Repairing Prospero

Making up for EM Yacht's defective construction.

As you might have noticed, I've been rather outspoken about what I consider to be EM Yacht's appalling construction, and Wittey Marine's failure to honour their legal obligations. The repairs to Prospero are going to cost around £17,500 + VAT (at least, that's the estimate!), and I am going to have to foot the bill (as well as various other ones).

My lawyer found another company on the Hamble who gave a somewhat higher estimate, and I contacted two other repair people in Britain; one of whom pleaded too much business (yes, really!) and the other never replied. Herr Gregor's estimate had been in the region of €16,600 + VAT. Mr Wittey's offer of a repair by EM Yachts 'at very attractive rates' amounted to €24,000 + VAT.

When I told EM Yachts of this "offer", they said that they were 'not familiar where from the quoted by you cost figures were taken and to which scope of repair they are related we are unable to comment them'. In other words, Mr Wittey's figures were not those quoted by EM Yachts. Far be it from me to suggest Mr Wittey's offer was less than genuine, but when it was very substantially greater than the estimates made by British and German boatbuilders, one tends to smell a rat. A very big rat.

So what needs doing?

The Huzar hull is constructed as a 'foam sandwich' - the two photographs below illustrate the idea:

Click on the pictures to get a larger view

These are photos taken by Herr Gregor. If the job had been done properly, then the outer skin of GRP, or fibreglass, should have been stuck very firmly to the foam inside. If the foam comes unstuck later, this is called 'delamination'.

Prospero hasn't delaminated: it's never been laminated to begin with! It is very obvious from these pictures that it's never been stuck in the first place. You can see great swathes of foam quite untouched by any bonding compound. In fact, you might say that in this case, EM Yacht's contruction has been appalling.

The part circled in red isn't too bad, you can see that some of the foam stays stuck to the panel that's been cut away. As for the rest of it - well, how EM Yachts and Mr Wittey can maintain that the boat was built correctly in the first place is baffling. They've had this report for more than a year. They're either deluding themselves or not facing the truth.

The picture above shows the boat under construction. You can just make out the foam area as a slightly lighter grey in the hull. I've marked the area on the starboard side in yellow.

Here's a plan of the boat and a view of the real thing.

The hatched portion is where the foam is, and you can see it corresponds to the dark blue topsides. The cut out panel area can be seen in the photo, where yellow plastic has been taped over the area. This is the 'destructive testing' which so upset Mr Wittey (but then, he's good at focussing on the peripheral issues and evading the important ones).

How is it going to be fixed?

All those blue topsides are going to have to be cut away. Not all at once, otherwise the hull would collapse. The other imponderable is how well the foam is stuck on the inside. Worst case: cut away all the foam, get new foam, stick it on, build new fibreglass over the foam. Move to a new area, start again.

The new fibreglass has to smoothed down and faired. Finally, the hull is painted. I haven't decided on the colour yet!