A refit process that shows you the 70-metre boat before you sign for it
What was announced
Olesinski, the British design and naval architecture firm, set out its Olesinski Real-Time Refit process in early July, having won the Passerelle Pitch Award at YARE 2026. The underlying technology came out of the studio's research department over roughly a decade, developed with Southampton University and the Alan Turing Institute. The firm employs more than twenty people.
The process has two stages. Olesinski takes whatever information exists on a target yacht, often no more than a broker's brochure, and produces an adjustable 3D model within days at around 90 per cent accuracy. Then comes a single working day with the owner and his team, where concepts are projected on screen and remote designers change them while everyone watches. The day ends with a settled concept and high-resolution renderings.
The arithmetic that makes it interesting
The firm's stated case is that a transformational refit of a 55 to 65 metre yacht can deliver the volume and amenity of a 70 to 75 metre new build, for 30 to 50 per cent less than building new, and in 12 to 18 months instead of three to four years. Set that against the current market, where a new 70-metre runs to EUR 70 million to EUR 100 million and the slot itself is the scarce item.
Those are the designer's numbers, not an independent audit, and a rebuild of that depth carries the usual refit risk of what is found once the linings come off. The direction of travel is not in doubt though. When new-build queues at the good yards stretch towards 2029, the arbitrage between buying steel that already exists and ordering steel that does not gets wide enough to be worth serious work.
Why the owner sees it before he commits
The reason large refits overrun is almost always that the scope was never really fixed. An owner signs against a general arrangement and a mood board, the yard prices what it can see, and the changes start in month two. Every change order after steelwork begins is priced by a contractor who knows the boat cannot leave.
Compressing concept design into a day in front of the owner does not remove that risk. It does move the argument to the cheapest possible moment, which is before anyone has been paid. An owner who can see his sundeck extension, his new tender garage and the resulting loss of aft-deck space on a screen, and reject two of the three inside an hour, is buying a tighter specification. Tighter specifications are what hold refit budgets.
Using it before you buy, not after
The application Olesinski points to that owners tend to miss is pre-purchase. A buyer viewing a 2011 60-metre with a dated interior and a poor beach club is normally asked to imagine what it could become. Producing a costed, drawn version of that transformation during the viewing period changes what the boat is worth to him, and it changes what he is willing to bid.
Olesinski is candid about who starts these conversations. In most cases it is the captain, because he knows the boat's limits and the owner's habits well enough to judge when the subject is ready to be raised. An owner who wants the option should say so out loud, because a captain who has not been invited to raise it usually will not.
What to check before you use it
A concept produced in a day is a concept. It is not a stability calculation, a class approval, a weight study or a shipyard quotation, and none of those get faster because the renderings did. A hull extension or an added deck on a boat built to a 500 GT or a 3,000 GT threshold can push it across a regulatory line that brings crew, safety and survey consequences with it.
The order of work that protects an owner is to fix the concept, then get naval architecture and class to confirm it is buildable, then take fixed prices from two yards on that frozen scope. Owners who let the yard price an unfrozen scope end up paying for every discovery on a time-and-materials basis.