The date, and what moves it

Three calendars, and none of them set by length

A survey and maintenance period is measured in weeks. A strip back to bare substrate is measured in months, and the number of months is not a function of her length. How long does a yacht refit take? It is a question about scope. A thirty-metre rebuild will outrun a fifty-metre repaint. The calendar is set by how far back the work goes, not by how much vessel it goes back over.

A survey and maintenance period opens tanks and bilges, runs what has fallen due and closes again. A cosmetic refit adds coatings, deck and soft furnishing over a hull nobody is cutting. A rebuild takes structure and systems back to substrate and the interior out to the shell, a difference in kind rather than of degree, set out phase by phase in what yacht refitting actually involves.

Those are three calendars, not three sizes of one. The long end is on the record here: a forty-seven point nine metre Trinity taken back to bare substrate over nine months, handed back on the date agreed at contract signature, in mirabella, redelivered. Read the tiers against that. A maintenance period runs in weeks, a cosmetic refit in months, a rebuild in more of them, and which of the last two she is in is settled at strip-down rather than at enquiry.

The yard period, and the window the owner actually loses

A quoted yard period runs from arrival at the yard to redelivery. The out of service window is longer at both ends. Mobilisation, the delivery passage in, the passage back out, sea trials and the list that trials generate all sit outside the quoted figure and inside the season the owner has lost.

Trials are the part that gets under-counted. Machinery run up under load for the first time in months produces findings, and those have to be worked and proved again. The margin to hold is not a percentage on the yard period: it is the two passages, plus the trials and the list after them, added to the quoted figure before any of it is set against a cruising date.

Under the waterline, and what a diver cannot price

No programme closes honestly until she is out of the water, blocked and staged. The blocks period is the first item on the critical path, because most of what is not yet known sits below the boot top.

Shafts are drawn and read for runout, wear down and taper. Propellers are read for pitch and balance. Stern tube and rudder bearing clearances are measured against the maker's limits and against what class will accept, and it is class that turns a worn bearing into a mandatory renewal inside the yard period. A diver's video establishes that something is wrong and never how much, and this yard will not price running gear renewal from one.

The component then goes out to a specialist, and it is his turnaround, not the fitting, that lands on the programme.

The enquiry date and the strip-down date

What gets called scope creep is mostly scope discovered late: work nobody knew about, found the week the linings come off and the insulation comes out, when corrosion behind a tank top or a wasted frame end appears with the plate. Of the things that put a programme behind, it is the one we see most.

The answer is not a padded programme. Padding absorbs one finding, and it hides which tier the vessel was actually in, so an owner carries a rebuild's calendar against a cosmetic refit's expectations. The answer is to move discovery in front of the quotation, which is what readings taken before the price are for, in what a thickness map tells you.

A programme written from the enquiry is an estimate with a date on it. One written after she is opened, with the found scope priced and sequenced into it, is worth putting in a contract.

Long lead items, and why the order date is the date

One class of item sets the redelivery date on the day it is ordered rather than the day it is fitted. A new propeller cast to a corrected pitch, a stern tube, a switchboard, curved glazing bent and toughened to a template, a stabiliser away at its maker: the fitting is days, and the wait in front of it is the part no yard controls.

That makes them a calendar problem rather than a procurement one. They are identified at specification and ordered at signature, against a scope still partly assumption. A yard that waits for strip-down to place them has spent float it will want later.

Owner side decisions sit in the same class. A fabric or an appliance left open past the point where its lead time still fits the programme has moved the redelivery date, and no labour on the yard's side moves it back.

Several trades on one deck, and who sets the sequence

Metal workers, pipe fitters, electricians and joiners on the same deck in the same week reads as congestion from the pontoon. It is a scheduling decision, and most of the difference between a programme that runs in parallel and one that runs end to end.

Some of it is fixed before anyone chooses: hot work and finished joinery do not share a compartment, and grinding dust does not share a deck with wet coatings. What decides the rest is who employs the trades. Eleven workshops on one payroll are sequenced against one programme; separate subcontracts each hold their own float, and floats held separately queue rather than add up. The visible form is a deck standing idle between two contractors who are both on programme.

Two windows that cannot be compressed

Coatings hold the longest fixed windows in a refit. A recoat window was either open when the coat went on or it was not, and the coat after it cannot be brought forward by wanting it. Why the conditions are recorded hour by hour rather than judged on the day is its own subject, in why we log dew point every hour.

The interior holds the other. Cabins are built up in the shed and taken apart again before anything goes aboard, for the reasons set out in six cabins, one dry fit. On a programme it moves discovery out of the week she is due alongside.

Who owns the redelivery date

A date is real when one named individual owns it. One project manager for each vessel is the mechanism, and what he does with it is specific: he holds the long lead order register, signs the variation when strip-down finds something, and sets the order in which the trades take the deck. Those three move dates, and they sit with one person rather than being reconciled between four.

The other condition is a matter of record rather than assurance, and it is a fair question to put to any yard before signing: which vessel, what date was in her contract, and did she leave on it.

Written at the yard, between a strip-down and a redelivery. The dates quoted here are the ones we programme against and the ones we sign.