Refit in Whangarei: Bad experiences with Port Whangarei Marine Center / Oceania Marine

From November 2017 to April 2018 I stayed in Whangarei for the refit of my Jongert 20S in Port Whangarei Marine Center/Oceania Marine Refit Services Ltd.

I have had very bad experiences with these companies and I can absolutely not recommend going there for a refit. Almost all the jobs that I had commissioned there were done so inadequately that they had to be renewed two or three times on a guarantee basis. These warranty services were only done after I had engaged a lawyer and was seriously searching for a surveyor. Previously I was threatened that the ship would be relocated to the longtime hardstand without power supply until I would pay the outstanding bills completely! I received invoices that were clearly excessive and I was openly lied to by the assigned project manager.

Below I will describe some details to give you an impression of my experiences:

The refit included
1. Repairment and repaint of some scratches on the hull (about 8 areas, altogether about 1m²) and appliance of two layers of clear coat (AWLGrip varnish) on the complete hull above the waterline
-> after the first paint job as well after the second paint job (warranty service) there were lots of runners, overspray, orange peel, visible inclusions of dust and insects in the paint; after the third paint job (warranty service) there were still sweat drops on the paint as well as visible scratches from the sanding

2. The appliance of two layers of antifouling
-> rusty areas under the keel were just painted over, thus after a few days the paint peeled off; now we are about one month back in the water and already the antifouling starts to peel off just under the water line!

3. Some parts of the main mast and the booms had shown damages due to oxidation around the screws; these parts had to be repaired, 30% of the mast and the whole booms had to be repainted
-> lots of runners on the booms, they were polished although according to AWLGrip this is not allowed because it destroys the UV-protection

4. Varnishing of the outer pilot house (max. 3m²) and 3 wooden panels
-> the work was done in an unbelievable slow tempo (which means lots of hours on my bill!) and was done very badly (lots of runners, overspray and orange peel). After the second warranty service, I was so fed up from the slow procedure and the bad quality of the work that I did the sanding and varnishing by myself. Generously I was reimbursed for the material used, but not even one of the working hours that I have saved them.

5. Small repairments on the teak wood – this was the only work that was done to my satisfaction.

Before I came to New Zealand I had contacted Oceania Marine Refit Services Ltd. and we made a contract for the refit. However, when I arrived in Whangarei the yacht was hauled out at Port Whangarei Marine Center – a kind of subcontractor – and the whole refit work was done there. I should have read the small print carefully then I would have been aware of that – however, I did not and so I was caught by surprise. The ship was not painted in the shiny shed advertised on the website of Oceania Marine – instead, the ship was lifted into a shed at Port Whangarei Marine Center that was absolutely not suitable to paint a superyacht. The floor was so dirty that if I dropped a screw it was difficult to find it back in the dust and rubbish piles. The shed had not even a sewage system, so if the hull or the floor were washed the water had to be swept outside manually. Not to speak of the non-existent exhaust air system or the insufficient lighting… Nevertheless, 500NZ$ per day were charged for that shed during the paint job!

I was forced to pay for a fixed scaffolding for the paint job which alone cost me about 8.000 NZ$. The scaffold was made from rusty iron and was very dirty, it was used on a construction site before. I asked several times for a mobile scaffold from aluminium (which would have cost me much less!), but the project manager told me that a fixed scaffolding would be mandatory for such work due to workplace safety regulations in New Zealand. Later I found out that this was an obvious lie! When the paint job had to be redone as a warranty service it was suddenly no problem at all to use mobile scaffolding. This lie had cost me around 6.000 NZ$ extra.

In general, the work on the ship proceeded very slow (thus lots of hours were billed…), the work was done in complicated ways (e.g. unnecessary masking and unmasking of the hull) and materials were wasted (e.g. I was billed for 600 pairs of gloves used by 3 workers who were painting the hull, more than 2500 m of tape for masking, 21 plastic buckets for whatever and so on). On everything that was used they added a hefty commission, e.g. for the AWLGrip paint they charged more than 50% on top of the price the shipyard had paid for it – very greedy!!!

Just to give another example of the extraordinary greediness of this company: I was offered “help” with a money transfer. On the next invoice, they charged more than 10% of the transferred sum for the “assistance” – more than 70 NZ$ for the work of a few minutes!

Almost all the invoices that I received weekly contained billing errors. E.g. working hours of other boats were billed on me, I was billed the price of tools that I had just borrowed and given back; working hours for warranty services were billed on me and so on. After I have checked all the invoices and worksheets I detected more than 3.200 NZ$ that I was obvious billed wrongly. At least this money was paid back to me. I really wonder how many billing mistakes I was not able to detect so easily… Besides I was billed all breakfast breaks of the workers (1/2 hour every day) as well as all the meetings they have had, including health and safety meetings.

A project manager was assigned to my refit project who behaved very unprofessional. On many of my emails, I received no answer. He refused to inspect faulty work that I wanted to complain about and he was not willing to discuss the problems that I have mentioned above (and many other problems that occurred) with me. Imagine, he even wrote me in an email that he would meet me only if my partner would not be present at the meeting (maybe he was afraid that my partner – who is a Doctor of Psychology – will detect immediately when he was lying again…).

All in all, it was a very unpleasant, unsatisfactory, disappointing and very expensive experience – I wish no one to experience it.

Klaus Hohberg
S/Y Lapita

For more details feel free to contact me: [email protected]

Note the Marinas and opening bridge in Whangarei have changed VHF to Channel 18.

International Shipping – We finished our trip in Whangarei and needed to ship some personal effects and boat items to Ireland. We struggled to find someone who would deal with the small volume but eventually found a great company called Overseas Moving run by Ian Colton – http://www.overseasmoving.co.nz/ He supplied us with packaging and we were continually updated throughout the process, I’d recommend him for anyone needing anything shipped to or from NZ.