Gösta Kyntzell - designer of classics

Gustaf Julius Kyntzell, born in 1882 in Kokkola, grew up to be one of Finland's most renowned boat designer. During his impressively long designer career he designed numerous ships, motor boats and yachts that have an all important place in Finnish maritime history.


Gustaf Julius Kyntzell

Gösta Kyntzell, as he became known, studied in Vaasa, Finland, and Gothenburg, Sweden. Contacts made there were later invaluable as a source of new ideas in yacht building and even resources, when, after the Second World War, Finland was mostly cut off from any foreign suppliers.

Gösta Kyntzell began his professional career in Sweden, but sprung to fame once he moved with his family to Finland. During his career he designed boats and ships for the Russian Navy, while Finland was still a Grand Duchy of the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union, as war reparations, the Finnish Coast Guard, the President of Finland and numerous private individuals all around the Baltic Sea.

A brilliant example of Kyntzell's design is the saloon boat AEB, build for August Eklöf, one of Finland's leading industrialists of the time. Today AEB is privately owned, but the the saloon boat "Kultaranta II", build for the President of Finland in 1929 belongs to the collections of the Finnish Maritime Museum in Kotka.


Saloon boat AEB, designed by Gösta Kyntzell (photo Jorma Rautapää)

In yachting Gösta Kyntzell is best known for his extensive series of racing yachts called Inga-Lill ("Little-Inga" in Swedish). He build the boats for himself and typically sailed them only for one season and then sold them onwards. This cycle of build, try and rebuild provided Gösta Kyntzell with an excellent opportunity to learn about the effects of changes in design, and probably gave him an intuitive edge over other designers, who did not sail their own designs in such an extent.

The first boat in the Inga-Lill series was a 30 square metre, special class A (Särklass A) yacht, build in 1907 in Arvika boatyard, Sweden. The last yacht in the series was an Internation 5.5 m class yacht Inga-Lill XXXXIIII, which represented Finland in the 1960 Rome Olympics.

All in all the Inga-Lill series included many different classes of boats from Skerry Cruisers to Metre Class yachts. At least two of the boats have also represented Finland in the Scandinavian Gold Cup races - the Six Metre Class yacht Inga-Lill XXVI in 1937 in Long Island Sound against US-81 Goose and the Five Point Five Inga-Lill XXXXIIII in 1960 in Marstrand against SWE-28 Wasa and in 1961 in Helsinki against SWE-33 Nowa.