About
By Lucian Horrobin, founder of MyVSSL.
I have worked in the marine industry for more than twenty years, first at sea and, for the past five years, running a shipyard slip in Sydney. I qualified as a marine surveyor through the Australasian Institute of Marine Surveyors and hold a Master 3000GT (Yachts) certificate of competency.
In that time I have accumulated close to a thousand days at sea and 180,000 nautical miles, including several years running the deck of a large ocean-going yacht. Today I manage the slipway at Minter Marine in Point Piper - two forty-foot cradles, a steady flow of vessels in and out of the water, and the coordination, quoting and invoicing through MYOB that keeps a yard running.
Why I built MyVSSL
The same problem followed me from deck to yard: a vessel's history does not travel with the vessel. A planned maintenance schedule only exists if someone commits to writing it and keeping it current. A five-year survey file often describes the surveyor's last visit more than the boat itself. Component and service records live with whichever business last touched the vessel, and are lost the moment an owner changes yard, surveyor or manager.
I have rebuilt maintenance systems from scratch because the one in front of me no longer matched the vessel, and prepared ISM and safety documentation for survey only to find it described a boat that no longer existed. None of that is unusual; it is simply how the industry keeps its records. It convinced me that the record should belong to the vessel, not to whichever business happens to be looking after it at the time.
I studied digital arts at the Australian National University before I went to sea, which is why I chose to build the platform myself rather than describe the problem to someone who had never worked on a boat. MyVSSL is the result: one vessel record that follows the vessel between owners, professionals and surveyors, with bookings, quotes, invoices and reports attached to it as they happen.