In a Robb Report feature showcasing the most extraordinary wooden boats being built anywhere in the world, Van Dam’s 30-foot Catnip stood in a class of its own.
The piece featured a handful of remarkable builders — Spirit Yachts’ 111-foot Geist, Boesch’s multi-layered Swiss mahogany runabouts, and HackerCraft’s modernized triple-cockpit classics — but Catnip captured something none of the others quite did: a boat that felt simultaneously of a specific era and entirely outside of time. Her Art Deco–themed interior features an array of semicircular gauge housings, windshield frames with slatted openings, and a mirror-polished stainless rudder, all complementing an expanse of flawlessly varnished mahogany. Twin 385-hp Ilmor inboards push her to 57 mph.
Robb Report noted the detail that defines Van Dam as a builder above all others: “Van Dam won’t build any boat twice.” Catnip is not a model. She is not a reference point. She is one expression of what’s possible, never to be repeated.