Chairman of Oyster dismasted on Arc!!!

Sad attitude toward one of the few (only 2, I reckon) British boatbuilders to have succeeded. All the others have gone down the pan or are so small as to be unimportant.

But then one of the problems in this country is a marked reluctance by the general pop to do anything but knock British products.
 
I sailed on a one year old Oyster earlier this year, while I was on board the roller reefing swivel at the top of the mainsale roller reefing disintergrated, ball bearings rained down on us from aloft & we lost all the luff tension. A new swivel was flown out to us and arrived 3 days later, inspection of the swivel made by a very well known manufacturer showed it to be very under-engineered for it's job.
It looks like Mr Mathews may have suffered a similar problem but with a much more devastating effect.
 
Hm, but the knocking is usually preceded by a marked tendency to build some occassionally quite shite products in the first place. And of course some of the questionable products are fabulously sucessful, like that vacuum cleaner so powerful that it sucks up your entire carpet in an afternoon.
 
I hadn't realised just how socially elevated us Oyster owners are, by heck -now beaming with pride. We've a leaky Heritage also. Disgraceful really, when you pay so much.

I received in the post a 'Priority Viewing' card last week as an Oyster owner. Idea is that you just flash it a bit at boat show and the salesmen push the timewasters (like Matt) over the side and concentrate on my viewing experience as most Oyster owners are movers and shakers and we all want a bigger O than the O we've got.

Already I'm considering the 45, but most 45 owners I know are after the 56. And all the 56'ers are after the 65.

Nobody wants a 72, funnily enough. All mouth and trousers and wobbly masts.

Sorry, what were we talking about?
 
ah right, all this time i've obviously NOT a prospective "O" owner by being all pleasant to them.

Anyway, I'm hoping that dozens of 'butters will go along with swmbo as obvious world crusier types and swmbo make worried noises about masts snapping cos i mean you would have thought the mast for chairman's boat wd be specially strong wouldn't you really, not specially weak and so on. So they'll have to flog of a few nice and cheap.
 
Hee hee, you want to be hovering on the point of putting ink to paper when swmbo whacks your elbow and points to the msathead.

'Get it checked by someone who knows what they're doing before you sign'

She then moodily exits stage left
 
Yes, but that's the power of marketing.

Oyster have successfully created a sort 'ultimate quality/luxury' perona and feel able to charge what would seem to be high prices for the build quality I observed (BTW Sweden Yachts and IP are still in business , though sadly not British and we felt were higher quality for less money).

The fundamental point was we would have been happy to pay quite a bit more than they were asking for the Bowman,(since they've gone bust it's a pity they didn't know this) whereas we felt the Oyster was overpriced and living on it's marketing hype.

The ideal would be for Bowman to have Oyster's marketing team.
I think maybe a lot of British builders suffered through relying on their past reputations to bring the customers in, rather than investing in the sort of vigorous marketing that other /forums/images/graemlins/tongue.gifbuilders have deployed so successfully.
 
top stuff. I think we're looking for genuine fear from the better halves or perhaps even more genuine fear than normal as they explain that they've "read about it somewhere" whilst we hover hesitantly with chequebooks in an "oh dear, so you mean we aren't allowed to buy one each?" sort of way and see what happens.
 
Moodily, eh, now there's a thought. I will have to subject them to the same stringent quailty test namely "excuse me, does your chairman's boat have a busted mast?"

Mind you, spose Moody stand will be quite a distance away whereas oyster, bavaria and similar flatpacker boats which knock down for the roof rack are near each other and handily close to the chandlery end with self tappers and epoxy to fixem up good as new or er i mean old...
 
Sour Grapes best suits Gerry's attitiude. He seems to be more concerned with the fact his daughter who apparently did not,could not,or wished not to buy an Oyster was given the brush-off at a boatshow, get over it. Having worked boatshows as a skipper I can appreciate that hundreds of people walk through a boat a day. Of that bunch it is up to the sales staff to identify those people intersted in buying a yacht. That is after all why these manaufacturers go to boat shows, to sell boats!

Its evident that Mr Matthews' personal Oyster Yacht is by no means a standard Oyster. Yes it is Oyster designed but not standard issue and highly customized. Thats why the company is refered to as a "custom yacht builder" no surprises here, unless you are looking for a production yacht such as a Bowman, look how successful that company has become.

Being an professional sailor I have seen Oyster yachts sailing all over the world and can say that they are certainly regarded as one of the best built on the market for a cruiser. Want to question this?..Just ask any marine surveyor and you'll get an objective opinion. To say a Sweden Yacht or IP is just as good as an Oyster is pure ignorance. That's like saying a Vauxall is as good as a Jag. Unfortunately we all cant afford Jags, or Oysters for that matter.

This summer I saw OYSTERCATCHER at the Round the Island race and it is like no Oyster I have ever seen before, completely set up for performance. Mr Matthews is a fierce competitor on the race course, check out the result of the Round the Island race, it won the performance cruising class, think a cruising Oyster could do that?

It seems to me that the UK should be proud to have such as successful export in a world in which nearly every job is being farmed out to either China or India. I would think you should be celebrating your fellow countryman's product and its success as being one of the best yachts in the world marketplace. I also wonder how many other yacht builders CEO's are actually out there sailing across the Atlantic, pushing the limits? I think he is the only one. To me that shows dedication.

Its all so easy for everyone to criticize from the safety of your computer station but if guys like Matthews (personality aside) were not out there pushing the limits of R&D for the sake of his own product and for future customers, then we all might as well be content never leaving the dock.

I commend the guy for getting out there and for the success he has created with his excellent British built yachts.
 
Think you'll find there are still quite a few succesful British boatbuilders who still have an enviable reputation around the world...Sunseeker, Princess, Fairline, Sealine, RibTec, etc
 
all fair enough.

However, the no-hopers, wannabees, tyrekickers and timewasters of today... may well become the valued customers of tomorrow. Unless, as I described, they have a bad time - because they'll remember. I'd like to see more manufacturers recognise the same, and oyster is far from alone in this respect.

Amongst brit sailors, Oyster are indeed top of the tree. But let's not kid ourselves that in build quality is in the same league as Nordia, for example. I suppose the jag analogy is about right.
 
[ QUOTE ]
Think you'll find there are still quite a few succesful British boatbuilders who still have an enviable reputation around the world...Sunseeker, Princess, Fairline, Sealine, RibTec, etc

[/ QUOTE ]

Interesting - princess were the second of my 2. As a raggie I wasnt sure whether Sunseeker / Fairline were still going or were just brands for another maker. RibTec is South African and tied to Yamaha I believe - not that I would class them as proper boatbuilders anyway

I still think the point is valid though. Most Brits happily support the national cricket team or rugby or football, in what after all are games that dont really matter that much and certainly dont affect our future. But for some reason we are very reluctant to regard British industry as our " team" in much more important economic competition unlike the French who, for example, continue to buy French cars in huge numbers despite their well documented quality problems. Instead, we seem to take a perverse pleasure in their problems.
 
there is certainly something in what you say.

I suppose historically, brits have looked outwards with varying degrees of success, and there's a general feeling that foreign things have a special caché.

By contrast, French were determinedly more nationalistic and conservative the extent of having laws to protect their language and customs. it's definitely the case many french simnoply don't move around for instance as brits do- you're born, go to school, go to university/work all in the same area. Random example i know but all three french exchange teenagers have declared that they prefer France and their ambition would be to live ...exactly where they live now.

However, the situation isn't all bad. Manufacturing of consumer goods is inexorably and inevitably moving to the lower cost far east, whereas higher value service industries remain here. The french and Germans do all they can to subsidise their existing manufacturing, but they're swimming upstream. Meanwhile free-market British-owned orgainsations in the meantime get all sorts of stick for acquiring continental companies but which are otherwise still perceived as "French" or "german".
 
Sorry I disagree. I work for a French Pharmacuetical company and they are proud of being French but not necessarily conservative.

The French do support French companies and their products. Most of the senior French that I meet are international in outlook, will recruit the best person for the post, be slightly biased towards a French product where practical but most of all are proud of being French. I think we should try to emulate the best features of the French and also the best from other european countries.

After considering the market carefully I have bought only French boats but sadly there is no English comparison in the segment of the market I am in. When Westerly were still in business I did go for a test sail and believed the boat to be a superior product to the one I bought but only 15% superior yet 60% dearer.

I congratulate Oysters on there success but regret that if I am ever fortunate enough to be able to afford one I will be probably suffering from other Brits envy at my success. I have always found this last feature of the British Pyschi sad as the opposite is true when working in the USA. In the USA I found that they love it if you are successsful as it means they can be too!
 
Re: Knocking british products /riot

Fact remains that the acquisition of french companies is resisted and is popularly seeen and reported as "anti- french" in frtance, that it viloates the very fabric of their country. Yet whilst UK lecky companies can and do get taken over and privatised by EDF (electricty de france) the french govt retains a golden share to ensure the it can take advantage of the market yet is also protected by state intervention.

In Germany, UK venture funds (eg Permeira) were publicly branded as essentially enemies of the german state in their acqusisition of german enterprises sold freely on the open market by the previous chancellor, Schroeder.

Whilst i am v supportive of the uk, i do not unquestionaingly support all and every uk product. There are better products than an Oyster, imho, as detailed above, and not much more exspenive if at all, and even the most superficial of inspections will confirm the same by someone with reasonable engineering or similar knowlegde. As always, of course, the volume sold is not alwaysa measure of quality.

Much more perncious is the way that you and others condemn the critical appraise of a single product by actually making a sweeping and general attack on perhaps the uk's most basic product - the people themselves - in order to support an argument that holds only a small amount of water but plays well if we all put on a Daily Mail/Express head on.

The fact remains that Oyster's flagship broke quite catastophically in not-too horrid conditions survives by lots of far cheaper boats on the very same route.

Whilst i';m sure he's a sound chap, i cabn reprot from personal experience, that the same owner of this vessel is very dismissive of competing products.

I'd be interested to hear more details, but it's him and his products on a back foot, not me and certainly not the general population of the uk, despite the easy convenience of attacking the critic.

Remember, this is the arc and that's front-and centre where Oyster aim their products. All those coastal toytown bavarias should be the ones with snapped masts.
 
Re: Knocking british products /riot

[ QUOTE ]

I'd be interested to hear more details, but it's him and his products on a back foot, not me and certainly not the general population of the uk, despite the easy convenience of attacking the critic.

[/ QUOTE ]

Sanorider is a new member and this is his/her first post. I welcome the contributions of Oyster's PR people to this discussion.

Back when IBM was the undisputed titan of the computer industry, my husband had the temerity to question the integrity of a major IBM product. IBM knew just how to deal with this. “They had 640 happy users worldwide”, they explained to my husband’s boss “it was such a pity that this one person couldn’t make the software work”. So my husband started the UK User Group and found that he was not alone, all 48 UK users had exactly the same problems, and had been similarly treated if they dared to complain.

Back then it used to be said that ‘IBM believes it is morally wrong NOT to separate a fool from his money… and IBM are very moral people’. Sound familiar? Hubris has a cost. Upstarts like Microsoft and Oracle now dominate the software world, and a manufacturer of, god forbid, PCs named Dell now dominates the hardware world.

Now if Mr Mathews were to initiate an open dialogue with his Oyster owners via a forum just like these (the software comes free in a Microsoft dotnet starter kit) then maybe the owners would be emboldened to say in public all the things they tell other boat owners in private. I would urge Oyster owners to speak out now for the long term good of the company for, surely, 'constructive criticism between friends is the sincerest kindness, only tell your enemies exactly what they want to hear.’
 
Re: Knocking british products /riot

[ QUOTE ]
I would urge Oyster owners to speak out now

[/ QUOTE ]

We bought ours secondhand. We looked at Swans, HRs and a few others. My wife was fairly new to sailing and hadn't even heard of Oyster, but it was love at first sight for her and impressed her enough that she didn't want t look any further. I was surprised and would have bet on the HR being much more to her taste. In truth, I'd have probably gone for the Swan.

Build quality? Not primarily. She liked the lines, the teak deck, the layout and it felt right to her. It was only when we had her craned out for the survey and I saw her underwater lines together with the rig that I became really excited about her.

Faults? Yes, of course she has. No more than the Swans I used to sail, mind. But she's built as a fast cruiser and would safely take us around the world. She is very well built - I know almost every inch of her inside and out.

I haven't met Mr Matthews but his 'must win' approach to sailing and boatbuilding has provided us with a lovely byproduct which we thoroughly enjoy.

I sense a bit of the stick which Mirabella V received in this thread. For myself, I salute the brave pioneers who push frontiers despite the risk of ridicule. If it wasn't for them, we'd still be paddling around in dugouts.

Or at least I probably would.

Getting back to the original subject, I see there's an Oyster 66 in 3rd position in the ARC so not totally crap, eh?
 
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