Klaus Allebrodt

Klaus AllebrodtKlaus is one of those enviable people, who can truly claim to have boats in his blood. Already prolific at sailing and racing dinghies at the age of eight, he grew up close to Lake Mohnetalsperre, made famous by the Dambusters film.

Such were his levels of experience that the German authorities felt compelled to grant Klaus a special permit for a sailing license at the tender age of 12, two years ahead of the norm.

By the time he was a student, renting a 30-foot boats was a breeze for this natural sailor, who proved equally adept at technical practicalities such as rebuilding an engine. After first working in his family’s furniture business, in 1980, Klaus saw an advert of a local businessman looking for a captain to run his 51” Baltic yacht, and, although Klaus admits today that he did not even know what a self-tailing winch was, when asked during the interview, he got the job.

In the following years that Klaus was running one of the largest sailing yachts in the Mediterranean at the time for the owner and in charter, he learned much about boats and the growing yacht industry. Therefore, three years later, Dahm International, a successful brokerage firm, asked Klaus, if he was interested to run the 19m Jongert yacht Amelie II and take her around the world. The answer was simple and during the following four years, Klaus took Amelie II to many places rarely visited by yachts at the time such as the then-new Hemingway Marina in Cuba or the Galapagos Islands.

In 1984 Dahm International asked Klaus to return to Palma and set up a yacht service center for them. He accepted that challenge, moved to the island and has lived there ever since.

In the following four years, he grew the Dahm International Service Centre, based in the facility that now hosts STP shipyard in Palma, to a sizable operation. Klaus’ clients appreciated his technical knowledge about boats and their systems and in the late 80s one of them asked him to oversee the construction of his new Jongert yacht, which, at 40m overall length, was the largest vessel the yard had built at the time. As this was an interesting opportunity and a big challenge, so Klaus left Dahm International and moved to Holland for the duration of the project. Already during the build, he received further inquiries from other yacht owners and stayed in the field of new build project management ever since.