88 89Asia-Pacific Boating January/February 2015 Asia-Pacific Boating January/February 2015

SPOTLIGHT – Oyster 825 –SPOTLIGHT – Oyster 825 –

NO SHORTCUTSIT TAKES AROUND 45,000 HOURS TO HAND BUILD A SPACIOUS, SEMI-CUSTOM OYSTER 825.

By Mike Owen

THE BRITISH MAY HAVE a reputation for reserve and restraint, but beneath this there’s often a cunning stealth. Ashore, think Bentley with fine salon comfort concealing racetrack performance, or the hybrid Range Rover that changed off-roading and high-life driving forever. Afloat, top British builder Oyster Yachts has achieved success by transforming blue-water cruising into a go-anywhere luxury business with the edges beautifully smoothed off what once had simply to be rough and tough.

This challenge to combine successfully the necessary durability and finesse for all needs is not a simple one. It is now the lifeblood of this builder with Oysters sailing between the polar extremes of elite quayside and furthest flung creek, equally at home in either. The launch last year of Reina, the first new 25m Oyster 825, gave good opportunity to decode the Oyster DNA.

Drawn by Humphreys Yacht Design in collaboration with Oyster Yachts’ in-house designers and engineers, and fully 15 per cent bigger below decks than the preceding Oyster 82, the 825’s conception was around providing, within the evolved Oyster formula, four good guest suites in the smallest size to allow also separate crew living and working quarters for greater guest privacy. That’s one more cabin than the Oyster 82 and the same as the larger 885.

Achieved without apparent compromise in this boat length under the magic 24m load line, there’s a straightforward cost benefit not just in build but also in a reduced crew, making the 825 attractive to own and to charter. That’s a common theme with Oysters – their robust build

and well-planned arrangements are finely finished, providing a sound platform for considering the business side of ownership.

None of this happened overnight. In 2013, Oyster Yachts celebrated its 40th anniversary in which time the boats – though always of quality – have advanced extraordinarily and cornered a market that even now is widening. Encouraging relationships and more varied sailing, Oyster has for a long while hosted Oyster-only regattas and rallies and as these become more ambitious and prestigious, owners are experimenting in different types of sailing. A new Oyster regatta participant from the cruising fraternity catches the competition bug and upgrades. Another joins the globe-circling, 26,000-mile Oyster World Rally, ordering the new bigger boat for the job. And so the net widens.

It’s a brand built carefully, cleverly on very sound footing. Look at the next two 825s in build at the yard and you’ll see there are no shortcuts. It’s all about precision hand-building techniques balanced with the best of appropriate modern technology. Longevity is key in the build, for safety, security and, in hand with that, high residual value.

Scantlings are not light and these boats carry weight, in materials and equipment, but not excessively. Cabinetry is solid timber, including drawer bases and insets. Yes, that marble worktop is the real stone, but a 6mm skin around a honeycomb core. And those decks aren’t just teak, they’re a chunky 12mm thick with the planking now a wider, 55mm measure, aesthetically better matching the proportion of deck expanse while reducing unseen deck fastenings concealed beneath neat caulking lines.

90 91Asia-Pacific Boating January/February 2015 Asia-Pacific Boating January/February 2015

SPOTLIGHT – Oyster 825 –

That bowsprit or more colloquially battering ram out front is also a seamless bonded secondary moulding concealing an exquisite huge piece of stainless steel engineering, ensuring the toughest integrity and exact high precision for stay foot alignment. Reflecting that same sturdiness, the shrouds for the three spreader Hall carbon rig grow through the capped bulwark style hull-deck join out of boxed carbon and stainless ferrules.

Back by one of the two helm stations behind the long, broad leisure cockpit, a man leans into his work, bedding down a bimini fitting on the coaming. He’s been preparing the masked off GRP section for what seems a long while, step by step, process by process. It’s done with care and caution, and slowly, no rush. The plan is that hardware fixings will never, ever leak.

This is hand building, not production building. It takes around 45,000 hours to build an Oyster this size, and of the three 825s built to date none is the same as another. While 825-01 Reina has a standard height, sleek deck saloon, -03 has a slightly higher profile raised saloon, and -02 has a deck extension for counter stern and tender garage with, inside the boat, many more structural changes including a galley moved from forward of mid-ships to the aft starboard quarter.

With the complexity of systems aboard these yachts, this is a massive re-engineering but all within the Oyster principles of semi-custom design and construction – something very few other constructors encourage. Shifting bulkheads is usually frowned upon.

Finessing this flexibility has come through Oyster’s work at the very top end with its flagship boats, the 100 and 125. With these, Oyster stepped into quite another league and

then brought the learnings back into the fleet beneath. Below deck, the 825 demonstrates this well from the CNC-milled floor matrix with inset joinery screwed down so solidly, right through to the make-up of those mentioned bulkheads, over-bonded and massively insulated as part of a highly effective noise and vibration control solution.

This is aided inherently also by that tight tongue and groove fitting of that cabinetry and similarly obsessively securely fixed headlinings and side panelling. Not a jot of movement, so neither shake nor rattle, yet still simply demountable for service access, and within that every part

that might naturally vibrate set on flexible mounts with no hard point of contact. So be it the hydraulic piping or a humble door stay, vibration is marginalised, and that makes for a very quiet boat.

Inside the engine room cocooned beneath the saloon floor and accessed by a cleverly concealed half height watertight bulkhead door from the forward crew lobby, systems and kit are all neatly grouped and arranged by operational and servicing priority around the key elements of, on Reina, the 5.9 litre Cummins engine and port and starboard Onan generators, respectively 22.5kW and 9.5kW. The bigger unit has the PTO for handling the heavy hydraulic demand from sail and rig controls including two captive winches, main halyard and sheet, headsail furlers, and the swinging retractable bow thruster unusually combining Lewmar and Sleipner technologies.

This customised approach is evident throughout, from the Kinetic Light/Radamec engine control system to the in-house designed PID fan control maintaining the correct temperature ratio between machinery space and external ambient. Core to the plan, minimising potential downtime, there’s a high level of redundancy and swap-out from the two centralised seawater manifolds upwards through pumps and other machinery. Everything from air conditioning and refrigeration to water making and electrical control is easily accessed and to help keep diesel clean there’s an integrated on-board fuel polishing system.

Back out in the crew lobby, just above the engine room entry on this first 825 there’s also a new monitoring system developed in collaboration with Skyships picking up and integrating data from all the on-board networks to present on a single touch-and-scroll display with incredibly good looking and intuitive 3D graphics.

Historical data from five days back can be viewed across AC, DC, tanks, engine, gensets, refrigeration, climate control, water making, fire systems, hydraulics, bilge levels, and much more, with sub categories branching out from the main tree. The list goes on and with a five-day history, faults logged and remote access over the vessel’s Internet, Oyster can help diagnose issues wherever, whenever. An interesting set up and bespoke again, because off-the-shelf solutions were simply too broad brush.

92 93Asia-Pacific Boating January/February 2015 Asia-Pacific Boating January/February 2015

SPOTLIGHT – Oyster 825 –

Oyster 825

LOA (including bowsprit) 25.15m (82.5ft)

Beam 6.31m

Draft (typical cruising trim) 3.43m

Standard rig and spar Semi-fractional sloop rig with fully battened main

Displacement (standard keel, lightship) 56,000kg

Engine Cummins QSB 5.9 305hp (227kW)

Fuel 3,000 litres

Water 2,000 litres

Sail Area 371sqm

Air Draft (Exc. Antennae) 34.16m

Each 825 to date has a very different take on accommodation but the underlying high quality of build is consistent. Reina will charter but she sails as a family boat, too, with father and three sons all 6ft 6in (198cm) and over indicating just how good space is below decks. With that extra tall headroom and plenty of upper deck and hull glazing, the interior is big, light and airy. The space is well allocated and shared, with two of the three suites aft providing an additional Pullman berth, taking total sleeping capacity to 12 including crew.

And with that Oyster eye for practicality at sea as well as rest, the layout throughout is well-planned and detailed for working and sleeping underway. Handholds abound. The shadow-gapped cabinetry is just as robust as it is refined and working areas whether at nav station, forward galley or servery-bar between forward accommodation and saloon all provide that desired work’n’wedge security.

Stowage space, as skipper Jarrod’s wife and chef/stew Floss says, is excellent, with no corner wasted and every cupboard and drawer wood-crafted specifically to purpose. That applies from the fine wine rack in the pedestal of the main saloon table to the tiny detail of diagonally sectioned cutlery drawer for optimal spoon fit, right through to the saloon’s smaller occasional table with exquisite games board inset, concealing below a cunningly clever stowage and swap out arrangement for a wide variety of other games and their pieces.

Stowage outside, too, is well matched to extended cruising and time away from shore with plentiful space for toys including diving gear and compressor in the huge lazarette locker that takes full advantage of that big beam aft drawn into this twin rudder Humphreys design.

With a fairly radical rounded chine beneath the wide stern and fairly flat underwater sections running forward, form stability is exceptional. This, combined with Reina’s tall carbon rig which saves almost a tonne in the air compared with the alloy equivalent much reduces pitch and roll, makes for a very easy ride even in a lumpy seaway.

Humphreys has extensive twin rudder experience from Vendee Globe and Volvo Ocean Race to mainstream production and for Oyster delivers a very successful configuration. On the 825 steering is almost finger light, she settles into the groove, quickly, easily, virtually self steering. No heavy work even in the 25+ knot breeze of our 240km test sail with only scant attention to the wheel needed.

Reina’s three-spreader Hall carbon rig flies a blade jib, swapping this out to the demountable staysail at around 17 knots wind speed. Both are on Reckmann furling systems. Only at around 20+ knots do thoughts turn to reefing the fully battened in-boom mainsail. With an eye on Oyster regatta success, sails here are North 3Di that are formed and foil shaped on a mould to become almost as a solid wing, not moving or waving around at all.

The efficiency is absolutely top line as demonstrated with an instant burst of acceleration as soon as a gust hits, the numbers jumping on Reina’s high visibility Sailmon display from 9 to 9.6 knots close hauled in 17 knots true wind speed suddenly bumped to 20. Easing sheets in the bigger gusts as winds topped 25 was joystick-simple and bearing away for an 11-knot fetch was refreshingly light with Humphreys’ well-studied twin rudder configuration.

Under engine and motor sailing, speeds were kept high around 9 knots with comfortable motion and very low noise levels below, and in typical Oyster vein no rattles or shakes, even open latched doors are completely movement free. In close-quarter manoeuvring the combination of hydraulic bow and electric stern thrusters make light work of crosswind berthing and the through-deck, pop up Sanguineti windlass eases any final warping.

And with all that efficiency in deck and sail plan plus a good 3200 litres of fuel, you could be tying up anywhere from regatta circuit to remote cruising ground… come Reina shine.www.oysteryachts.com/fleet/825