Building-automation engineers who only work on boats
The hull is not what dates a yacht. The technology is.
A well-built 2005 motor yacht is still a well-built motor yacht. The hull is sound, the engines have years in them, and her joinery was made by people who are mostly retired now. Put her alongside a new boat of the same size and the difference is not the sea-keeping. It is that the new one has glass in every bulkhead and answers a telephone, and yours has a panel of toggle switches with the labels worn off.
That difference is worth a great deal of money at a broker's — and almost none of it is structural. It is screens, sensors, a controller, and somebody who knows how to make the three talk to each other on a boat rather than in a house.
We are in the business of closing a twenty-year gap for the price of a tender.
Which is also why we only take on boats that are worth it. If the survey finds her wiring at the end of its life, or her systems past saving, we will say so and decline the work. Selling a control system to sit on top of a problem helps nobody, least of all us.
- ✕Twenty-two toggle switches, four of them still labelled
- ✕Nobody knows whether the bilge pump ran last week
- ✕The heating is on or off, and somebody must be aboard to choose
- ✕The only camera is the one at the marina gate
- ✕Finding out whether she is all right means driving down
- ✕A broker calls her “a well-kept boat of her age”
- ✓One screen in the saloon, and the same one on your phone
- ✓Bilge, batteries, shore power and temperature, logged and watched
- ✓Heating on from the motorway; warm when you step aboard
- ✓Cameras that tell a person from a gull, on deck and below
- ✓You already know she is all right
- ✓A broker calls her “recently upgraded”
We write the system, we do not assemble a kit
An installer fits the functions a manufacturer thought of. We programme what you describe, in the words you used, and change it whenever you change your mind — which everybody does, in the first month.
You own everything we fit
The hardware, the accounts, the credentials and the drawings are yours, and they pass with the boat when you sell her. The software that runs on it is licensed separately, under its own terms.
We say no
If her wiring is at the end of its life, if the budget does not fit the ambition, or if a boat is simply not worth it, you will hear that from us as soon as we have read your photographs — before you have spent anything at all.
One company from survey to handover
The people who survey her design it, the people who design it fit it, and the person who hands her over is one of them. Nothing is subcontracted to somebody who has never seen the boat.
What it actually costs
There is no price list on this site, because there is no such thing as a standard twenty-year-old boat. What there is: send us photographs and a description, and get a considered price range back for nothing. A fixed price follows a visit aboard, and it is agreed in writing before anything is touched.
As a rough shape — one system on a small boat runs to a few thousand; a whole motor yacht of eighteen to twenty-two metres, with screens everywhere, deck cameras, climate, pumps and safety monitoring, runs into the tens of thousands. Both are a fraction of what the same equipment costs as a factory option, and a fraction of the difference it makes to her value.
Tell us about herThe seven questions everybody asks first
Is this going to damage my boat?
No. On a vessel in commission nothing is cut, nothing is drilled through a bulkhead and no joinery is removed — the whole installation is reversible and leaves no trace. Where cable does go in, it follows a route that already exists, and the survey establishes exactly what that is before any work is agreed.
What does it cost?
A single system on a ten-metre boat — the lighting, or the heating, or the cameras — starts in the low thousands. A whole twenty-metre motor yacht with screens in every space, deck cameras, climate, pumps, tanks and safety monitoring is a serious project and is priced as one. Send photographs and a description and a considered price range comes back for nothing; the fixed price follows the visit aboard.
My boat is from 2004. Is she too old?
That is exactly the age we work on. Below about 1990 it depends far more on how she has been kept and rewired than on the year she was built — send us the details and we will tell you honestly, including when the answer is no.
Can I start small?
Yes, and most people do. One system this season, another the next, on a controller sized from the start for all of it. Nothing gets thrown away when you add to it.
What happens when the internet goes down?
Everything aboard carries on working. The system runs on a small server installed aboard, on the boat's own Wi-Fi network — so the lights, the heating, the pumps and the alarms work at sea, with no internet at all. A connection only carries what you see from a distance: when she is within reach, in a harbour, the same app answers from anywhere.
Do I need to be there while you work?
For the survey, ideally yes: you know things about her that no drawing does. For the installation, no — we work with the yard or the marina and keep you posted, with photographs.
Do you travel?
Yes, regularly — and that is exactly why the first two steps happen at a distance. We read your photographs and price a range before anybody gets on an aeroplane. The survey fee is banded by where she lies and you are told it before you commit to anything, and for a boat a long way off we will usually say whether it is worth our coming at all before you have spent a thing.
Tell us about her
Ten minutes in the quote wizard tells us enough to put a real number on it. No technology questions — just the boat, and what you would like her to do.
The first two steps cost you nothing. No sales visit, no newsletter.