june/july 2016cruisingworld.com73began conceiving the Balance 526. Hull number
one of that series launched in December.Phoenix Marine/Xquisite Yachts, Atlantis
xquisiteyachts.com
Phoenix Marine was born from the ashes of
Dean Catamarans, which liquidated in 2012
after more than 25 years in business. The com-
pany had just introduced a new 50-foot design,
of which four boats had been built. A small syn-
dicate of employees, customers and creditors
eventually purchased the Dean assets. Chief
designer Rudolf Jonker, a Dean employee for 18
years, had spent the previous fi ve years on the50 project and wanted to see it continue. One
of his customers was Tamas Hamor, who’d pur-
chased the fourth and fi nal Dean 50 and sailed
it 13,000 miles. Already in a charter business
called Xtsea, Hamor started Xquisite Yachts
in 2014 to market the boat. Now branded as
the X5 (sail or power), the 50-footer is built by
Phoenix and sold by Xquisite Yachts.Robertson and Caine, Cape Town
robertsonandcaine.com
Among South African boatbuilders, Robertson
and Caine is the 800-pound gorilla in the room.
Occupying four production plants near Cape
Town, the privately held company employs
some 1,400 workers. The exclusive catamaran
builder for Tui Marine (which owns The Moor-
ings and Sunsail charter companies and sells
Leopard catamarans), R&C has orders for 175
boats in 2016 and 211 boats in 2017. These range
from 40 feet to 58 feet, both power and sail.
Sixty percent of those boats will go into charter
and 40 percent to private owners. Founder John
Robertson now lives in Tampa, Florida, with the
title of executive chairman; a motorcycle acci-
dent killed Jerry Caine in 1999. R&C’s managingBOATBUILDERPROFILES
zil is procurement,” he said. “Cape
Town has such a yacht-building facil-
ity that these guys can get what they
need. We’ve got the Harken guys here.
Southern Spars came to the boat to
set up the rig. Ullman in Cape Town
made the sails.” In Brazil, by con-
trast, “Everything had to be ordered
six months out, shipped in and then
trucked. So you have all this costly
material, and it’s just sitting there.”
Interestingly, Rudi told me that
Robertson and Caine’s high produc-
tion scale inadvertently exerts an
infl uence on the cost of components
for all South African boatbuilders. “If
I order a winch that’s on one of their
boats, it’s a lot less expensive than one
that isn’t,” he said.
South Africa’s most distinctive fea-
ture is its labor market: What skills
are available, and at what cost? The
legacy of apartheid and its aftermath
fundamentally shape business here,
creating both opportunities and con-
straints that are unlike those you’ll
fi nd elsewhere. Some of these factors
take shape in government and indus-
try programs; others are deeply root-
ed in ethnic culture. South Africa of-
fi cially designates people according to
race: Black African, Coloured (mixed
race), White and so on. Through an
offi cial program called Black Eco-
nomic Empowerment, based on score
cards and created to redress the in-
equities of apartheid, the South Afri-
can government formally grades each
business on its degree of diversity.
Boatbuilding jobs are welcome in
South Africa, as nationwide unem-
ployment fi gures fl oat around 25 per-
cent. The going rate for an entry- level
laminator, according to one Cape
Town builder I interviewed, is 40
rand ($2.70) per hour; highly skilled
workers earn 100 rand ($6.70) per
hour. Assuming eight-hour days and
240 working days in the year, that
amounts to annual salaries of between
$5,000 and $13,000. By contrast, a
recent study by the state of Maine
showed the average marine-trades
salary in that state to be just over
$40,000.
As an industry, South African boat-
builders are working to develop the
necessary trade skills among poten-
tial employees. Trade groups like the
South African Boat Builders Export
Council (SABBEX) and Marine
Industry Association South Africa
(MIASA) collaborate with False Bay
College on a three-year yacht and
boatbuilding program that combinessix-month cycles of classroom work
with equal intervals in apprentice-
ships. Every Cape Town yard I visited
employed students from this pro-
gram. Otherwise, each company
trains its own staff.
“Virtually every one of our guys has
been trained by us,” said Peter Weh-
rley of Matrix. “A lot of our guys had
never been employed before. We gen-
erally start them at sweeper and see
how they operate. Then, slowly but
surely, we train them up. It’s actually
quite rewarding to be part of the
community.”Phil Berman compared his boat-
building experiences in South Africa
and China. “In China,” he said, “Lee
[Xiangong] builds our boats. Lee went
to a university of boatbuilding, but he
isn’t a lifelong sailor. Lee is going to
do exactly what I tell him to do.” In
China, he said, communication took
longer, and so it took longer to get
projects done the way they wanted.
And in South Africa?
“Jonathan [Paarman] isn’t going to
do exactly what he’s told to do,” Phil
said, laughing. “If he thinks some-
thing’s stupid, he’s going to let me
know about it right away — because
he’s a sailor. He intuitively knows.
“In South Africa,” he continued,
“you have this core of South African
build guys. There’s a culture. Guys
like Jonathan, they don’t come along
very often. And it takes a lifetime to
get that kind of skill set.”THE TECHNICAL SPECTRUM
Fiber. Resin. Core. No matter who’s
doing the work, the story of compos-
ite boatbuilding is the story of those
three ingredients.
The simplest, lowest-tech way toABOUT SABBEXThe South African Boatbuilders
Export Council (SABBEX) is an
association within the frame-
work of the South African
Department of Trade & Indus-
try. In addition to promoting
exports at boat shows world-
wide, SABBEX members must
adhere to an industry code of
conduct that includes warranty
procedures, owner’s manuals,
customer service and interna-
tional specifi cations; companies
that fail to meet these stan-
dards are excluded. For more
on SABBEX, visit sabbex.co.za.Balance 526Xquisite X5COURTESY OF THE MANUFACTURERS