Acquisition and Merger
WhAt do you get When you MArry A cruising-yAcht hull With A sportfish superstructure? one fAMily’s dreAM boAt. “let me get this straight,” i said, shifting in my seat while straining for clarity. “you put a what? on a what?”
on the other side of the table, tom glass, vice president at roscioli yachting center in fort lauderdale, florida, paused— letting the questions sink in—before conceding, “let’s just say it wasn’t your ordinary work order.”
the term “refit” may refer to any number of yacht refurbishments, from interior redesign to new engines to system overhauls, but this particularly adventurous roscioli client raised the bar. he decided to turn his 106-foot (32.3-meter) Westship raised pilothouse into a trideck superyacht.
it’s a vision that does not seem totally out of the realm of possibility. that is, until you consider his muse was a donzi sportfish.
“it all started when the father, Mr. gray, sr., came to us after being a hatteras fan for many years,” glass said, thinking about the various yachts the family has owned during the past quartercentury. “the men of the family are all about 6-foot-6, and when it was time to trade up, they requested [from hatteras] certain customizations, starting with longer bunks.” being a production yard at the time, hatteras declined the change orders. gray then approached bob roscioli of roscioli yachting center, a yard known for semi-custom work. roscioli agreed to the build order, and the gray family ordered a semi-custom donzi 65, which served them well—and still does today. When the time came again to upsize, roscioli was at the top of the list.
A number of factors contributed to the gray family’s choice of a Westship 106. they looked at and appreciated several features on Westport 112s and 130s, but their slip on florida’s gulf coast could handle no more than 110 feet of length overall. they also wanted to
continue cruising and fishing their favorite grounds—the Bahamas and the Keys—which required a fairly shallow draft. Ultimately, the Grays determined that a Westship 106 with a 5-foot-10-inch draft would serve their purposes with a few adjustments.
“We knew we would make some changes to Hello Dolly VII, but decided to hold off for about a year,” said Michael Gray, one of the sons. “After using the boat for a few months, we determined we needed a sky lounge, and with our sportfishing heritage, when you start talking sky lounge, then you start thinking, ‘Okay, let’s put something on top of that sky lounge: a flybridge.’”
After what Glass calls some “imagineering” by Gray and his brothers, and a crude cut-and-paste drawing on a single piece of paper, it was game on.
“I thought, Why can’t we just put a sportfish salon on top of the main deck?” Gray said. “So I measured the salon of a Donzi 73. It was about 6 inches too narrow, so I measured up the 80, which was within half an inch, so I asked Tom [Glass] to send me a concept.”
There were no formal plans at the outset. “You’re building to a rule that doesn’t exist, so it was kind of shot from the hip,” Glass said. “We built a one-off mold of the 80 that would fit exactly. Then it was just making