FIBRE MECHANICS LIMITED - Key Persons
I was brought up in the Canary Islands, surrounded by sailing boats and every water-based activity imaginable. When the time came to stop playing on water, I came back to the UK to study Ship Science at the University of Southampton, specialising in design of yachts and small craft. After securing a summer placement with Green Marine during my second year, I was offered a position as design engineer on graduation. By way of numerous TP52s, Volvo racing boats, superyachts and mini-maxis, I worked my way up from junior Design Engineer to Engineering Manager and finally to Project Manager, my latest project being the Wally Cento Galateia. On completion of Galateia I left in November 2016 in order to help found FIBRE Mechanics. I bring with me vital experience of controlling the weight of a complex racing yacht, fully fitted with hydraulics, electrics and superyacht quality joinery...
I developed a passion for the ocean from a very young age. During my early years I was fortunate to have lived in the Canary Islands for 12 years, surrounded by water based activities from sailing, skiing to windsurfing. This appetite led me back to Southampton, where I chose to study an engineering masters in Ship Science at the University of Southampton, specialising in yachts and small craft. During my 2nd year studying at Southampton I secured a summer placement with the racing yacht builder Green Marine.
After graduation I continued to work at Green Marine, working my way through the ranks, from junior design engineer working on racing yachts such as the Volvo 70 Pirates of the Caribbean and the TP52s Patches and Cristabella. In 2007 I had the chance to apply my knowledge to project management. My first project turned out to be a successful one: RAN II, the Judel/Vrolijk Mini Maxi 72. Working with the Owner's design and build team, we focused on saving weight across every area of the yacht from the hull to the customised lightweight carbon brackets for the winch grinder gearboxes, this was my first experience of saving weight on the systems side of a yacht, RAN II went on to be the most successful mini maxi racing yacht ever:- Fastnet winner twice, Sydney-Hobart class winner, Mini Maxi champion 3 times.
After RAN II I worked on the larger superyachts being constructed in the Southampton factory, initially on 39m Cinderella IV and then onto the 42m Sarissa. On Sarissa I spent 5 months working at Vitters Shipyard in Holland, helping them integrate their mechanical systems into a carbon structure efficiently, and with minimal parasitic weight. I went on to work alongside the Tripp Design office, optimising the custom deck hardware and simplifying the sail handling systems.
After working on Sarissa I returned to the Lymington factory in the new role of Engineering Manager. My first task was to setup a new engineering department at Green Marine from scratch. The goal was to develop an in-house team of designers and engineers that could take the naval architecture information from the designer and translate it into fully engineered work packages and drawings for our production teams. During my tenure as Engineering Manager I was responsible for the engineering of the TP52s RAN IV and Container, superyacht tender/landing craft, the Briand 108 Inoui, Open Season, seven Volvo Ocean 65 one-designs and the Nigel Irens 78 foot cat Allegra.
In 2013 Green Marine won the contract to build a new ultra-lightweight fully fitted Wally Cento, and I was given the challenge to manage the project from start to finish. In this most weight sensitive of yachts, every kilo saved was added directly to the bulb weight and translated into righting moment. The target seemed challenging from the start, Wally yachts themselves set the bar with Magic Carpet 3, but by constant attention to detail over the entire 2 year build period we succeeded in reducing Galateia's'structural and fit-out weight by hundreds of kilos compared to the target.
When I joined Green Marine 12 years ago, the focus was on building super-light composite structures for racing yachts. The success of Galateia was as much due to the fit-out as the structure, and it was this aspect of Total Build Management that has given me the appetite to join with my colleagues in founding FIBRE Mechanics in November 2016.
With more than 30 years' experience in building world class, award winning and record-breaking sailing yachts including record breaking IMOCA 60 - Hugo Boss, award winning WALLY Cento - Galateia, the MAXI 72 - Cannonball and the latest Fast 40+ - Girls on Film. I have been involved with boats pretty much all my life. On leaving school I worked with my family's marine business...
I have been involved with boats pretty much all my life. Whilst at school, I learned how to sail and race dinghies at Christchurch Marine Training Centre. I managed to get a bit of a reputation for breaking boats, which was a good thing in a way, because the centre ran a 'You Break It - You Fix It' policy. With their guidance, I learned a lot more about basic boat building and repairing techniques than I wanted to know at the time. In the early 80s, I started crewing on larger keeled yachts, which led me to participating in various regattas, and races including Cowes Week and the Fastnet.
The experience I offer is the long view on materials, mould tools, build processes and the costs of lightweight custom yachts over the last 40 years, with hands-on experience of what works and what does not. My partners at FIBRE Mechanics include some of the best project managers, design engineers and production managers that I have come across in that time. Together our experience is both wide and deep, and as a group we are in a great position to make that experience count.
I have spent more than 40 years working in and around high-tech composite boat yards and grand prix racing yachts, from the IOR boats of the late 1970s, through Whitbread, Volvo, America's Cup yachts and onto today's fast cruising catamarans and racing yachts fitted with ultra lightweight interiors and systems. After several years on the shopfloor at Green Marine, I worked in SP Systems' technical office for 8 years in yards throughout Europe and the USA, until re-joining Green Marine in 1993. There I was a project manager for 7 years, then in charge of R&D and contract management until 2010 when I became Technical Director. In the summer of 2016, I left Green Marine in order to form FIBRE Mechanics, a yacht building company 100% focussed on the construction of lightweight carbon yachts: composite structures, super-light interiors and smart systems installations.
Beginnings: I have sailed boats for as long as I can remember, first with the family from Itchenor, then racing Cadet and Merlin Rocket dinghies on the river Thames. My first experience of boatbuilding was watching my father renovate a Thames A-Class Rater in the late 1960's. In 1978, with a degree in Politics and Economics and while working as a trainee accountant for Peat Marwick Mitchell, I read an article in ‘Yachts & Yachting' about the future of boatbuilding. It described the vacuum assisted resin injection process being used to build yachts at Jeremy Rogers boatyard in Lymington. Bill Green was Jeremy's right hand man at that time - I asked him to let me work in the injection moulding shed, and started work at the yard in early 1979. I worked with Bill Green in a number of capacities for the following thirty years.
1979-1985: At Jeremy Rogers I was doing a range of work on a number of production and semi-custom racing boats, including a series of Peterson 39's, one of which, Eclipse, won the 1979 Fastnet race. The resin injection system was fantastic at producing boats hulls to a consistent weight; and that was the main motivation for Rogers investing in this cutting edge composite technology from the automotive industry. It was not however the lightest way to build a boat. These were the days before serious laminating epoxies were available, so the custom boat division developed ways to vacuum consolidate Kevlar and carbon laminates with resins that were (with hindsight) not well suited to the task.
In 1980 I went to Southampton Institute to study Yacht & Boat Design, while working at Rogers in the holidays. When Bill Green and Ian King started Green Marine, I joined them as they were building their first boat, the Hugh Welbourne designed 43' Panda in 1983. Over the next few years I worked at Green Marine on a string of IOR boats: three Frers boats: Nitissima, Fujimo and Jennie M; the Welbourne half-tonner Chia-Chia; two one-tonners: Bill Tripp's Thumper, and Phillippe Briand's Panda '85, and a memorable Peterson 50' cruising yacht called Zeezot van Verre.
In 2001 James gave up a perfectly sensible career as a City lawyer, to focus on his passion for yacht racing and design. At the same time as gaining a first class degree in naval architecture, he also gained practical experience of laminating, sail-making and marine design; now specialising in yacht racing systems. James was a founding Partner of FIBRE Mechanics and is now Senior Naval Architect at WightShipyard. His breadth of technical knowledge, combined with his detailed and analytical approach make him a very valuable consultant to FIBRE Mechanics.
In 2001 I gave up a perfectly sensible career as a City lawyer, to focus on my passion for yacht racing and design. Whilst gaining another first class degree - in naval architecture this time - I gained experience of each segment of the industry from laminating and sail-making through to design and brokerage. It is this breadth of technical knowledge and a practical understanding of the industry that I have continued to build on and provides me with a unique perspective for plotting a project's course to success - letting me bridge the gap between the traditional roles of builder and designer. My career has let me design, engineer and manage custom and production IRC/ORC yachts, Class 40, Open 60, Volvo, Maxi racer-cruiser, multihull and even Olympic kayak designs - some of which have won international awards, some World Championships. In 2014 I launched the gorgeous Irens 78 catamaran Allegra as project manager for Green Marine. In 2016 I moved to Ker Yacht Design to manage and design further carbon fibre yacht projects with one or more hulls.
I was introduced to sailing by mistake on the last day of the autumn term at school when I was 10. I spent the next 6 months teaching myself to sail a plastic single handed dinghy on a gravel pit, cracking the ice to launch through the winter. Since then I have had the opportunity to navigate, race and sail on my projects in generally better weather and more glamorous locations, but I still get the same buzz today from making anything that floats go a little bit faster.
I have been designing, engineering and project managing yacht projects since 2006.
I specialise in system and design integration - filling the gap between the traditional remit of designer and boat builder - and enjoy the challenges of coordinating a team of specialist engineers on complex projects. My career has allowed me to work with a number of specialist designers, engineers and equipment manufacturers and where possible I have tried to take the time to learn as much as possible about the rarefied environments that they inhabit, so I could figure out how to connect their focused understanding to the next link in the chain.