What happened to Oviatt Marine?

We have a 2009 Alaskan 56 and couldn't be happier with the boat. It feels strong and sturdy, everything is accessible, and with twin C7s, it is also pretty fuel-efficient. The boat looks very similar to the Outer Reefs.

What happened with Oviatt Maine?

Is the founder/owner still active in the industry?

We have a Grand Alaskan 53 built in 02 and I’m wondering the same this

Grand Alaskans were mostly from the designs of Art DeFever. Oviatt was a sales house with strong input to the build yard and DeFever. They were built at a few different yards in Taiwan, Tania primarily. Outer Reef yachts are built at Tania as well.

A tour of a later model Grand Alaskan and a similar age Outer Reef will show a strong resemblance. Once Jeff Druek got OR going Oviatt’s sales house seemed to disappear.

Funny you should ask. I tend to get paralyzed by analysis, I dig way too deep and get stuck. We had a contract on a boat that I really liked, Queen B. It is a 2009 64 and some lucky owner has her now. I'll tell you about her. She spent most of her life in the Great Lakes area and had both engines rebuilt with less than 200 hours on them. New paint, looked like a boat should look. I call then the poor man's Fleming. Anyway, on the sea trial the flybridge chairs shook badly, and she sounded like a WWII PT Boat as I think the exhaust needed rebuild. Very loud, so much so you could not sit at the back table and enjoy the ride. The engine room, although it has over 100k spent on the rebuilds was a bit shabby to me. Original tanks, etc. But all of those little things could have been addressed.

On to Gary Oviatt. I started digging, and found that there are several brokers who knew these boats well, and were there from the beginning at Oviatt Marine. And lo and behold, I found Gary Oviatt. He was shocked to hear from someone about the Grand Alaskan boats he created, and he was very open to chat. I'm getting older now so some details tend to get fuzzy, but seems he is or was in real estate. And out there is a broker named Yolanda who was extremely knowledgeable and sold a lot of these when she worked with Gary. Seems she may have been involved with Queen B. And there is Judy, who you will also find on Yacht Forums and also TF who was there. And I think that one of my other favorite boats, Outer Reef was founded by people who left Grand Alaskan. I know some of those people were there for sure. Overall, I was told that it really depended on which yard built the boat, and how involved the owner, broker, or owners representative was when it was built. This is probably true about anything. It is amazing how things, even little things get screwed up. For instance, I am going to meet tomorrow morning with the local shop that does our annual on our aircraft to find out HOW THE HELL THEY HOOKED THE SHIP BATTER UP BACKWARDS FRYING SOME SYSTEMS!! Totally inexcusable.

But after that over the top deep dive, I'm with you. I like the Grand Alaskan. They look like boats should look. They are beautiful to my eye and well built in my opinion. The one thing I learned was do a survey after a sea trial if you can. You may find something out that would save you the expense of a full survey.

Oh, one of the stories told by Judy or Yolanda, was that Art Defever was at the yard on one of the first sea trails, and he was surprised at the relative speed of the Grand Alaskan with the 3196TA 660 hp Cats.

Thanks for the info I did wonder about Outer Reef as there is a few similarities Our GA is just want we where looking for we are on our maiden voyage heading north to the Queen Sharlotts we did a major refit on the electronics and the engines and still working through a few other bugs but we love the boat and the way she looks. Funny but someone asked me the other day how I liked my Fleming

Tell us more about your electronics and engine upgrades.

We swapped out all the old electronics for Garmin installed two 19” screens in the pilot house new Garmin radar dome new VHF with AIS send and receive also installed new Fusion stereo and speakers to flybridge, pilot house and saloon the new Garmin is amazing so user friendly just like the I Phone but still lots to learn as for the engines we stripped of all the coolers on all three engines and had them cleaned then oil change and filters also for fuel . New house batteries sticking with AGM as I couldn’t justify the cost of lithium We also installed a new dishwasher hopefully a little more water savings then got rid of the Asko washer and dryer in the basement and installed a new GE washer dryer combo unit (heat pump and condensation ) we will see how that works but so far so good In the space where the dryer was I was able to install a tool chest. We plan on installing a water maker next year but as we carry 350 gallons I’m in no rush
The one thing I was surprised to find out was the forward fuel tank is full but has not been used for over 12 years so is just acting as ballast so now I need to polish it before I can use it I got a quote on that and it will cost more than fuel is worth but it would also be expensive to dispose of it and I figure the tank will need cleaning so I will get that done in the fall. We also installed Star link and a new smart TV got rid of the old DVD and 6 disc cd player.

We also changed the boat name and had a party paying homage to King Neptune and asking for safe passage lots of champagne and dancing was involved in that one

Not too many Grand Alaskans roaming around here so nice to see another cruising in the area.