In effect, we did look at American Expedition Yachts.
There's quite a story to this... and, I'm not 100% sure that American Expedition Yachts would agree with this history, but I'll tell the story from my perspective anyhow.
American Expedition Yachts (AEY) is at least partially a spinoff group of ex-employees from Northern Marine.
We approached Northern Marine, and asked them to design a 68' boat for Roberta and I. We discussed exactly what we were looking for, and Stuart Archer, then at Northern Marine, designed us a boat. Based on his presentation, we green-lighted the project, and asked for a contract. After receiving the contract, and before signing it, we started doing our due-diligence on Northern Marine.
The feedback we received from Northern Marine was very consistent. They produce a great boat, but virtually everyone said to expect enormous cost overruns and schedule slippage. Also, as I dug deeper, I started hearing about cash flow problems at Northern Marine.
Further confusing us, Northern Marine suddenly stopped pushing us to sign the contract. They then announced a huge layoff, and that Stuart Archer was no longer with the company. Stuart called a few days later to say that he was now working to start a new company, which has become AEY, and did we still want to build the 68. There was no way we wanted to build a boat with a start-up.
Throughout all of this, we were in contract with Nordhavn for an N64. To make a long story short, we shifted focus to building a custom steel boat. But then, when we canceled our agreement for the N64, we explained to Nordhavn why we thought the N64 didn't work for us, and why we felt the 76 was too large for us -- and, the N68 was launched.
-Ken W
| Williams, Ken |
2007-02-23 14:08:47
|