Oyster Problems?

[Muckle Flugga]

Originally Posted by minaret

Great example of what can happen with very large infusion setups, something I've noted with infused boats many times before, especially in cases where they are infusing both core and laminate at the same time. It can be very difficult to control resin ratio, especially in areas of the mold where complex geometry requires resin to be infused around tight curves and corners, like a keel. As someone who has done a great deal of carbon vacuum bagging in large high tech construction, I often note in factory production infusion pics the lack of gauging in the bag, and some of the more modern closed mold methods actually preclude thorough gauging. On a hand built high quality vacuum epoxy layup, I would never throw down a bag that large without not just sucker feet but gauges as well at a much higher frequency than I've ever seen in an infusion setting, for obvious reasons. This means the only way to determine actual bag pressure at any given point is by "pinch test", a wholly unsatisfactory method if much of the mold can't even be reached while in wet layup. This often results in very rich laminates, or very dry laminates. I'd love to field burn test hull samples from this boat; I'm sure you'd find the resin ratio's all over the place. Some of the more modern infusion setups are a huge gamble; when you pull the trigger and catalyze and flip on the pumps, everything better go just right in a remarkably short period of time, or you will end with less than ideal results. I'm sure they don't like to eat the possible resulting huge materials losses. Of course, in this case, it would have helped if there had been some laminate in there to begin with! And no, I wouldn't think the designer would be able to escape any responsibility here. This is what happens when a high quality product name gets sold out. If people don't get wise to this continuing trend and bother to educate themselves on the basics of yacht construction before buying a yacht, before long all we will have left is this sort of thing and the full custom route. People would be better off going back to home builds like in the 60's and 70's, rather than buying from a major production builder today. Of course, no one has that sort of time or energy any more...

Thank you for your analysis of infusion issues, about which I know little.

And the bit in bold is my thinking exactly.

[Muckle Flugga]

Originally Posted by Polux

That keel design is used in many quality yachts and certified by the best certifying bodies. The problem is not the design but the way it was built, specially in what concerns the thickness of the fiberglass.

Off course a design also specifies the correct amount of composite and the thickness and I don't know if in what regards that the design is appropriated or not, I am talking about the design with a single strong attachment up besides the others that rely on the keel structure and connect the stub to the keel.

Hi Polux,

I have no issue with the general design idea of a keel stub and bolt on lead. It *can* be one of the most reliable and well found designs. I far prefer it to the bolt on keel with no radius in a "T" formation, which is inherently weaker, though can be strong, depending on precise specs, of course. In this case it appears to have been radically underbuilt however, and I assume at this point the builder followed the specific, rather the general design.

Just one question, though: are you suggesting that the strangely long aftmost bolt is typical of this design? I have never seen a keelbolt with such a huge quantity of its working length exposed and offering leverage…

[Muckle Flugga]

Originally Posted by Polux

Some confusion here. Yes the market, and that means the ones that have the money for big yachts, prefer performance yachts but performance yachts were never cheaper than heavier boats, quite the contrary, they are more expensive for the simple reason that for building lighter and strong you have to build with more quality and with better materials...and I am not sure it was the case with Oyster, with exception of the interior

I am sure this is true in some cases, but as we have discussed before, there is a difference between a Bugatti Veyron and a Ford Mondeo with a spoiler and carbon trim…

[chris95040]

Originally Posted by Kenomac

Why? Were you in the market for a 90ft Oyster?

Macgregor 22 up to a 90ft yacht.... that's quite the move up. You might want to make it in smaller steps.

I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you aren't taking his jabs about Oyster personally (on-topic jabs, regardless of their absolute accuracy) and responding by ridiculing his boat.

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by Jon Eisberg

In some earlier posts, I've seen some references made to "Russia"... Now, I see the diagram posted appears to be in Russian...

Was this work actually done in Russia, or farmed out to a Russian subcontractor?

Certainly not. Russian boat-building is very expensive and poor quality. The Russians could outsource to Switzerland and still save money

Russians are consumers, not producers, in this market.

[JJ77]

Was this boat the previous yacht of the owner of PolinaIII?might be coincidence offcourse.They just sold it.
Yachts for sale | Contest Brokerage




Ref. new Oystermarine owner;
Oyster Marine Ltd sold to HTP Investments BV (HTP) | business News on SuperyachtNews.com


"HTP acquired Oyster by using the exclusive funds of the partners Wim de Pundert and Klaas Meertens and is therefore not subject to any restrictions with respect to the amount invested and the period over which the investment is held. "










Cheers,
JJ

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by Polux

Some confusion here. Yes the market, and that means the ones that have the money for big yachts, prefer performance yachts but performance yachts were never cheaper than heavier boats, quite the contrary, they are more expensive for the simple reason that for building lighter and strong you have to build with more quality and with better materials...and I am not sure it was the case with Oyster, with exception of the interior

Well, you can have light, strong, or cheap. Pick any two.

Or you can have really, really strong, and neither light nor cheap -- that was Oysters of the previous era.

If you suddenly want "light", then a premium product like an Oyster is going to have to forget about anything "cheap" in the production process. But if you're a hedge fund -- imagine the temptation to suck out a bit of extra profit, speculating on the Oyster reputation, and cutting some corners.

An isolated mistake in quality control won't hurt a company with such a huge and loyal base of owners as Oyster. Shirt happens, after all. More than one Swan has lost its keel at sea, and Swan did not lose its reputation as a result.


But if this is a systematic approach -- to milk the Oyster reputation, charging prices for the quality of Oysters of days past, but building them like Beneteaus or worse -- yikes. Let's hope that's not the case. It would not, however, be the first time that a hedge fund has taken over company and has run it into the ground by milking it like this.

[Alessiocannoni]

Some reply to your questions:
1-The story was published in Russia because Artur (the journalists and naval architect ) was the first one to investigate seriously around the accident; he was a Oyster fun, he came to Spain and he spent 10 days with me during last part of the rescue operation.
2- the story came up only now because the shipyard asked to the owner don't say nothing. We gave them 4 months to propose a compensation for the loss.They never offer money or a new boat for free, they used this time to sell 3 more Oyster 825 and to invent articles on magazines that let to interpretate that we had an accident against floating objects or other things. I didn't start to sail yesterday, I did my job seriousely for about 20 years, I can't accept that somebody invent that I have damaged a boat, just in order to cover his responsability.
3- I have informed the Owner of one of the boat that is now doing the ARC immediately,his boat was still in the shipyard at that time; he was really in a hurry to have the boat to partecipate to the ARC, and he accepts that the shipyard put some reinforcement on his boat (secret job).
The marketing people in Oyster shipyard are very good in their job, they are able to convince very experienced owner that they can manage a 82 feet sailing boat without crew, or that an electrical sliding door whithout manual beckup is a safe solution at sea, or that is normal to trim the boat by putting lead everywhere, or that is normal to connect the electronic of the engine to the service batteries and........have I to go ahead????? No one of the otheir Oyster owner or captains looked for me, sorry I have not explanation for that......we are speaking about safety.....we are speaking about a boat th a cost something like 6.000.000 million of Euro + vat......

[poiu]

Originally Posted by minaret

Great example of what can happen with very large infusion setups, something I've noted with infused boats many times before, especially in cases where they are infusing both core and laminate at the same time. It can be very difficult to control resin ratio, especially in areas of the mold where complex geometry requires resin to be infused around tight curves and corners, like a keel. As someone who has done a great deal of carbon vacuum bagging in large high tech construction, I often note in factory production infusion pics the lack of gauging in the bag, and some of the more modern closed mold methods actually preclude thorough gauging. On a hand built high quality vacuum epoxy layup, I would never throw down a bag that large without not just sucker feet but gauges as well at a much higher frequency than I've ever seen in an infusion setting, for obvious reasons. This means the only way to determine actual bag pressure at any given point is by "pinch test", a wholly unsatisfactory method if much of the mold can't even be reached while in wet layup. This often results in very rich laminates, or very dry laminates. I'd love to field burn test hull samples from this boat; I'm sure you'd find the resin ratio's all over the place. Some of the more modern infusion setups are a huge gamble; when you pull the trigger and catalyze and flip on the pumps, everything better go just right in a remarkably short period of time, or you will end with less than ideal results. I'm sure they don't like to eat the possible resulting huge materials losses. Of course, in this case, it would have helped if there had been some laminate in there to begin with! And no, I wouldn't think the designer would be able to escape any responsibility here. This is what happens when a high quality product name gets sold out. If people don't get wise to this continuing trend and bother to educate themselves on the basics of yacht construction before buying a yacht, before long all we will have left is this sort of thing and the full custom route. People would be better off going back to home builds like in the 60's and 70's, rather than buying from a major production builder today. Of course, no one has that sort of time or energy any more...

Wouldn't the keel stub area have been too complicated to try to build using vacuum bags that they would surely have done it in conventional ways? Can you see evidence of it being vacuum bagged?

The broken areas look dry of resin to my eyes, but if it were vacuum bagged then it would have a low resin content anyway. When I have seen broken fibreglass it always looks dry - do you think it is dry?

I certainly agree about the lack of material there. The stub flanges are ridiculous. The shape also looks wrong.

I think the people at Oyster are unlikely to be 'selling out' the company by cheapening things. The managers and new Dutch private equity owners are pretty decent people and are not likely to be scraping around to shave the insignificant 10 or 20 quid that cheapening this structure will save. Rather I think the light structure will have been more motivated by the market demand for lighter and ever faster boats. There is a corporate act of taking eyes off the ball here. How such poor engineering and possibly QC failings, whatever they are, get made will be down ultimately to corporate culture, procedural failures and the often blurred responsibility coming from shared management decisions.

[Polux]

Originally Posted by Curious Sailor

Wow.. Thought my Macgregor was bad... No oysters for me unles on the half shell. Lol

Use expoxy resin! Trust me you'll thank me!

Oyster use vynilester resins that are a derived of epoxy resins.

[Polux]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

Well, you can have light, strong, or cheap. Pick any two.

Or you can have really, really strong, and neither light nor cheap -- that was Oysters of the previous era.

If you suddenly want "light", then a premium product like an Oyster is going to have to forget about anything "cheap" in the production process. But if you're a hedge fund -- imagine the temptation to suck out a bit of extra profit, speculating on the Oyster reputation, and cutting some corners.

An isolated mistake in quality control won't hurt a company with such a huge and loyal base of owners as Oyster. Shirt happens, after all. More than one Swan has lost its keel at sea, and Swan did not lose its reputation as a result.


But if this is a systematic approach -- to milk the Oyster reputation, charging prices for the quality of Oysters of days past, but building them like Beneteaus or worse -- yikes. Let's hope that's not the case. It would not, however, be the first time that a hedge fund has taken over company and has run it into the ground by milking it like this.

I agree with all that but that does not take anything regarding what I have said. Light boats require a more careful building, better control quality, better materials and better built and that results in comparatively more expensive sailboats.

Lots of very strong performance cruisers around for many years doing extensive racing without problems, being sailed harder and doing more miles than most heavier cruisers.

Normally the brands that do that are specialized on that type of built, some coming or doing also race boats and mastering the building techniques and the needed quality control.

Sometimes brands that have been doing other type of boats and change the type of boats that are doing have problems. That happened with Bavaria and now with Oyster.

Regarding Oyster let me point out that has nothing with the boat being too light. A D/L of 121 for a boat of that size is on the high side regarding performance cruisers of that size. Lots of successful boats built with the same materials and techniques with that D/L for the size.

The problem is not being too light but being badly built or badly designed.

Let me remind you that Oyster had in the past built performance cruisers comparatively lighter than this one, the light wave line, and the boats were well built and strong. One of them is a famous one, the Red Oyster, a 48ft 28 year's old design, that has been extensively raced with an incredibly number of miles under his belly.

Right now it is making a fantastic ARC on the racing division sailing as fast as a Outremer 51 or a Pogo 50 and sailing not far from the first Oyster 825 and ahead of the 2nd one.

I guess they forgot how to build that type of boats

There is also another issue that is being making bigger and bigger yachts very fast coming for smaller boats that is what they have built for many years and that with an increasing production of boats.

Adverts like these don't inspire a lot of trust on me, from a brand that made the first boat over 80ft just some years ago:

"...we had just set a new world record. With nearly 6.3 tonnes of resin flowing in around four hours, this was the largest single continuous infusion anywhere in the world – the previous record being a bridge structure at around 6 tonnes."

[Alessiocannoni]

I have been for many years the captain of a 88 feet built by Green marine, a fast cruiser abou 13 T lighter than th 825. She sailed 2 times around the world passing under the capes, Greenland, south Georgia, ecc. She never lost the mast, she never lost the keel, she is still sailing. The secret? Lifting keel, water ballast, carbon fiber, epoxy resin joynery with honey-cell core, no teck on the deck. This are the technologies to build a fast cruiser.....all things unknown by a lot of shipyards.

[Polux]

Originally Posted by poiu

Wouldn't the keel stub area have been too complicated to try to build using vacuum bags that they would surely have done it in conventional ways? Can you see evidence of it being vacuum bagged?

The broken areas look dry of resin to my eyes, but if it were vacuum bagged then it would have a low resin content anyway. When I have seen broken fibreglass it always looks dry - do you think it is dry?

I certainly agree about the lack of material there. The stub flanges are ridiculous. The shape also looks wrong.
...

There is another point here that is to know if that type of keel structure with a stub is the more adequate regarding performance cruisers. I see that structure being used a lot on heavier boats but I don't see it used on performance cruisers.

That structure relies on thick laminate to maintain the integrity of the stub and a performance cruiser does not use normally thick laminate (comparatively) but a better distribution of efforts by the hull.

On that article on the Russian magazine a Spanish surveyor put the major cause of the accident on the lack of thickness of the laminate on that area.

Curiously a less adequate design can have as origin the relatively conservativness of Oyster owners: That keel structure (with a stub) looks stronger than an apparently lighter structure and less voluminous keels that are used on most performance cruisers (even big yachts). Things are not always what they look

[Kenomac]

Originally Posted by chris95040

I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you aren't taking his jabs about Oyster personally (on-topic jabs, regardless of their absolute accuracy) and responding by ridiculing his boat.

Your assumption is ridiculous.

If you've read some of my posts, you'd know that we moved up from a 12ft kite sailboat to a 19ft O'Day, then onto a stepping stone Hunter 450, then onto our present Oyster 53.

Small steps, good advice... Just like I wrote. Don't make assumptions based on your own lack of knowledge.

[poiu]

Originally Posted by Polux

There is another point here that is to know if that type of keel structure with a stub is the more adequate regarding performance cruisers. I see that structure being used a lot on heavier boats but I don't see it used on performance cruisers.

That structure relies on thick laminate to maintain the integrity of the stub and a performance cruiser does not use normally thick laminate (comparatively) but a better distribution of efforts by the hull.

On that article on the Russian magazine a Spanish surveyor put the major cause of the accident on the lack of thickness of the laminate on that area.

Curiously a less adequate design can have as origin the relatively conservativness of Oyster owners: That keel structure (with a stub) looks stronger than an apparently lighter structure and less voluminous keels that are used on most performance cruisers (even big yachts). Things are not always what they look

I don't agree with all this. The thick cross section of the keel stub if properly designed and built will give an enormously strong keel, far stronger than a thin keel using the same amount of material. That is a simple engineering issue. I think it is wrong to imply that a stub keel is not tied as well as a thin fin keel into the rest of the hull structure. It is usually as it should be. It looks stronger, that is true and if it isn't going to be made stronger then there is no point in it at all.

There are plenty of ways to badly build a keel. There are a lot of boats with fin keel nightmare designs out there and getting almost no support from the ribs and stringers. The modern trend of flat bottomed zero bilge designs makes this so much harder to achieve.