What fascinates Hans Stützle are all these details, all the small solutions, thought through to the very last detail, that they build at his Winkler boatyard, founded in 1928. The master boat builder talks enthusiastically about it, explaining all the finer points with a gleam in his eye while we leaf through one of the illustrated books that tell the story of the production of a tender.
For example, there is the 104 metre long "Quantum Blue", which has been given two dinghies, a coupé and a convertible. The lines of the eleven metre long racing boat hull were designed by hydrodynamics luminary Ocke Mannerfelt, while his son Ted took care of the exterior styling. The shuttle can accommodate twelve guests, and even when fully loaded, it speeds along at 42 knots with its two 223-kilowatt engines. Inside the saloon, which is lined with moulded teak that elegantly runs all the way round in one piece, you can only hear a very quiet whisper from the engine room. Everything is perfectly trimmed, balanced, without trim tabs, without lead, says the shipyard boss: "Hydrodynamics are so important! Only if the boat is technically good is it also good for the crew. And the owner is only happy if the crew gets on well." That is his philosophy.
Broadening the horizons of craftsmanship
So even the holders for the champagne glasses in the armrests are turned from a solid block, not welded - to ensure that no dirt settles on the floor, which the staff will ultimately find difficult to clean up. Even the smallest spaces are bright and white inside, including those for anchors, fenders and life jackets, and even the engine room is easily accessible, even at sea and in the tender garage. There are no cavities that are simply laminated shut, no hatch that simply lies in its rubber seal, there are drainpipes for the cup holders at the helm, there are fixed steps in the forepeak that is protected from seawater, illuminated pockets, a specially designed folding bathing ladder and an LED lighting system that can - of course - be controlled via a tablet. "It's so much fun!" They spent a year building the coupé and handed over the convertible after a year and a half.
"With the construction of this tender, our technical horizons have been broadened yet again," says the shipyard. For example, there is the moulded handrail on the roof: to ensure that the fittings have exactly the same strake, a six-metre-long oval tube was specially rolled, from which individual parts were cut to fit, and even the cleats are ground so that they run with the strake. Perfect craftsmanship is the minimum standard here. Across all ship's trades.
An all-rounder for the Winkler boatyard
Stützle is an all-rounder, someone for whom a rowing boat has just as much a place as the sailing boats from the neighbouring clubs. "We do the classic winter storage business - with everything that goes with it," says Stützle, and that this is "very important" to him. 70 boats were moored here last winter, including many local boat celebrities. Some boats and clubs have been coming back for decades. In 2008, they delivered a 45-foot racing sailing yacht, the "Leu" designed by Judel & Vrolijk. In 2015, the first superyacht tender left the yard, for "Quantum Blue".
And everything should always be built here at the shipyard. Hardly anyone else in the industry does this today, Stützle also trains people himself, in both traditional and modern boatbuilding, he builds with wood as well as metal, in fibre composite as well as carbon. He also has his own engine fitting shop. Why? "Because otherwise we wouldn't be able to deliver the quality I want! And we're not flexible enough." When a shipyard calls him and says: "Take care of it!", he takes care of it. Whatever the issue. "We try to do work that benefits the owner in the long term," says Stützle.
Working with conviction
The CEO's office is located in a new hall built to the passive house standard in 2010. "Back then, people said to me: 'You're crazy! When are you going to earn it all back? Today that's worth its weight in gold!" When he does something, he does it right. From his office, you can see the whole courtyard through the floor-to-ceiling windows, all the way down to the Lesum river. On the long conference table is a G covered in gold leaf, which was once part of the sweeping, curved lettering on the stern of a superyacht. They first burnt the letter out of stainless steel plates, then ground it into a spherical shape, hammered it with a ball peen hammer, blasted it, coated it with epoxy and finally covered it with gold leaf and clear lacquered it. The backlit lettering was first installed in Barcelona, but a year later it had to be replaced in Sri Lanka - a new owner, a new name. So now the G is back here.
If you stand at the jetty where the "Bank of Bremen" is moored, you can already see the buildings of Abeking & Rasmussen upstream. Where the small Lesum flows into the large Weser and where Germany's first artificial harbour was built 400 years ago, the huge halls of the Lürssen shipyard tower up today. This used to be the site of the Bremen Vulkan, which was one of the largest shipyards in Europe until the 1990s and has long since disappeared. For many, Bremen is still a place of industrial decline, a symbol of social democratic suspicion of the rich. And yet a hotspot for the superyacht industry has emerged on the northern fringes of the once Calvinist city.
Trade learnt at Lürssen
Hans Stützle also learnt his trade at Lürssen. When he started in 1992, the 46 metre long "Falco" had just been delivered, followed two years later by the 72 metre long "Coral Island". "That was huge," says Stützle, yes: "gigantic!" He was practically socialised into the superyacht business. "The quality of the work at Lürssen fascinated me right from the start. It was exactly my thing."
The 52-year-old was born in Bonn and later grew up in Stockholm, where his family sailed an International Folkboat, which is now used by the shipyard's apprentices after work and at weekends.
After leaving school, I realised that I wanted to do an apprenticeship in a trade."
His father advised him to become a boat builder, but he himself was a political scientist, later editor-in-chief of the Berlin Tagesspiegel and finally State Secretary in the Ministry of Defence. He knew the Lürssen shipyard from his time in the navy.
The way to the Winkler boatyard
Stützle started working at the Winkler boatyard in 1995. The year before, he had been travelling with his father-in-law on a tanker in West Africa, while wars raged on land, rockets flew over Freetown and corpses lay on the barge in Monrovia. He had already been fascinated by the shipyard on the Lesum; he had told the boss straight away that he would like to buy her company.
At that time, it was still a classic service and repair company with five employees. Stützle became the owner of the shipyard in 2001, and today 35 people work here, plus subcontractors. "The people are very flexible," says the boss, who comes to work on his bike, "all fantastic, loyal employees" - who give up their holidays from January to May and sometimes work overtime if the project has to be completed and the day or time doesn't matter. People work closely together here. And the boss is right in the middle of it all. Stützle is someone who is on first-name terms with his people, someone who comes to them for a smoke. His son Paul now works at the company, as did his former wife, a qualified boat builder.
Thanks to his contacts at Lürssen, he has repeatedly been given the opportunity to work in new areas. In 2010, they built a mast weighing just under three and a half tonnes for "Project Coco" here; today, the 61-metre-long ship is called "Lady Kathryn V", and the equipment carrier was completed in 2011, "with all the trimmings". With a height of 8.8 metres, it barely fitted through the new hall door. In 2015, they built another megayacht mast, for "Shergar", also by Lürssen. The 45-knot Pininfarina design has internal radar antennas and communication devices; they tested the superstructure on the roof of the shipyard at the time, while the detailed design comes from the Beiderbeck design office, which is also based in the neighbourhood and with which the shipyard has been working closely since 2006.
Developed projects
The tender for Roman Abramovich's 140-metre "Solaris" was later created on the Lesum after his representative inspected the tender of the "Quantum Blue". The 12.40 metre long tender - like the mother ship - was drawn by the renowned designer Marc Newson, with engineering by Patrick Banfield. With an unladen weight of ten tonnes, it is significantly more seaworthy than the "Quantum Blue" shuttle format. It is powered by two six-cylinder engines with 328 kilowatts each, and the boat is capable of 40 knots. However, in view of the war in Ukraine and the associated sanctions, business with Russian owners has come to a standstill. He still had four orders from this group, "two of them really big", for which he had already purchased all kinds of materials. "But we can compensate for that well," says Stützle, adding that the market for tenders is a difficult one anyway. "We don't have to build one!"
Two deck furniture packages for mega yachts are currently being built in the Winkler halls. They have therefore installed one of five outdoor showers in the centre of the hall. They were designed at the shipyard, right down to the large shower head with its elegantly curved lines. There was nothing suitable on the market, says Stützle, not in his quality, so they simply designed everything themselves. In the summer, the external stairs of another large format will be manufactured here.
Restoring a wooden boat
Meanwhile, another project is waiting in the yard. A 27-metre-long steamboat, built from wood in 1898. The "Aloma" has been standing on land since the mid-1980s; Stützle bought it in 2020 and now wants to restore it; the interior and exterior plans were drawn up by the Beiderbeck design team based on the other side of the Lesum. Keeping the ship is not an option: "I can't afford it!" In the past, Queen Victoria of England occasionally travelled to her country residence on it, but today there are hardly any ships from that era left, and certainly none whose history is so fully documented. He has promised the former owner that the "Aloma" will be put back into service. "We can completely restore the ship here!" There it is again, the sparkle in his eyes.
