Oyster Yachts , what happend

[Island Time 1,235]

This is an interesting article...

http://www.oysterstory.info/

[Brien 22]

Thanks IT, for passing this report on.

 

The lessons apply to any enterprise large or small.

 

Brien

[MarkMT 68]

Fascinating. Seems like there is much yet unknown about this, particularly how build practices at Oyster were allowed, or caused, to deteriorate over time to such a dire extent. I note from Wikipedia that the company was acquired by investors in 2008.

[marinheiro 352]

Oyster have never been the boat builder per se, always a marketing company with construction of their yachts sub contracted, primarily 3 companies in UK but also our own McDell Marine in the early 2000's and a few big yachts in Turkey. The Polar Star appears to have been built (at least the mouldings) by Bridgland Moulders in UK, one of their long term sub contractors. There was a very good technical analysis of the failure in Professional Boatbuilder magazine. The key fault being the internal grid was moulded in 2 halves with joint along the centre line, which was a dumb design to start with. Then to make matters worse, the installation of the grid was not carried out correctly, particularly the joining of the two halves.

On later 82.5 yachts Oyster redesigned the grid which is an admission they got it wrong.

Richard Mathews, Oysters founder sold the company around 2008 and subsequently set up Gunfleet, a series of Oyster like yachts all with lifting kneels

Www.gunfleetmarine.com

[MarkMT 68]

That's interesting. I note from gunfleet's website that they also sub-contract manufacturing, in their case to Windboats, which themselves have built around 300 Oyster boats.