ABOUT

INTRODUCTION

This website is dedicated to the history of the naval architects Einar and Carl-Eric Ohlson’s work. The work of the Ohlson Brothers forms an essential element of the Swedish boat building and sailing legacy. TOP, The Ohlson Project, tries to revive this legend by bringing the past to life.
We, the project team, are in the process of building the history of the Ohlson Brothers, something that has not been done before. As part of this work, we have collected more than 1 600 drawings and are preparing them for digital storage. This gathering of information and data showed us the enormous breadth of work and experience in boat design.
The project team is a joint effort of Swedish and international contributors under the lead of the daughters of late Einar Ohlson. The initiator of this project is Lutz von Meyerinck, owner of an Ohlson 38 footer, www.ohlson38.de .
We aim to cover and highlight, step-by-step, different aspects of the design work such as the boat models, the results in the Olympic Games, the collection of drawings, the yards and the database.
We were proud to present and celebrate the first introductional video, The Ohlson Yacht Project, ’Rediscovering a part of the Swedish Maritime heritage’. The video was launched on the 4th of January 2020 on our YouTube channel.
Welcome aboard this website!

BACKGROUND

At the end of the 1940ies, the Ohlson Brothers delivered boat designs for design contests but requests for design work started to flow in heavily after their 5.5m IC Hojwa won a bronze medal at the 1952 Olympic Games at Helsinki, Finland. This early success established their names internationally. The 5.5m boats became the formula one in world class sailing from the beginning of the 1950ies until the end of the 1960ies.
At each of the Olympic Games between 1952 and 1968 one of their boats was sailed to an Olympic medal. In parallel to these successes in racing, cruiser/racers were developed for sailors and won international recognition in racing and cruising.