HISTORY

The Kazulin family's tradition of designing and building fine watercraft began seven generations ago on the Adriatic Coast of Croatia. Since then, generations of the family produced commercial and pleasure boats in Europe and North America.

In the early 1900's, Simon Kazulin built many of the early motor driven wooden fishing boats when he ran Skansi Boatworks in Gig Harbor Washington USA. His son Mike continued this tradition with his line of Kazulin-Cole wooden boats into the 1960's in nearby Tacoma.

Meanwhile, Simon's youngest son Velko remained in Croatia designing and building very fine wooden excursion boats and runabouts. He progressed into fiberglass in the late 1950's and built not only the very first fiberglass production boat in Eastern Europe, but also one of the first modern "retro boats". This was a 5 meter (17 feet) "barcha" in fiberglass, based on the Adriatic coast's traditional lapstrake, tumble home fishing skiff. Subsequently, these boats were produced in the thousands over a period of 30 years, and continue to this day to have a presence in all the ports of the Adriatic.


Along with these fiberglass boats, Velko's excursion vessels were sought after by the locals who knew the Kazulin reputation of superior building and design abilities.
"When I visited the Coast last summer, I saw one of my old boats moored at a local dock....40 years later, how wonderful!" Velko states (1999).
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