Compass Tenders

• Category: bespoke superyacht tenders
• Founder: Richard Faulkner, owner and chief executive
• Origins: a yacht building and repair business started on the River Hamble about thirty years ago
• Based: Port Hamble, Hampshire, England
• Facility: more than 35,000 square feet dedicated to new tender building
• Team: more than 100 skilled staff
• Delivered: more than 75 custom tenders since 2007
• Categories: limousine, open, catamaran, utility, D-RIB and semi-custom
• Limousine tenders: 8.7 m to 14.0 m
• Open tenders: 7.5 m to 11.6 m, including chase, sports and jet variants and owner's launches at 8 m and 8.5 m
• Catamaran tenders: 10 m to 13.5 m
• Semi-custom: the Latitude range, offered in four coachroof styles

From a Hamble repair yard to bespoke tenders

The business began about thirty years ago as a small yacht building and repair operation on the River Hamble, the stretch of Hampshire water that has been the centre of English yacht building for a century. Richard Faulkner owns and runs it. The move into bespoke tenders came in 2007, and since then the yard has delivered more than 75 of them.

The operation now occupies more than 35,000 square feet at Port Hamble and employs over 100 people. The senior team includes Katharine Dominy as head of operations and Ed Wingate as head of design, and there is a dedicated aftercare coordinator. The yard has taken multiple Boat International design awards, which in this industry is the currency that gets a builder onto a shortlist.

Six kinds of boat

The catalogue is organised by what the tender is for. Limousine tenders are the enclosed guest boats, running from 8.7 m to 14.0 m across more than twenty delivered designs. Open tenders cover 7.5 m to 11.6 m and include chase boats, sports tenders, jet tenders and owner's launches at 8 m and 8.5 m. Utility tenders and D-RIB tenders handle the working end.

Catamaran tenders sit between 10 m and 13.5 m and exist for a specific reason. The wide beam gives an open-plan interior and a stable platform, which suits both guest transfers and water sports from the same boat. On a yacht that can only carry one large tender, a catamaran is often the answer, and the cost is garage width.

The garage dimensions come first and the boat is designed inside them.

The limousine tender

The limousine is the boat guests see first and judge the yacht by. Compass designs each one to reflect the mothership, matching the interior scheme, the exterior lines and the materials, and it works with whichever stylist the owner already employs for the yacht itself. The range of delivered lengths, from 8.7 m to 14.0 m in roughly half metre steps, shows how tightly each boat is fitted to its garage.

The practical qualities that matter are less visible. An enclosed tender has to be quiet enough to talk in, dry enough to arrive at a restaurant properly dressed, and easy to board from a swim platform in a swell. Air conditioning, seat height, door geometry and step arrangements are where a good limousine separates itself, and none of it shows in a photograph.

Open boats, and the bow door

The open range is the working half of a large yacht's fleet. A 11.6 m chase tender runs guests and stores over distance, a 10.5 m jet tender gives propeller-free operation near swimmers, and the 8 m and 8.5 m owner's launches are the boats used most often and photographed least. Compass offers an optional bow door across the open range.

The bow door is worth understanding. It lets guests step directly onto a beach without wading and without a second dinghy, which is the difference between a tender that gets used for shore trips and one that does not. It also adds structure, weight and a seal that has to be maintained. Owners who anchor off beaches will use it constantly, and owners who berth in marinas will not.

Latitude, the semi-custom answer

Not every owner wants an eighteen month design process. The Latitude range takes the hull and systems from the custom boats and offers four coachroof styles, North, East, South and West, on a platform that is ready for customisation with a shorter build time. Custom design work remains available on top for owners who want the boat to match the mothership exactly.

This matters most on refits and on brokerage purchases, where a new owner inherits a garage of fixed dimensions and needs a boat that fits it within a season. It also gives a price and a delivery date earlier in the conversation. The trade is that a semi-custom boat starts from someone else's decisions about layout and proportion.

How a bespoke tender actually gets built

The process starts with the garage, not the boat. Length, beam, height, cradle position, launch and recovery arrangement and lifting weight are all fixed by the yacht, and the tender is designed inside that envelope. Compass works with the yacht's designers, the captain and the build manager from the beginning, which is why on a new build the tender is contracted early.

The trap is the reverse case. A tender designed to millimetres for one yacht will not fit another, and that is the single largest factor in what a used bespoke tender is worth. Owners who expect to change yachts within a few years should be honest about that with themselves before commissioning a boat that only one garage in the world will take.

What it costs

Compass publishes no prices, no weights and no speeds, which is normal for a builder that makes one boat at a time. Figures come through the yard, the captain or the build manager, and they move with length, engine package, interior specification and the amount of custom engineering involved. A 14 m limousine finished to superyacht interior standards is a significant capital item in its own right.

The running costs are conventional. A tender of this class carries marine diesels or jet drives with normal service networks, and the specialist items are the hydraulics, the doors, the seals and the interior. What owners underestimate is the cost of matching. Upholstery, veneers, paint and hardware chosen to match a yacht are made to order, and a replacement panel is a manufacturing job.

Aftercare and the season

Compass keeps an aftercare function in house, which is the right structure for a builder whose boats are scattered across the Mediterranean and the Caribbean every summer. In practice support for a custom tender means a technician who travels, because there is no dealer network for a boat that exists in a fleet of one. Engine and drive problems go to the local Volvo, Yanmar or jet drive agent.

The realistic expectation is that mechanical faults are resolved locally within days and anything structural, hydraulic or cosmetic comes back to Hamble or waits for a visit. Owners who cruise far from the yard should hold a spares package aboard, agreed with the builder at handover. That conversation is easier to have before delivery than in August.

Against Pascoe, Vikal and the production yards

Pascoe International is the best known name in bespoke limousine tenders and the most direct comparison. Vikal International competes on the same ground from Australia. Below them, Novurania, Williams and the other catalogue builders offer boats that are customised within a standard hull, at a fraction of the engineering cost and with far shorter lead times.

Compass wins where an owner wants a boat conceived with the yacht by the same designers, and where the garage is an awkward shape that no catalogue hull will fill. It loses on lead time, on price and on resale, because a bespoke boat is worth what the next garage will take. An owner who does not need the boat to match the mothership should look at the catalogue builders first.

Who it is for: Owners commissioning or refitting a large yacht who want the tender conceived with it, and who will keep the yacht long enough for that to pay.