Yachting World - July 2018

SUPERSAIL WORLD 78 JULY-SEPTEMBER 2018

‘ The company is intending to

secure a production race boat

contract to protect it from the

vagaries of custom building’

fewer boatbuilders, but the customer won’t have to wait as
long for his yacht and it should, in theory, be less expensive.

LABOUR-INTENSIVE
Some of the numbers quoted by Fibre Mechanics in recent
marketing material are stark reminders of just how labour
intensive composite yacht building can be. The company use
the Green Marine-built, 115ft Farr Yacht Design ketch Sojana
as an example. Using traditional methods, the flat panels
alone on this yacht would consume 15,000 hours, but the
total composite work, including hull and deck, requires more
like 80,000 hours, assuming the tooling is made by a CNC
machine. If the tooling is handmade the hours would rise to
100,000, which equates to 40 or 50 man years!
Geoff Stock told us that an associated problem is finding
a sufficient number of skilled composite workers to make
building a yacht like this viable. “Assembling a skilled team of
35 people, which is what is required to complete a 115-footer
in an acceptable time frame, is extremely difficult,” he said.

AN EARLY CUSTOMER
The attractions of mechanising a large part of the composite
process are clear. Fibre Mechanics has attracted business
from production multihull builders Gunboat, whose Gunboat
68 is a natural candidate for automated panel construction.
Her hulls are supported by numerous bulkheads and ring
frames and her technically complex full-beam aft bulkhead,
which also takes the loads of the mainsheet track, has
already been fabricated by Fibre Mechanics using carbon
skins from Poland. In all, there will be more than 70 individual
items per boat made by Fibre Mechanics.
The company has also been heavily involved with the refit
and part rebuild of the Bill Tripp-designed 39m sloop G2

(formerly Cinderella IV). The yacht’s hull was built originally

by Green Marine for Vitters in 2006, so the Fibre Mechanics

staff are familiar with her. Pendennis Shipyard in Falmouth,

Cornwall, has removed her aft wheelhouse superstructure

and there have been major changes to her interior requiring

new bulkheads. This is a collaborative effort between Tripp

Design and the interior specialists Nauta Yachts.

Work is well-advanced on a new composite 14m/46ft

powerboat designed as a large yacht tender and, in addition

to the Gunboat project, there is work on other composite

multihulls in the pipeline. The company is also intending

to provide some manufacturing stability by securing a

production race boat contract that Stock hopes will protect

the company from the peaks and troughs of custom building.

THE TEAM

When walking through Fibre Mechanics, it feels like the Green

Marine of old, although such a suggestion is quickly quashed.

It is the case, however, that within a few weeks of announcing

the launch of the company in 2016, Stock was joined by five

senior engineers and project managers who had formed

the backbone of Green Marine for many years. It’s not a bad

pedigree on which to build because founders Bill Green and

Ian King created a company renowned for its innovative

COMPOSITE WORK ON A
YACHT LIKE THE 115FT
GREEN MARINE BUILT
SOJANA REQUIRES OVER
80,000 HOURS