Hallberg Rassy 37 2008-2010 series legal case

Dear Sirs,
A legal case in Sweden has just been closed, concerning the delamination of a brand new Hallberg Rassy 37 Yacht, Mia Maria.

The court judged the non evidenced verbal statements of Mr. Magnus Rassy and Mr. Christof Rassy about the delamination more credible than the examnation results about the delamination made by two professional test engieneers, two professional and renowned surveyours and one professor of lamination technology. The Rassys point blank refuse to admit the delamination. So, the owner of Mia Maria lost, but most of the reason for that seemed to be that he did not leave the yacht fully in the hands of Hallberg Rassy for their actions.

The delamination status have made the Insurance company for the yacht to state that if yacht is lost due to the damages, Insurance will not cover loss.

Needless to say, the court and jury are located near the Hallberg Rassy yard.

There are rumours in circulation by locals at the village for the hull production site about systematic failures in hull production made by Hallberg Rassy at the production date for Mia Maria (ignorance about environmentally friendly polyester vax effects) and also about Hallberg Rassy having by mistake ordered and used the wrong typ of resin.

This entry is meant to alert other Hallberg Rassy buyers of newer yachts produced between 2007 and now about the potential problem, and to thourougly examine their hulls under and above the waterline by means of Ultrasonic or other methods. Hopefully the US legal system allows owners for corrective actions or compensation in cases like this.

Please find the details here:
http://www.blekingenaturfoto.se/bat/Powerpointpresentation_HR37_nr_168_English.pdf

 

Would be interesting to read, but I cant open your link ??

 

You could try to click it?

 

I haven't viewed the pdf in question, but sometimes with larger pdfs and if your connection to the source is slow causing your inline pdf viewer to pause up, it can work better to right click and "save as" and then open the local pdf directly once the whole thing is downloaded.

 

It should work now:
http://www.blekingenaturfoto.se/bat/Powerpointpresentation_HR37_nr_168_English.pdf

 

It's just a large file: 13.47 MB's. I have video games which load less than that....

 

Sinbad,

Thanks for the link.

I have digested the whole shooting match, and yes, there certainly is a delamination problem, but a lot of the other "things" are actually quite "normal" in the marine game. Not saying for one second that they should be, but c'est la vie.

It is not good for HR to not respond to the complaints, and even worse to deny them, but there are many people with new boats that have no idea how to look after them nor fix some of the most common problems themselves. If this boat was of the cheaper variety, my comments would be OK, but seeing as it is a brand that sells off being a first class quality boat, then the problems needed fixing asap (or before) and as discreetly as possible...I was Service Manager in Aus for a large importer of a glass boat, and we had our fair share of problems of course, but we always tried to fix them asap and with as little discomfort as possible for our customers....most of what we see in the doc, is really little things that should have been addressed...pity HR has chosen not to do so...i am sure that they will do their best in future to see that these sort of things do not happen again.........hopefully.

 

I finally downloaded that document...took three cups of coffee with my connection..and wow. Bad news for Hallberg Rassy. Plenty of poor attention to detail issues . Hallberg Rassy carries a price premium for production boats. Some of those issues, like no UV protection on exterior mast cabling or poor plumbing runs are amateurish.
Most important, You assume that a big part of a price premium is customer service, warranty work. Looks bad, poor management..

 

The failure discussed in this thread had nothing to do with foam cored construction.

 

Right!

Dunno how I got that completely wrong.

 

And something about those core samples. They look very thick for a small yacht hull. They coulnt have come from the topsides, These cores must have been taken from the very bottom of the hull and may reflect poor secondary bonds ,not neccasarily poor bonding in the main hull molding laminate. I wonder how many other production boats have the same problem ?

 

This issue is in the hull laminate, not in any secondary bond (unless the hull was not laminated all at once, which would be a disaster in polyester).

I have seen this problem in many, many thick, "hand layed", hulls in non-bagged polyester resin from th late 1970s to the present. That is why I've always laughed when hearing some sales guy brag about how strong his hull is because it is "more than an inch thick" or whatever.

The thick laminates are prone to this sort of delam due to the difficulty in rolling out every bubble in every layer without lifting up when applying subsequent layers, the increased temperature of the curing mass, gravity working on the heavy laminate in the mold before cure, and multiple batches of resin with potentially different set times.

If you build up thick sections in a modern matrix things work better in Epoxy. With Epoxy you can build layers in separate cures instead of all at once, improving the bond and decreasing the cure temperature of the mass. You can't do that with the old Polyester laminates.

 

Can you share the manufacturer, model, and failures of the cored boats you mentioned you had issues with this year?

 

Sounds logical to me Paul. Ive really never seen a production yacht built. Several custom, hand laminated epoxy glass over core boats , but never a standard monolithic glass boat. I wonder if the problem shown is not in fact common with many production boats.
Oh, and nothing wrong with cored construction. As always the devil is in the details. I recently saw a big sailing yacht with wet core. 4 or 5 square meters of exterior skin and core needed to be removed in the area of the bilge aft. The cause was poor attention to detail during the yachts life. Fastening equipment into the bilge by piercing thru the inside skin into the core, with mechanical fasteners...stuff like that. Need to follow correct procedures with cored boats. I also see unskilled shipyards haul cored boats out, stand them on their keels, block them up with sticks, a wedge of wood and a sledgehammer to drive the wedge home. Ouch !!!!!
I also see some delams on boats at beam max in the topsides from lying very hard against the dock on a fender. Need to spread the load with more fenders ! Us guys on metal boats simply oil can our topsides !!! Ouch again. .

 

No demand in idiotic discussions with you Paul. If I want to waste my time, I can watch TV....