Olaf Harken

1939-2019

Olaf Harken who, together with his elder brother Peter, co-founded the famous marine hardware, winch and rope-handling business bearing their name, died on 21 October, aged 80.

Olaf Harken was born of Dutch and Swedish parents in Indonesia at the beginning of World War 2. In 1941 the Japanese attacked Indonesia. During the fighting and nightly bombings, Peter, Olaf, and their Swedish mother, Ulla, managed to escape to Borneo. Their Dutch father, Joe, joined the Dutch army and helped fight the Japanese until his capture.

Joe Harken was imprisoned for five years and not liberated until the end of the war. Meanwhile, Peter, Olaf, and their mother lived first in Borneo, were then troop-shipped to New Zealand for a year, to Australia for another year, and finally shipped to San Francisco in 1944. Here they were miraculously reunited with their father in 1946 after the war was over.

After studying at Georgia Tech, Olaf Harken took an engineering job in New York City, but in 1967 he returned to Wisconsin to help his brother Peter build boats for the college market. That first year they made a total of $3,800.

As the years continued, Olaf ran the business side of Harken Inc, while Peter, an economist by training, handled design and production.

“Peter designed the blocks, and knew more about manufacturing than me,” Olaf once said, while Peter commented: “Olaf was more patient and better at the business than me. Each of us was better at the other guy’s education. But we kept it quiet, figuring people wouldn’t want blocks designed by an economist.”

Harken continued to grow and innovate with new products in rope handling until it became the worldwide company that exists today. Harken has offices at its headquarters in Pewaukee, Wisconsin, as well as in the UK, Italy, France, Sweden, Poland, Australia and New Zealand.

Both brothers always maintained that the key to their success was the people they hired and worked with. “Peter and I were not very smart,”

Olaf commented in his 2015 memoir ‘Fun Times in Boats, Blocks & Business’, “but we did know that success is linked directly to trust and treating people with dignity, and maybe a little sprinkling of humour.”