A Christmas Pressie from Oyster

Oh wow - these are the samples of wood, fabric and avonite for the galley from Oyster. I have them pinned up in our lounge room so I can look at them everyday and start imagining what things will work. Our plan is for it to be very neutral with a sheen so we can introduce colours as our ideas change. 

Deck Moulding

It's really happening, the deck has been moulded and we just received these pictures.... We understand the hull moulding will start just before Christmas.

Oyster Visit November 2014

We took a lot of pleasure in watching the craftsmen at work

A busy yard

Our first glimpse of the new stern design - fab!

Andrew inspect the 'man cave' on 475-01

This is the light Oak we have chosen for the interior

We choose this door design

We think we'll have this style teak floor boards

How glamorous - maybe a rain shower would be a good option....

Carolyn updating the work list at Oyster

Introducing the MWL

The MWL or Master Work List is how we work through options and agree exactly how Askari will be customised to meet our sailing needs. Today we received the first draft and John our project manager has already included all the items we had added to our contract and a list of other things he thinks we may need. The process means he retains control and we mark our updates and show where we agree, he then issues a final version of that list for us to sign and return, then we move onto the next. Apparently we will get 7/8 of these as we go through the build.

We are planning a visit to the UK in November so that will be a great opportunity to meet John and go through the MWL. We don't think the boat will be moulded by then but it will be very exciting.

Southampton Boat Show

We spent two days at the Southampton Boat show, with Oyster, on other blue water cruising boats and with suppliers - exhausting but so much fun!

Celebrating our new boat in the sun at Southampton Boatshow - is this a dream???

Made the decision to change the table on our boat to this fold out version as seen on the 575

Oyster have a brokerage show at the same time - a great opportunity to see features we like and don't like.

Love this idea to remove the spare halyards from cluttering the mast

Feeling at home on the 575 - hope he's not getting foot disease

The serious side - picked out a liferaft at the Ocean Safety stand

We love the new chunky steps and stainless hand rails - we will have something similar....

Shoosh don't tell anyone but I had to test the bed for size - this is a 575 but I think its the same size

The first decision made

The first choice we had to make was to decide on the colour of our 'cove line and boot tops' - these are the lines that on the hull just above the water line and down the side; the go faster stripes. Oyster standard is navy blue, however we wanted something different and so decided on grey, dark grey but trying to find the right shade was quite a dilemma. Some greys are green grey - yuck, others are too pale. At one point we walked every jetty at Fremantle Sailing Club looking for boats with lines in a grey we liked. In the end we short listed to 3 RAL colours and Oyster made sample panels in gelcoat over fibreglass and shipped them to us so we could see exactly how it would look. We finally decided on RAL7024....

I really hope we will be better at making decisions as this process goes on as that decision took two months.

Contract signed.....

It's official we are building Oyster 475-03.....