Bob Oram

I have been designing multihulls for more than 20 years. I offer a range of stock plans, and welcome custom projects.

A bit of history on how I came to be here.

I was born last century (how cool is it to be able to say that). My first boat memory is of my younger brother (6) and I (8) hanging around a boat ramp at Como in Perth watching the old ski boats. We probably looked like a pair of proper urchins as we were offered a ride in one of those old twin cockpit centre-mount ski boats with a flat head ford V8 and straight out exhausts. Edward and I were in the back cockpit about 6 inches above the water doing what seemed like 100 knots but was probably 30 tops. We were both terrified but as the saying goes, ‘what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger’.

According to my Uncle Bob, (the family historian, and who at 78 sailed a 26’ production mono from Brisbane to Perth without an autopilot, 1500 miles of it by himself and is now planning to fly around the world in a 50 year old light aircraft) there had been an Admiral of the Royal Navy on the maternal side of my mothers family since the inception of that institution, (err Henry five I think) up until the last one that was based in South Africa in the 1950s. My grandfather was one of the first commissioned officers of the Royal Air Force before immigrating to Australia in the early 20s. He also has the (now dubious) honour of teaching the first pilots of the Japanese air force.

When I was 11, I went to sea during school holidays on a 40’ prawn trawler working out of Exmouth Gulf, Western Australia. My pay was an onion bag full of Moreton Bay Bugs (aka bay lobsters). They couldn’t give them away in those days. We moved from Western Australia to Queensland, where I finished school at 13 years old and worked on the Smith Creek wharves in Cairns. Left the family soon after and started about 6 years of working on trawlers, barges and coastal shipping on the North Queensland coast. I also spent a bit of time working on 2 cattle stations up on the Peninsula.

By the time I was 15 I could splice wire rope (still can), work cargo ships, load and unload timber barges, go broke working trawlers and fall off horses.

While delivering a timber barge down to Brisbane, I met my wife Jenne. Through 3 beautiful children, the usual trials and tribulations, and 32 years of a life that has always revolved around boats, we’re still together. I realized the other day that I’m always designing or building our next boat.

I didn’t get into sailing until my mid 20s. but it was just an extension of what I had been doing most of my life so it came fairly naturally. In 1982 I designed my first 24’ cat (Spinner) as I couldn’t afford to buy plans and didn’t particularly like what was available anyway.

In 1995 I designed a 50’ boat for friends of ours and that formalised designing as a business, not that anyone has accused me of being a businessman. My drafting skills ranked way up there with my accounting skills (I hear peels of laughter coming from J’s sewing room) so, with the occasional phone call to a good friend who happens to be a proper draftsman, I taught myself Autocad and a simple but effective plate development design program. I still operated a 25 ton machine in the pine forests on permanent night shift for 3 years to actually make a living, then talked, built and designed boats during the day.

Now this where I should say something about mission statements and business plans and using the latest computer graphics and whiz bang technology to further the ………………..

Gee, I just want to be here next year with my latest boat in the water and still talking to good, realistic people about good, realistic boats. That’s about as mission statementy or corporate planny I can get.