. A technical editor at work, he regularly spends evenings and weekends building with cedar planks. At home in Wangen, he also builds anything he likes, including a grandfather clock. Boats up to 5.35 metres long are built in the cellar. Larger ones simply don't fit in. Then a client comes along who also wants to sail. He receives his sailable canoe.
And that may have fuelled his sailing memories, because Thomas Vochezer's next project is a sailing boat. In the meantime, he has also found a new home in his brother-in-law's carpentry workshop and the boats can now be a little bigger. In 2009, he built the frames for his first mini yacht there. It is a Buzzard Bay, very similar to a design by Lewis Francis Herreshoff, son of the famous US designer Nathanael Herreshoff. The boat measures 14 feet in the waterline and has an overall length of 17 feet. This makes it one of the very small Buzzard Bay designs.
"Despite its hull length of just 14 feet, my Buzzard Bay sails like a real yacht. Sitting in the cockpit, everything feels right and you feel wonderfully secure."
Nevertheless: "It's just like a small yacht, it feels like one too, you feel safe and secure in the boat," enthuses Thomas Vochezer. "I sailed her for two years. Then I simply put her up for sale on the Freundeskreis Klassische Yachten portal - and sold her relatively quickly."
He has already started on the next boat. This time a design based on Capt. Nathanael Herreshoff's personal dinghy from 1889. It is a mix of catboat and ketch, with two unstayed masts, each with a gaff sail. Rigging is easy and can also be done single-handed. He calls the clinker construction "Coquina"; it is 16 feet and 8 inches long. As soon as it was finished, this boat also found a buyer. It goes to Berlin.
Fire destroys the business
He builds it again, and another interested party is quickly found. One of the customers had also sold his little Herreshoff in the meantime: "But he quickly regretted it. I should therefore build him another boat straight away." Vochezer not only builds the hull and rigging in his workshop, he also sews the sails himself. He orders ready-made sails from Sailrite in Columbia City. The US mail order company specialises in "Maritime homemade fabric projects". Vochezer can sell the three boats for 20,000 euros each. With this budget, you can get your first used ten-metre yachts, but never, under any circumstances, so much style, such simple sailing bliss. And so few follow-up costs.
Further customer orders follow, and the press also takes notice. An article about the small shipyard appears in the "Schwäbische Zeitung" and even in the "Handelsblatt". And also in "Playboy". "The men's magazine always reported on classy things," says Klaus Mergel, the editor who brought Thomas Vochezer and his boats into the magazine at the time. Mergel himself is a water sports enthusiast and secretly a wood craftsman. "Thomas builds his boats with great attention to detail and an aesthetic sense," he still raves about Vochezer's work today.
Then the disaster: "The dog was the first to notice," reports the shipyard manager, "it struck on the night of the first to second of May three years ago. But there was nothing left to save." His brother-in-law's entire farm in the centre of Leupolz burnt down, including four flats, the carpentry workshop and the shipyard with three kayaks and a skiff, the "Melon Seed".
Vessels such as his "Melon Core" were originally used for duck hunting in New Jersey, and the original tear dates back to 1888. Thomas Vochezer had delivered the enchanting gaff boat to a customer eight years earlier, and now it was in the hall for refurbishment. Nothing remains after the fire. "It's just like this," says Vochezer, pointing to a hammer. "I found it in the ashes, without the handle of course. I've been doubly attached to it ever since. I got it from my wife once and I still work with it every day."
Vochezer gets going again
Ten kilometres away from the burnt-down house, he soon finds a farmer who leases a somewhat rustic shed. Vochezer gets going again. And no longer alone. His son Jan joins the shipyard business. He brings with him expertise in computer-controlled milling machines.
Jan first builds a 3D milling machine and develops a laser cutter to produce thinner wooden mouldings. The father-son duo also started working with modern shipbuilding software, which calculates the components and arranges them on the boards in such a way that there is as little waste as possible.
So far, Vochezer has had to adjust the planks of the clinker boats using spiling. This is a classic, fairly precise, but time-consuming method involving calipers and auxiliary battens and careful transfer of the lines to the final plank. "Some planks are s-shaped in their development. The design software can eject this completely without the spiling," says Jan, explaining how the preliminary work on the computer in conjunction with the milling machine simplifies production.
Future-orientated changes in the family business
There has also been a change not only in the technology, but also in the material. Today, Vendia wood is used in the construction of clinker canoes and sailboats. This is a plywood made from Nordic pine, harvested, sliced and glued in Finland. It is specially tailored to the needs of clinker boat builders. "My wooden boats are still particularly light. The kayak I'm currently building weighs around 18 kilograms in the end, while a comparable plastic boat weighs at least 24 kilograms," says Vochezer.
And another innovation is in the pipeline: For the upcoming Interboot in Friedrichshafen, they have recently built boats entirely without a customer order, i.e. for demonstration and at their own risk. In addition to an enchantingly sleek sea kayak, they will be bringing two sailing boats to Lake Constance.
One of them, the "Hoppetosse", is actually a rowing boat for which they have also made a gaff rig. It is to be launched for the first time on the day of the shipyard visit. There is a mill pond right behind the yard where their business is located. Father and son lift the "Hoppetosse" from the trailer. A little later, the mast is up. Then they roll up their trousers, jump into the boat, put the rudder blade in and the sailing fun begins. Tiller and sheet, that's all there is now.
"It feels great," Thomas Vochezer describes the maiden voyage, "it responds so quickly!" However, he is not good at judging the necessary upwind yaw in the moody pond wind: "I always calculate this with a drawing one to ten, from which I determine the lateral plan and the sail pressure point." This then determines the exact position of the centreboard. He carefully leaves out the rudder, "the theories differ, but so far it has always worked out. And if necessary, we can correct with more mast drop."
"All my boats are light. Even with Vendia. This wood, specially processed by the Finnish manufacturer, weighs only imperceptibly more than the okoumé plywood previously used."
Stunningly simple for wonderfully carefree sailing
The second exhibition boat is now too big for the pond after all and has therefore been placed in the meadow. "No, that's no coincidence," Jan comments on the dimensions of the main mast. It just fits between the transom and the stem. This makes the boat particularly easy to pack up for towing. And here too, both masts can be erected within five minutes. Simply sailing away is also possible with this larger dinghy. It has also been designed and constructed in an enchantingly simple way for wonderfully carefree sailing.
To show what is technically possible, they even flange-mounted an electric pod motor to it and elegantly concealed the installation in cabinets, apart from the motor control unit: "The boat took about 800 hours to build. That's how the price is calculated." They are still trying to get round the figure. But there will probably be one at the trade fair.
In view of all his years of experience, the only question that remains is why the "buck" once threw him off. "Maybe I was just a little too big for the boat or the seat was a little too high up, who knows?" Thomas Vochezer shrugs his shoulders. One thing is certain: the involuntary capsizes were a stroke of luck. Without the mishaps, he might never have had the idea of building any more boats.
