Northshore creditors meeting

Seajet said:
' The first failure ' being a total rip and disaster for suppliers is the impression I got;
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Am sure someone posted here that the suppliers actually got all their losses back over time from the new company (with the exception of the Inland Revenue). Also there is someone who posts here (can't remember who but he has a Southerly 47 as his avatar) who mentioned his own boat was being built during the previous liquidation, and IIRC he said that although it wasn't much fun at the time, he now regards it as ancient history......
 
Seajet said:
Re lift keel boats, the highly regarded Ovni had the approach, ' let's make a strong lifting rudder blade '.

Southerly decided ' as the thing dries out, let's take the easy option and fit a tiny rudder which will turn any real sailor right off in an instant '...:rolleyes:
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Could I respectfully suggest that this is a little unfair. I have sailed aboard several Southerlies including drying one out in Brittany. The twin rudders are extremely strong - designed to take the weight of the boat - and there are a lot of advantages to them once sailing. These include much less weather helm, small turning circles and redundancy if you somehow damaged one. The disadvantage is manoeuvring in a marina due to no prop wash etc. I think on balance the advantages significantly outweigh the few disadvantages and twin rudders are very seaworthy. On the other hand the Ovni has only a relatively weak centre board and an AVS of 124 versus 144 for the Southerly. I know which I would rather be offshore in
 
AndrewfromFal said:
Am sure someone posted here that the suppliers actually got all their losses back over time from the new company (with the exception of the Inland Revenue). Also there is someone who posts here (can't remember who but he has a Southerly 47 as his avatar) who mentioned his own boat was being built during the previous liquidation, and IIRC he said that although it wasn't much fun at the time, he now regards it as ancient history......
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Buyers depositors are secured in a client account that has a charge on the property so they will be safe. Also BMF contract provides buyers a lot of protection. It's the small suppliers who are going to suffer unfortunately although after last time you would have expected them to restrict credit and demand either payment up front or at least a serious deposit
 
lustyd said:
Is it just me or does this look like it ought to be illegal? Reads very much like fraud to my uneducated mind!
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Its a funny one. We have limited liability companies because limiting the amount you can lose encourages entrepreneurs to build up businesses. All the companies on the FTSE are limited liability. Some of them are daft enough to give up that protections ( step forward BP) and as a consequence are being taken to the cleaners in this case by yankee lawyers.

It cannot be fraud becuase in no way was it hidden. When Abbot first arrived I negotiated seriously for a 35RS. I should have bought it since the price deal was a steal. But I didnt because as a businessman I could see why the group was structured in the way it was with the land in one company and the liabilities in another. And as a businessman, I would probably have done the same.

What I wouldnt do if I was Irons Brois or Lewmar etc is ever supply an Abbott company again after being let down.

In the end, its commercial life. Dog eat dog. Weak to the wall and all that. Not nice but no one was in any way deceived.

P.S. The bit that puzzles me is why they havent developed the site for housing after the failure. They would make far more money that way than ever making boats. But to be fair to Lester he not only invested seriously in the first company but he has been daft enough ( I believe he is still involved) to go back into boat building after experiencing first hand what dozens of other british boatbuilders ( not to mkention most of the scandinavians and Bav and Jeanneau) have done before. Namely that boatbuilding is a way to lose money not to make it.
 
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birdseye said:
In the end, its commercial life. Dog eat dog. Weak to the wall and all that. Not nice but no one was in any way deceived.
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Except for all the Northshore customers who did not possess your ability to audit the corporate structure behind the sales front end.
 
birdseye said:
... P.S. The bit that puzzles me is why they havent developed the site for housing after the failure. They would make far more money that way than ever making boats...
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Perhaps the time is now right for land development.
A couple of years ago house prices were in the doldrums but with current rates of house price inflation this could be exactly his plan.
 
birdseye said:
But to be fair to Lester he not only invested seriously in the first company but he has been daft enough ( I believe he is still involved) to go back into boat building after experiencing first hand what dozens of other british boatbuilders ( not to mkention most of the scandinavians and Bav and Jeanneau)
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Unless something happened in the past 3 years I do not think Bavaria ever ceased trading or went into liquidation. Bavaria was a family owned business for 29 years, experienced organic growth in that period, a period in which Westerly Yachts went bust 3 times and rose phoenix like with with roughly the same operational setup.

After 29 years the family sold Bavaria to some investment outfit at an amazing valuation. A couple of years later when then credit crunch struck the debt associated with that external leveraged buyout was sold off highly discounted.
 
I think that the successive years of attack of the middle classes have taken a toll on this company. Since Tony Blair came to power, he sought more and more ways of extracting tax. Everything from VAT, Stamp duty, fuel duty, withholding tax etc etc. This culture has not gone away with the present government, where we have seen stamp duty increased to 7%. The result is that disposable incomes have been under attack and as older people have been selling their boats younger one are not replacing them so our hobby is in serious decline. You only have to look at south coast marinas, where there are empty berths everywhere, I believe that Torquay has 70 vacant berths. Middle classes have been squeezed such that few doctors can now afford to send their children to private boarding schools, that was not the case 20 years ago. We now have a society of super rich who largely opt out of taxation and the rest. The middle classes have found that they ware paying for our bloated welfare state and mismanagement. Any one in their right mind knows that in the long run it is cheaper to buy and own your own property, all over the country major assets from schools to hospitals are built using PFI there result is that the country is in hock and governments are stuck because they can't raise enough taxes so they just try to keep finding new ways to make us pay our "fair share" so watch out for the mansion tax, gain access to your whole pension fund at your peril and I can foresee a capital transfer tax being added to the list. Southerly were aimed at the middle ground, Oyster and Discovery are for the super rich and the demographics are more in their favour.
 
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Seven Spades said:
I think that the successive years of attack of the middle classes have taken a toll on this company.
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The complete inverse is true. The last 20 years have seen an astonishing polarization of wealth, the top 10% are getting richer and Northshore appealed to a sophisticated fringe of yacht buyers who by definition are likely to be in that getting-richer-every-year 10%.

The underlying problem for Northshore is that is that people looked at the price tag, and then looked at what they got for the money and finally decided they were not prepared to fund the idyllic lifestyles of those who typically suckle off the income stream of a small time cult British yacht builder.
 
Talulah said:
Ouch! Recently there was the Southerley owner on here who was having his keel mechanism looked at. He did say Southerley were looking after him.
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And Cardo's boat was slowly sinking:

'The solution was finally posted over on the Southerly Owners Association forum. Turns out small cracks can form at the forward corners of the grounding plate moulding due to the stresses on the hull. I have found such a crack on one of the corners, about an inch or so long, and it's letting in a small, but constant trickle of water.'

Didn't inspire confidence.
 
Seven Spades said:
I think that the successive years of attack of the middle classes have taken a toll on this company.
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The world is divided into the haves and the have yachts. I don't think owning a southerly is a middle income proposition anymore with a 47 footer costing around 700k with options. I think Southerly were very badly managed and unlike Oyster where you pay similar prices (ok maybe slightly higher) but you receive top service. Southerly were like used car dealers with their approach to customers and they lost customers because of it.
 
jonjo5 said:
The complete inverse is true. The last 20 years have seen an astonishing polarization of wealth, the top 10% are getting richer and Northshore appealed to a sophisticated fringe of yacht buyers who by definition are likely to be in that getting-richer-every-year 10%.

The underlying problem for Northshore is that is that people looked at the price tag, and then looked at what they got for the money and finally decided they were not prepared to fund the idyllic lifestyles of those who typically suckle off the income stream of a small time cult British yacht builder.
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+1 !

Frersfanatic,

I'd be interested in the ' engineering ' of twin splayed ( tiny ) rudders to take the weight of the boat...anyone who thinks a Southerly more seaworthy or in any way superior to an Ovni ought to be sectioned ! :)
 
Just_sayin' said:
And Cardo's boat was slowly sinking:

'The solution was finally posted over on the Southerly Owners Association forum. Turns out small cracks can form at the forward corners of the grounding plate moulding due to the stresses on the hull. I have found such a crack on one of the corners, about an inch or so long, and it's letting in a small, but constant trickle of water.'

Didn't inspire confidence.
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What year and model please?
 
Seajet said:
+1 !

Frersfanatic,

I'd be interested in the ' engineering ' of twin splayed ( tiny ) rudders to take the weight of the boat...anyone who thinks a Southerly more seaworthy or in any way superior to an Ovni ought to be sectioned ! :)
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Respectfully that's a matter of opinion. I've seen the engineering behind the very robust twin rudders and I am fully satisfied. The s42 and s47 are very fast and seaworthy boats. I have not sailed an Ovni so I can only go off the numbers but centreboarders with low angle of vanishing stability do not inspire confidence from me. And their sailing performance as reported by yachting magazines is not that exciting
 
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