Building the dream - Oyster Marine

Ralph Hogg is an excited man. Since winning the exclusive Australian rights to represent the highly regarded British marque Oyster Marine, Hogg, of North South Yachting fame, says he is meeting more people who are on the verge of 'living the dream'. He identifies a growing number of people who have worked towards taking early retirement with sufficient resources to purchase a bluewater cruising yacht and set sail on the cruise of a lifetime.

Besides being inspired by the personal achievements and choices of some of these people, Hogg is also excited by the fact that the Oyster range can provide exactly the type of boat many of them are looking for. He calls it a "lifestyle boat"; a craft that is built and fitted out to the highest standards. A craft that is comfortable, secure, impressively styled and truly capable of long-range passagemaking.

He explains further: "It's a boat that people can retire to and sail around Australia and the Pacific; or an alternative would be to have the boat delivered to the Med, spend a season there and then sail across the Atlantic with the Oyster fleet in the ARC, and eventually onwards via the Panama Canal and across the Pacific.

"It's also a boat that people can enjoy simply sitting at the marina."

At this moment, Hogg is especially excited about Oyster yachts, because we are standing right in front of the first new Oyster 53 destined for the Australian market. At this stage it's still under construction, with completion hopefully in time for it to be exhibited at the Sydney International Boat Show at the end of July.

Even at this stage, blind Freddy could see it's a serious cruiser that's being built and equipped for a long and comfortable life.

This boat is not for Ralph himself (by the time of publication it may already have been sold), but it's not hard to see that he wouldn't mind if it was. He's also looking forward to the delivery passage, for which he intends to be onboard.

And that's something more to be excited about. Instead of an epic delivery voyage from the opposite side of the globe, all that's entailed is a crossing of roughly 1400nm across the Tasman 'firebreak' between New Zealand and Australia.

We are standing looking at Hogg's 53ft baby in a boatbuilding complex in Glendene, Auckland, rather than somewhere in England. Though if all goes to plan, this boat should be virtually indistinguishable from its British-built siblings.

PEARLS OF WISDOM
Oyster Marine has embarked on a bold enterprise which involves the Auckland company McDell Marine building its designs (initially the Oyster 53, with the 49 to follow) under license. And as far as Hogg is concerned, that's excellent news for prospective Australian buyers.

With a base price of a cool $699,000 (new Oyster yacht prices are always quoted in the British currency, Hoggs says), it's no minor decision to buy an Oyster. For that price, the quality must be first-rate from stem to stern. Thus you'd expect Oyster Marine to be very careful in its selection of a licensed builder in far-flung New Zealand.

So, time for a look at the companies involved...

Oyster Marine was founded by English yachtsman Richard Matthews some 28 years ago and has become the UK's largest yachtbuilder. Matthews, who remains the chairman of the company, comes from ahard-core racing background, and the original Oyster design was a 34ft cruiser/racer called the UFO 34.

As the company grew, it moved into hard-core cruising, developing its signature deck saloon concept and a reputation for high quality craft, competing against, say, Nautor's Swan range at the top end of the market.

The range now consists of cruisers from 42-82ft in overall length, with launchings around the 1000-boat mark. The company has had a long relationship with naval architects Homan & Pye, moving in recent years to a design team approach.

For recent models it has retained the English designer Rob Humphreys to produce hull lines, appendages and sail plans, with Holman & Pye providing construction and layout expertise. In-house designers provide input on styling and other elements.

Based in Ipswich but with construction divided across several yards in Southampton and Wroxham (near Norwich), the company prides itself on providing a wide range of customisation of interior layouts, joinery and furnishings, and rig options, depending on each owner's choice.

McDell Marine has had a similarly long run in the marine industry, with some 30 years in business, although its early days were in the powerboat game, building the popular Sea Nymph range, powerboats from the early 1970s and its Farr trailersailers and cruiser/racer keelboats.

The company was formed as a partnership between accountant (and accomplished racing sailor) Kim McDell and mechanical engineer Bill Howlett, who both remain fully involved as Managing Director and General Manager respectively.

FLEET MANAGEMENT
Over the years, the company has made an impact at the performance racer/cruiser end of the yacht market, building Bruce Farr-designed craft such as the Farr 1020s, 1220s, 940s and the 41MX for the local market, as well as the Mumm 30 and the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron's one-design fleet of Farr MRXs.

"We've tended to concentrate on fleets rather than boats," says Kim McDell. This has been borne out in recent years by its involvement building a fleet of Farr Platu 25s as a joint Thai/New Zealand venture with Phatra Marine Products.

The company's concentration on construction of series-build or multi-build projects for vessels up to 65ft has also involved a variety of commercial powered craft, including fast, planing large RIBs as official camera boats and challengers' tenders during the America's Cup Regatta on Auckland's Hauraki Gulf. It's RIBs have also been used as Fast Recovery Operations craft for the Royal NZ Navy.

McDell Marine is currently working through an order from the Toyota Motor Corporation for 155 Ponam 28 high-performance flybridge cruisers for the Japanese recreational market. According to McDell Marine, Toyota "were impressed by New Zealand's competitive labour costs, strong marine industry infrastructure and the ability to provide proven, world-recognised brand names in fittings and auxiliary systems".

Built of alloy (hull) and GRP (deck), the deep-vee hulled Ponam flybridge cruisers are capable of speeds to 40kt.

As Kim McDell tells it: "Toyota hadn't been in the marine market before. It's been a very good project for us, and working with them has brought us up to another level with our systems management and QA [quality assurance]."

The challenges are to combine performance with a voluminous hull, good load-carrying ability and a high righting moment.

As Trade-A-Boat NZ Editor Geoff Green reported in our previous issue, the arrangement between Oyster Marine and McDell Marine came about as a direct result of the 2000 America's Cup.

Matthews was looking at the possibility of contracting work out when he sailed to New Zealand in his Oyster 56, Oystercatcher XXIV, to view the Cup, says Kim McDell. "We met him [Matthews] while he was in town in November 1999 for initial discussions, then saw him here again in December. Bill [Howlett] and I travelled to London in January 2000 to meet with Oyster at the Earl's Court Boat Show and subsequently signed a contract for the first run of seven Oyster 53s."

In June last year Oyster sent out an Oyster 53 hull and deck, built in the UK, from which McDell Marine built moulds. McDell started building the first boat, Kiwi Oyster, from its duplicate set of production tooling in September.

The multi-million-dollar contract was to build an initial seven Oyster 53 masthead sloops during 2001. This has since expanded to an extra seven of the 53s, plus an agreement to build moulds and begin work on an initial series of seven of the new Oyster 49.

McDell has committed to build six or seven boats a year in the Oyster range, with up to nine boats a year from 2002.

If there's one immediate impression to be gained during a visit to the McDell factory, it is that these are solid cruising yachts being built to last. They are definitely not lightweight flyers, but the hull lines nonetheless promise good all-round performance.

SEND IN THE CLONES
In order to ensure a product which is comparable in every way to the British-built Oysters, McDell Marine is working by the book as written by Oyster Marine, which in some areas involves using different methods from those developed in-house by the veteran Kiwi company.

Over time the relationship could well grow into an increasingly collaborative venture: "We like to think we can bring a lot of ideas and innovations to the table," McDell says.

Construction of the Oyster 53 hull and deck is in solid, hand-laid fibreglass using female moulds, with a balsa-cored laminate used for the coachroof over the deck saloon.

The hull laminate incorporates isophthalic resin and powder-bound mats (Oyster offers a one-year warranty which extends to three years for the GRP below the waterline).

An independent surveyor has been involved right through the build process, which is "just over five months from go to whoa," Howlett says.

Stage one is the lamination process for the hull and deck and is scheduled over seven to eight weeks; stage two sees all the interior joinery built into the hull before the deck goes on, over an eight-week schedule, and stage three involves a further eight weeks of work to bring the boat to completion (Rigs and sails are not part of McDell Marine's brief).

"We're hoping to get to the target hours by boat number five," Howlett says, adding that the goal is to have four Oysters under various stages of construction at the same time, within the self-contained facility of 50,000sqft.

The three Oyster contracts (estimated to be worth more than $NZ20 million) are expected to keep the yard busy until at least the middle of 2003.

All cabinetry work for the Oyster yachts is done in-house and there are engineers on site, while outside contractors are employed for stainless steel and upholstery work.

The company aims to build its skilled labour force from 50 to 60 people to meet the challenge of producing the Oysters. A sophisticated approach to project management, including cost-control and quality assurance systems, is evident.

"We've long believed that if it isn't written down, it doesn't happen," Howlett says. "Each boat we build has lamination manuals and process flow charts, everything is recorded and each step has to be individually initialled by the person responsible."

"One of the highest challenges is the timber joinery," Howlett says. "With the first boat we had to send the first lot of veneers back to the supplier, because it has to be just right. A lot of the veneers are only 250mm wide, they need to be matched and you have to be careful or you can get lines showing in between the veneers when you spend time in the tropics."

He notes the high-quality plywoods needed for the interiors has been sourced in Australia, while Burmese teak and North American white oak are also extensively used throughout.

The keel carries the lead ballast deep down in what Oyster calls a High Performance Bulb (HPB). The rudder is protected by a full-length skeg, and bronze anti-collision base.

DEPARTURE OF SORTS
We will take a closer look at the individual details of the Oyster 53 in next month's Trade-A-Boat, but in the meantime it's easy to see what Ralph Hogg is so excited about.

For Kim McDell, whose background has primarily been with more high-performance sailing craft, he agrees that the Oyster contract is a departure in a sense.

"We've always worked with Bruce Farr in the past. But we have had a long-term commitment to building international name brands... The brand is so important.

"New Zealand's competitive advantage is in our labour costs. The more labour in the boats, probably the more competitive we can be."

Asked if he agrees with Hogg's assessment of a growing market for the Oysters, McDell says: "I think the demand for bluewater cruisers [like the Oyster range] has always been there, but there's probably a bit more of it happening as the baby boom generation gets older."

Look for Vanessa Dudley's test of the new Oyster 53 in the next issue of Trade A Boat...