Resolution
Well-Known Member
+1
I read forums like this for the quick speculation interspersed with an occasional fact. I read the YW report closely and considered it a fair and informative job.
Oyster Yachts gone into administration
- Thread starter Happyboating
- Start date
+1
I read forums like this for the quick speculation interspersed with an occasional fact. I read the YW report closely and considered it a fair and informative job.
pvb
Well-Known Member
I don't think that's correct - Oyster Marine Ltd is the company which builds and sells the boats, so must be included in the administration. In any case, the administrators have been appointed to the holding company, Oyster Marine Holdings Ltd, which owns the other Oyster companies, therefore all the companies are basically involved.
Cheery
Well-Known Member
Apart from a thumbnail picture and one paragraph, you never see articles on superyachts in MBY when there is a marina fire or sinking, these are the fodder of Superyacht World. Same thing but not saily things isn't it?
dom
Well-Known Member
Suspect you have answered your own question. Finance loves lawyers: little skirmishes cost £10-50K, emotional cat-fights £200-£900K, prolonged heels-dug-in contests with payments into court, witness statements, endless QC musings, etc, can head towards £2-5m, and the sky is the limit for big bananas regulatory/DoJ challenges. Don't know why these tend to be the numbers, but one sees them a lot. In the midst of this endless tactics are deployed to lay offside traps in terms of costs for the other side and so on.
An article which risked ruffling the feathers of PE outfits, wealthy owners, big lenders who may claim that their collateral has been impaired ...to send Elaine into the middle of that armed with ???x£4 per month ....jeeez
Oh yes, Elaine, when you've smoothed that over, can you go to the Red Sea and sort out those pesky pirates once and for all ...an old rib and a few out of date flares should do the trick. And do hurry up, cos we want a full report in our Easter special
Oh sorry, the answer; that publication was a small Russian affair happy to go with "single-source", "market-sources" stories. Nothing wrong with that, but different to researched journalism, probably sent to th evarious parties prior to publication to gauge their response, challenge the facts, etc. The Russians got a lot right and well done them; then so could the MAIB after a couple of weeks?
[70521]
Well-Known Member
I do get just a tad annoyed when somegody posts just a link and no comment!
A sad day for a lot of people. Perhaps the brand and assets will be bought by a company who can manage it better, who knows.
lw395
Well-Known Member
I somehow never saw the magazine article.
Did it reach any useful conclusions?
In my view, the keel either fell off due to an accident, i.e. a grounding which weakened things, or it was never strong enough.
If the latter did we ever find out how that came to be?
A keel is not really complex or clever, just big with a lot of consequences if you get it wrong.
(Getting the shape to get the boat to windward best is ccomplex and clever, a weight on a lever much less so)
dom
Well-Known Member
All true, now look at the pics dunedin referenced!!!
http://wavetrain.net/news-a-views/70...olina-star-iii
Angele
Well-Known Member
That is a bit harsh.
As of early yesterday the situation was that Oyster was neither in liquidation, nor administration. It has just run out of cash. (If that situation is not rapidly sorted, it will inevitably lead to one or the other fairly rapidly). The update that Happyboating posted gave the news that Oyster Marine Holdings Limited is now in administration. That is news. So I think it is useful that he posted it here. If he didn't feel like commenting, then that is his prerogative.
[70521]
Well-Known Member
We all see the world in different ways. I like news, but why just post a link without comment.
A company running out of cash, best not tell my accountant wife she would have a few comments.
At least we now know the Holding Company has appointed Administrators. Sad news is 160 skilled people are laid off.
http://www.ybw.com/news-from-yachti...oes-into-liquidation-160-staff-laid-off-65572
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pvb
Well-Known Member
The YW investigation essentially concluded that the keel stub was poorly designed and poorly manufactured. The article said...
"The conventional hull construction that Oyster had hitherto used in all its boats sees a lattice work of foam stringers and frames over-laminated with glassfibre and carbon fibre. However, on its 825 model, Oyster utilised a form of construction that was new to the company - a moulded structural grid (see Diagram 1). Although new to Oyster, these grids have been around for decades and are installed on thousands of sailboats and powerboats.
Oyster chose to manufacture the four pairs of keel webs and the port and starboard sides of the grid as separate fabrications. These components were then tied together, and tied to the hull structure, in four ways. The two parts of the grid itself were bonded into the hull in much the same way as a conventional foam stringer system would be constructed, by over-laminating with glassfibre. The keel webs were laminated to the sides of the keel stub. Carbon fibre was laminated across the grid itself to tie the port and starboard sides together. Finally, the keel webs were bonded to the conjoined grid structure
above by over-laminating with glassfibre (see Diagram 2) with that over-lamination designed to bridge all the T-shaped intersections and transmit the keel loads from the webs, across the T-joints, and into the grid structure and hull shell more generally.
When Polina Star’s keel failed. Oyster took photographs of test areas excised from the keel structures on the other two 825s. Although Oyster could not give us these photographs for legal and insurance reasons, what we were shown revealed an assembly that was compromised. Although Oyster informed us that the port and starboard sections of the grid had been dry fitted so that the correct positions of the keel webs could be marked on the hull, the photographs we saw seemed to indicate that some of the webs had not been aligned correctly with the grid. Furthermore, the images showed that filler and wedges of foam had been added around the tops of the keel webs around the area of join, almost certainly so the glassfibre over-lamination would run smoothly over the join. The effect of those foam wedges would be to reduce the surface area of the bond between the over-lamination and the keel webs.
Other pictures revealed a kink in the over-lamination around the joint, which would produce areas of localised stress concentration under load. Essentially, the photographs we saw seemed to show that the 825 had a potential underlying manufacturing weakness in one of the highest load areas on the boat. Because of the damage wrought by the keel failure and the subsequent sinking and salvage, we cannot state categorically that Polina Star’s structure was compromised in exactly the same way. But all the evidence we have seen does suggest that this was the case, and it is an opinion that Oyster says it shares."
Angele
Well-Known Member
As it is the holding company that has gone into administration, and not Oyster Marine Limited itself, those with an interest in these things can pull off the 2016 accounts for Oyster Marine Holdings Limited from Companies House.
clicky
Mildly more illuminating than its subsidiary's accounts (the only ones posted earlier), because most of the intercompany debts disappear on consolidation. You can also see that customer deposits are in a subsidiary - presumably Oyster Marine Limited - so the buyers might not be panicking quite yet.
clicky
Mildly more illuminating than its subsidiary's accounts (the only ones posted earlier), because most of the intercompany debts disappear on consolidation. You can also see that customer deposits are in a subsidiary - presumably Oyster Marine Limited - so the buyers might not be panicking quite yet.
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lw395
Well-Known Member
I would imagine the concern of customers is that their deposits are in the form of ownership of a part finished boat, which nobody is currently turning into a finished boat.
lw395
Well-Known Member
I looked at the pictures, they really do not tell me very much.
Apart from, it was made of fibreglass and it's broken.
It's easy to post on SA 'that needed to be thicker' or 'my Contessa 32 isn't built like that', but engineering isn't like that these days.
From what PVB quoted, it looks a lot like a failure of the 'design for manufacture'/manufacture/QA loop.
Angele
Well-Known Member
I thought the one with the caption "A sample of the damaged laminate suggests it is very dry and was not thoroughly wetted out during construction" spoke volumes.
lw395
Well-Known Member
It mostly speaks volumes about peoples limited experience of GRP that has been stressed to destruction.
This was extensively discussed elsewhere. When top quality GRP fails under certain forms of stress, it often looks exactly like it was never wetted out.
IF you want to see this for yourself, find a GRP such as some dinghy battens or tent poles. They are clear, you can see there is no air in them, they are totally wetted out.
But if you bend it to destruction, it becomes a splintered mess of fibres looking like 'there wasn't enough resin in there'.
dunedin
Well-Known Member
As far as I can tell, it is one of the only, perhaps the only, case of a catastrophic hull failure of a cruising yacht which caused the whole keel structure to peel off suddenly at sea in moderate conditions, without any evidence of any grounding or other damage. Very fortunate no lives lost.
Arguably more shocking, in terms of causes and severity, than Cheeki Rafiki, though fortunately not in terms of fatalities probably only due to a combination of luck, much more moderate conditions and closer to rescue.
Can anybody name ANY other incident of such catastrophic hull failure of a recent and unmodified cruising yacht, not caused by hitting off underwater objects?
dom
Well-Known Member
Interesting and good point. However, even if those pics are inconclusive pvb's point earlier re the PE owner strengthening the keel on his version of the same model, suggests that Oyster knew ex-ante that the 825's keel structure had a big question mark over it.in terms of scantlings or construction.
lw395
Well-Known Member
I'm not aware of anything remmotely comparable.
However, this is thread drift to some extent.
It would seem that Oyster and their customers had pretty much put this disaster behind them.
There seems to little to suggest that the Polina incident/saga directly caused the cash crisis this year?
However, this is thread drift to some extent.
It would seem that Oyster and their customers had pretty much put this disaster behind them.
There seems to little to suggest that the Polina incident/saga directly caused the cash crisis this year?
Angele
Well-Known Member
In truth we know nothing about the causes of the company's financial problems, because we have been told nothing by "the horse's mouth". I think everything that has been said on this thread as to the reasons for the failure is speculation. Whether it does have anything to do with the Polina incident of not is just speculation. Just as a much as saying it may or may not have had something to do with funding from their shareholder is also speculative.
SO40
Active Member
Well said. Let´s just wait and see people.