Nauticat, Finland's Wheelhouse Motorsailer Builder

A Finnish yard named after its best seller

Nauticat began as a family shipyard run by Pentti Siltala, a Finnish engineer and yachtsman, and the present company traces it to 1961. In 1966 sailors from the area came to the yard wanting a roughly 10 meter boat that could sail, motor and keep its crew dry under a real wheelhouse in Baltic weather. Engineer V. Aarnipalo answered with the Nauticat 33. The boat did so well that the business, for decades called Siltala Yachts, took the Nauticat name in 2005.

The range grew around the same idea. The Nauticat 38 arrived in 1975 and the 52 in the early 1980s, later replaced by the ocean-going 521 and its smaller sisters, the 43 and 40. From the Nauticat 35 of 1986 onward, designer Kaj Gustafsson drew the boats, including the 32, 39, 42 and 515, and in 1997 the redesigned Nauticat 331 replaced the 33. Nauticat Yachts Oy declared bankruptcy on May 16, 2018. Four years later a group of Latvian entrepreneurs restarted the brand as Nauticat Yachts SIA in Riga, planning deck saloon, pilothouse and motorsailer models in composite.

The Nauticat 33, the motorsailer that defined a type

Our in-depth coverage of the brand focuses on the Nauticat 33. It stayed in production from 1967 until 1996, and sources put the total somewhere between 1,100 and 1,160 hulls, a figure few motorsailers anywhere have matched. The recipe was a ketch rig, a hull whose lines owe a lot to Scandinavian fishing craft, inside steering in the wheelhouse and a strong diesel, most often a Ford Lehman. The boat evolved from a wooden-wheelhouse Mk I to an all-fiberglass Mk II in 1979, with a deeper keel option arriving in 1982; the model page walks through those versions.

American buyers tend to hunt for the later fin-keel Mk II boats, which sail better and have no timber superstructure to worry about. Used prices run roughly from $30,000 up to about $95,000.

Owning a Nauticat without the original factory

Nauticats have a loyal following among sailors who want to cruise in comfort in cold or wet climates, from New England to the Pacific Northwest, and the inside steering station is a real selling point. The 2018 bankruptcy removed factory support for older boats, though the revived Latvian company and owner groups remain sources of information. Most US boats are now decades old, so condition counts far more than model year.

What to check:

• Wooden wheelhouse condition and leaks on early Mk I boats
• Teak deck fastenings and the balsa-cored deck beneath them
• Ford Lehman or later diesel condition, mounts and exhaust
• Fuel and water tanks for corrosion and leaks
• Wheelhouse windows, door seals and inside steering cables
• Rig, chainplates and mizzen step on ketches