A working yard on the Knysna lagoon
Wooden boats built, restored and slipped since 1994.
We build the first boat a family owns, and the last one.
The yard
Careen sits at the bottom of Long Street in Knysna, on the lagoon side of the railway line. Two sheds, a twelve-ton slipway, and a loft long enough to lift a nine-metre plank. Nick Sonnenberg took the place over from the last of the Thesen apprentices in 1994 and has run it since.
The work
About a third of what leaves here is new: cold-moulded hulls in local timber, mostly day boats and small cruising yachts under twelve metres. The rest is repair — planking, deck beams, rudder stocks, and the slow business of taking a soft boat back to sound wood.
The wood
We buy saligna and iroko through a mill outside George and stack it for two summers before anything is cut. Nothing goes into a hull until it has been in the loft long enough for us to know what it will do. Epoxy where it earns its place, copper rivets everywhere else.
Boats built here
- Sandpiper — 8.4 m cold-moulded sloop, saligna on oak frames, launched 2019.
- Marlin Hunter — 6.2 m clinker skiff rebuilt from the keel up for the Knysna angling club.
- Ounooi — 1957 Thesen ferry tender, new stem and eleven planks, back on the water 2021.
- Tern — 5 m open day boat with iroko trim, built for a family in Sedgefield.
- Bokmakierie — 11.6 m cruising cutter, three years on the floor, launched 2023.
- Kleinbaai — 7 m working boat for the abalone permit holders at Gansbaai.
The floor
Served his time under the last of the Thesen shipwrights and bought the yard in 1994. Lofts every hull himself and will not let anyone else fair a stem.
Fourteen years on this floor. Does the planking and most of the deck joinery, and is the reason the repair side pays for itself.
Splices, sprays and varnishes. Came from a furniture shop in George and now handles every coating that goes on a hull here.
Runs the cradle, the winch and the tides. If your boat is coming out of the water, he is the one who decides when.
Hire the slip
Careen Boatworks, 14 Long Street, Knysna 6571. Weekdays 07h00 to 16h30, Saturdays until noon. 044 382 6117.