- Founded
- 1955
- Headquarters
- 2500 Shingai, Iwata, Shizuoka 438-8501, Japan
- Shipyard location
- —
- Official website
- https://www.yamaha-motor.co.jp/marine/
Brand Overview
Yamaha Motor's own boats for the Japanese market — nineteen fishing boats, cruisers and sport boats from the 6.0-metre FR-20 to the 11.1-metre DFR-36, sold with a Yamaha outboard, or on the DFR diesels a single Volvo Penta inboard, included in the price.
YachtCodex Analysis
AI-generatedAn independent reading of this builder written by AI. Unlike the specifications and descriptions elsewhere on this page, it is interpretation rather than a sourced fact — treat it as a starting point, not a citation.
What this builder is
Yamaha Motor Co., Ltd. was founded on 1 July 1955 and is headquartered in Iwata, Shizuoka; it went on the water in 1960 with its first outboard, the P-7, and its first FRP boats, the CAT-21 and RUN-13, presented on Lake Ashi, and its timeline records Yamaha's first FRP fishing boat in 1965 and the merger with Yamaha Marine Co., Ltd. in 2009. The Japanese marine site sells Yamaha's own boats in three groups. Fishing boats are most of the range: the DFR diesel line (the DFR-36FB flybridge, DFR-36HT and DFR-33 on a single Volvo Penta D8-550 or D6-440), the YFR outboard line up to the YFR330 on one F450 and its Premium Line version, whose woodwork the site says comes from Yamaha Fine Tech's musical-instrument craft, the F.A.S.T.26 and 23, and the Bay Fisher 25, 23 and 20 centre consoles. The multi-purpose and cruising group holds the S-QUALO 27-footer, the AX220, FR-20, SR-X and SR-X EX, and the SR330 on twin F300 outboards is the sport boat, built around what the yard calls 'glamorous boating'. Each spec page prints one table per engine build — length overall, beam, hull depth, hull and complete-boat mass, engine and output, tanks, persons and Japanese navigation area — and a yen price list by package.
Who sails them
Yamaha boat owners are mostly Japanese anglers — from the bay fisherman on a 50 hp Bay Fisher to the offshore crew who wants a diesel DFR or a YFR330 that, the site says, resists wind drift as well as an inboard boat — together with families and groups who use an S-QUALO, AX220, FR-20 or SR330 for cruising, marina days and gatherings, and who buy through Yamaha's Japanese dealers with the engine and legal safety kit priced in.
Signature models
The YFR330, which the site calls the summit of the YFR series, and its new Premium Line version head the fishing range; the DFR-36FB is the largest boat, with a flybridge and a diesel inboard, and the SR330 on twin F300s stands for the gathering-and-party side of the lineup.
Strengths
Yamaha is known for building boat and engine together — every outboard model leaves with a matched Yamaha four-stroke included in the price — for fishing features such as the Wave Thruster Blade hull, fishing-support remote controls, aft stations and live wells, Helm Master EX joystick control on the SR330 and Command Link instruments, for more than six decades of FRP boatbuilding since 1960, and for a dealer network across Japan.
Considerations
The site is Japanese only and its products are offered for Japan; figures are metric and given for the base engine build, with other engines kept as options. Pages print length overall, beam and hull depth (全深さ, not draught), hull mass and complete-boat mass (stored as displacement), but no draught, speed, range, cabin or berth count, CE category or designer. Navigation areas are Japanese categories (coastal or limited coastal), persons is the legal capacity, and prices are suggested retail in yen including tax, engine and legal safety equipment. The DFR photos show prototypes. The Prestige yachts and US-built jet boats Yamaha Japan also sells are not part of this entry.
Analysis generated 10/18/2026
Part of
Fleet at a Glance
Calculated from the models in the YachtCodex catalog, not from the builder's claims.
- Models in catalog
- 19
- Length range
- 6.03–11.07 m
- Hull forms
- Motor Monohull 19
Models by this brand
19 models
Multi-purpose and cruising boats5
Bay Fisher3
F.A.S.T.3
YFR4
DFR3
Sport boats1
History
Yamaha Motor Co., Ltd. was founded on 1 July 1955, with Genichi Kawakami as its first president, and began with motorcycles. Its boat business started in 1960, when it released its first outboard motor, the P-7, and its first FRP boats, the CAT-21 and RUN-13, presented on Lake Ashi; in 1961 the CAT-21 won the first Pacific 1,000 km motorboat marathon. Yamaha built its first FRP fishing boat, the Daisan Fuji Maru, in 1965 and launched its first FRP wasen (traditional Japanese boats), the W-16 and W-18, in 1968; the 'Wing of Yamaha' won the first single-handed trans-Pacific yacht race in 1975, and the first marine diesel, the MD35, followed in 1976. In 1990 the company built 'NIPPON', a challenger for the 1992 America's Cup. Yamaha Motor merged with Yamaha Marine Co., Ltd. in 2009, marked fifty years of its marine business in 2010, stepped up wasen production in 2011 to support recovery after the Great East Japan Earthquake, and reached ten million outboards built in 2013.
History written fromglobal.yamaha-motor.com/jp/stories/history/timeline/· 年表 Corporate Timelineread 10/19/2026