Your New Sonar

New International Sonars are built to order by Rondar Raceboats in their factory in Wiltshire, England. New boats are shipped worldwide via roll-on/roll-off ships to the port nearest you. Rondar builds boats to order, and lead times are typically 60-90 days including shipping, so plan ahead!

 

About the Boat Builder

Rondar’s 5 decades of experience building world championship winning boats in many classes means that your new Sonar will be stiff, durable, and well finished. Most importantly, it will be ready to race to win, straight away! New Rondar Sonars have all come in under minimum weight, with a factory reinforced keel sump laminate schedule, fair bottoms & keels. A new boat eliminates concerns about fairing new keels, bottoms, or reinforcing sumps.

A new Sonar costs approximately $45,000 for boat, spars, and galvanized road trailer with brakes. For details, possible special offers or, fleet purchase options, please contact Rondar directly.

A premier builder of small sailboats since 1965, Rondar Raceboats became the builder of the International Sonar in 2015. The initial incarnation of Rondar Raceboats was launched by two keen UK sailors who wanted to support their hobby by buying their own equipment as inexpensively as possible. They had produced their own molds for the 505 class and had them built by an industrial molding company in New Milton whose owner was also a competitive sailor. The name “Rondar” was derived from the fact that they operated from Radnor Mews in London.

The molding company saw the potential in the racing dinghy market which was starting to boom in the 60’s and took over the original company. Through the 70s they increased the product range with the 420, Contender, Albacore, Fireball, and Europe, amongst others; and they grew to be a sizeable company building around 800 boats per year. They had numerous successes on the water and exported across the globe in a time when exporting was quite complicated compared to today. Composite construction was in its infancy, so boats were single cored polyester structures that went soft and took on weight over time. Frequent replacement undoubtedly fueled the rise in popularity of dinghy racing by providing a good supply of used boats.

Around the late 70s and very early 80s, the company was starting to struggle in another deep recession, and volumes dropped as better molding techniques were invented. The product range was rationalized down to the 505, Contender, and 420. At the same time, someone in the company developed the forerunner of the spa bath, with its applications for the elderly and the disabled, and the company took a gamble and exhibited the prototype at a major home show. They came away with a bulging order book, and a new direction in the construction industry, so the boatbuilding side was sold off to a couple of top flight 505 sailors–Peter White and Phil Milanes–who were better known at the time for being Seahorse sails and Milanes foils.

Pete and Phil set-up the company in a converted farm building in Wiltshire, and persuaded several key employees from rival companies to join them. They enjoyed a number of successes with the three products they took over. The economy was doing better through the Thatcher years, and the business grew again. The global financial collapse of 1988 saw property values fall and the wealthier middle classes suffer which impacted the boatbuilding business quite severely. The original molds were now very dated and the boats, while well built, were no longer state of the art nor quite as competitive as they needed to be.

Paul Young, the current CEO, was crewing for Pete White at the time in the 505. Young was working with Racing Sailboats in London at the time, doing their boat work for pretty much all the top sailors of the day. They were the blueprint of the racing chandlery businesses that we have today. An honors graduate of Southampton University’s prestigious naval architecture program, Paul recognized the potential in Rondar and acquired the company from Pete and Phil in 1991. With the company in poor health, the immediate priority was to breathe life into the products and the 505 was the first class to be taken back to its original principles and redeveloped. This new Rondar 505 won the World Championships in 1993 and national titles in 8 different countries, and since then has won 17 of the last 21 World Championships and over 180 National titles. The 420 and Contender followed in rapid succession with World Championship successes, and the company enlarged its portfolio as time went on. The current models include the International 5o5, Squib, International Sonar, Firefly, K6, International Viper 640, and now the International 470.

 

Contact Rondar about a new Sonar!

Error: Contact form not found.