Ship shape

Inside the cavernous Richmond Yachts plant off Dyke Road, the smell of fibreglass permeates the air. Along half its width is an unfinished 142-foot yacht, whose sleek superstructure reaches to the ceiling. It is surrounded by a maze of scaffolding.

Fibreglass workers, electricians, plumbers and other tradespeople go purposefully about their work. The sounds of grinders, drills and hammers fill the plant. Along the other side of the building, workers are dwarfed by the hollow shell of another 146-footer as they lay in stringers.

Richmond Yachts’ VP of operations Keith Kiselback tours up and down the multiple decks of the unfinished yacht and through the various shops. Tall and slim with greying hair, a neatly trimmed beard and rosy cheeks, he is dressed casually in a shirt, sweater, jeans and a fleece jacket. Surveying his workers, he likes what he sees.

Kiselback’s confidence is, in part, the product of spending a lifetime building yachts. He’s helped build 50 megayachts – vessels more than 90 feet long. He’s survived the vagaries of B.C.’s volatile megayacht-building industry and been involved in the rise and fall of several of its biggest players.

His father drove freighters, his daughter is a ship’s captain and his wife’s family can be traced back to explorer John Cabot. “I stay in the business because this is what I’ve grown up to love and what I want to do,” he says.

At the turn of the millennium, according to the B.C. Yacht Building Association, yacht building in the province was a $250-million industry, with six to eight mega-yachts of more than 100 feet being built each year by a direct workforce of 1,500. By 2005 most of those companies had shut down, sold or restructured, and their skilled workers had moved on to more reliable jobs in other construction industries. Today the industry that was once booming is producing less than $75-­million worth of yachts, and its workforce numbers less than 500. What happened?

Few foresaw a downturn during the industry’s heady years.

A booming North American economy drove the industry to great heights throughout the 1990s. Toward the end of the decade, dot-com entrepreneurs and investors were suddenly finding themselves with millions of dollars in their jeans. The wealthy were getting wealthier and looking for ways to spend their money. They responded by throwing their cash at larger and fancier yachts. American yards, including those in Washington

A favourable U.S./Canada exchange rate didn’t hurt matters, either. Through the 1990s, the greenback was worth 30 to 48 percent more than the loonie, giving B.C. yards a significant advantage over U.S. yards. The trend continued beyond 2000 and peaked in 2002 with the U.S. dollar worth $1.57 in Canada. B.C. yards were scrambling to keep up with demand, but business was great.

“People were coming in every week looking to have boats built. Everything was going well. We had a crew of up to 120 and we were making quite good money,” recalls Kiselback, who at the time was running Sovereign Yachts Canada Inc., a Richmond-based company set up by New Zealander Bill Lloyd in the mid-1990s. In the late-’90s and early-2000s, the company built close to a dozen megayachts from 90 to 138 feet.

There was plenty of wealth to go around. Ben Vermeulen founded West Bay SonShip Yacht Builders Ltd. in 1967 to build small commercial vessels in Delta. Thirty years later, he and his sons Wes and Bas were building 14 to 16 yachts a year (of up to 107 feet) and employed a workforce of 200. Dan Fritz bought Maple Ridge-based yacht builder Cooper Yachts from Forbes Cooper in 1989 and began churning out mega-yachts under the brand name Queenship YachtWorks Inc.

Jack Charles of Arrow Transportation Systems Inc. started Crescent Custom Yachts at Crescent Beach in 1987, initially to finish bare hulls of about 120 feet he’d bought from the U.S. He was building one or two each year and was so successful that he built most of his yachts on spec, only offering them for sale when they were finished or close to being completed.

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