The worlds largest plastic ”Snekke”

This is a 24 foot long Plattegatter, built by The Roland Family in KRISTIANSAND 1970.
The hull is made of pine, and the superstructure of teak. The boat has now a 55hp Volvo Penta engine.

They built 3 of these boat, and this is the last one, and also the best preserved before the shift to plastic boats came at full force. You see, in the beginning of 1960 there was already a change in the production facilities to produce plastic boats. The company initiated production of 21 foot sjekter (plastic boats that looks like clinker built wooden boats) in fiberglass. The production eventually took up around 120 boats a year, and was soon replaced by what was claimed to be “the worlds largest plastic sjekte”, the Fram 690:

Fram 690

At that time, talking to hard veteran sailers who had been to the seven seas, they could only admire the plastic objects. Some of them had until recently been opposed to everything called plastic, but after seeing plastic boat for themselves, testing them, they had come to other thoughts. Plastic has low maintenance, good durability, and does not deteriorate like wooden boats do. They wondered a lot, but agreed that plastic boats have come to stay.

It’s part of local history. One of the last wooden boats can be seen at KRISTIANSAND harbour this summer.