Ontario Yachts, the Hamilton Yard Behind Many North American Sonars

A Hamilton composites shop that outlasted the slump

Ontario Yachts works out of a fiberglass shop on Wentworth Street North in Hamilton, where Lake Ontario ends in the west. Sailboatdata dates the business to 1961, and Dirk Kneulman Jr. and Don Oakie have managed it together since 1986. Few Canadian yards of that generation can show that kind of continuity, because many folded when boat sales fell apart in the mid-1980s.

Part of the reason Ontario lasted is that it never relied on boats alone. The shop took composite contracts from outside the marine world, the most famous being the fiberglass base under the pitcher's mound at Toronto's SkyDome. That job sums up the business model: Ontario sells laminating skill, and boats are one way of putting it to use.

Its output splits into two families. First come in-house cruiser-racers, the Viking 22, 25, 28, 33 and 34 plus the Ontario 28, 32 and 38, which today mostly sail on the Great Lakes. Second come class boats built to rules set elsewhere, namely the Albacore dinghy, the Etchells, the Sonar and the Blazer 23, a Bruce Kirby design that adds a roomier cabin to the Sonar hull.

Why US sailors know the name from the Sonar

Of all those boats, only the Ontario Sonar has its own page on this site, and it is the model that carries the builder's name into American harbors. The design is a Kirby day racer from 1979, shaped by a survey of members of Noroton Yacht Club in Darien, Connecticut, and Seidelmann Yachts in New Jersey built the first hulls a year later. Its 1996 Paralympic selection and its 2004 American Sailboat Hall of Fame induction are covered on the model page.

Ontario was one licensee among several. Shumway Marine and C. E. Ryder held licenses on the US side, DS Yachts in Canada, and Rondar Raceboats in England has held the class building rights since 2015. Roughly 860 Sonars have been built in all. Ontario hulls remain a familiar sight in North American fleets, and the US class has advertised hull 678, built by Ontario in 2002, out of Port Washington, New York.

Class rules hold every builder to one standard, so a buyer should weigh the measurement certificate and the boat's state ahead of the name on the transom. A tidy Ontario boat can still win races, although the newest Rondar hulls arrive below the class minimum weight and with a keel sump the factory has strengthened.

Buying an Ontario-built boat in the US

No Ontario dealer operates in the US. Used Sonars move through class classifieds, fleet captains and specialists like Shumway Marine of Rochester, New York, whose used-boat page cautions that the good ones go fast. Budget about $8,000 to $35,000 for a used boat, with age, sail inventory and trailer setting the figure, compared with roughly $45,000 for a new Rondar Sonar on its trailer. Buying north of the border adds Canadian export and US customs paperwork before the boat can be towed south.

Support comes from the class network rather than the factory, which suits a tightly controlled one-design. Points to check on an older Ontario hull:

• Cracks or weeps around the keel bolts and in the sump laminate
• Soft core in the deck or the cockpit sole
• Play in the bearings of the internal spade rudder
• Corrosion on spars and their fittings
• Legality of the sails, the weight certificate and the measurement record
• Trailer frame, brakes and bunks