DATE: Monday, October 20, 1997              TAG: 9710180346

SECTION: BUSINESS                PAGE: D1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY CHRISTOPHER DINSMORE, STAFF WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:  108 lines

COLONNA'S SHIP COMES IN EVERY YEAR, SCORES OF YACHTS PASS THROUGH HAMPTON ROADS ON THEIR WAY TOFLORIDA FOR THE WINTER. UNTIL RECENTLY, MOST WAITED UNTIL THE END OF THE TRIP FOR REPAIRS. BUT ONE YARD HAS FOUND A PLACE IN THE LUCRATIVE BUSINESS.

She's tied up at the Waterside Marina, looking every bit like a 100-year-old, beautifully restored fishing schooner. But the 147-foot Zaca A Te Moana is only five years old and already needs a little work under her sails.

As soon as the naval architecture plans are done, this private luxury sailing ship, owned by a titled Dutch family, is heading into Colonna's Shipyard Inc. for a ``soup-to-nuts'' overhaul, said Doug Forrest, the yard's vice president.

The small Norfolk shipyard has recently carved out a niche in the repair of such luxury yachts, working on sailing ships like the Zaca and the big motor cruisers of the mega-rich.

``In the last two years, we've worked on some of the finest yachts in America,'' Forrest said.

For Colonna's, getting into yacht repair was about doing what it takes to survive.

``Colonna's made a willful decision to move away from its reliance on Navy business about six years ago,'' Forrest said.

The shipyard had just survived a brush with bankruptcy, re-emerging into a ship repair marketplace in Hampton Roads where the Navy was still everyone's principal customer. But with Cold War over, the Navy began cutting the number of ships in the fleet.

To occupy its work force, which now numbers 300, Colonna's went after the commercial tug and barge market. Such work now accounts for the much of its revenue.

The yacht market is just another source of revenue for Colonna's as Navy spending dries up. While the company is pursuing yacht repair aggressively, it accounts for less than 10 percent of the yard's annual business, Forrest said.

``It's another arrow in our quiver that we need to survive,'' he said. ``A lot of people out there are not adapting, and we're adapting.''

For Forrest and Colonna's, adapting means keeping your eyes open for every opportunity.

``All we're doing is applying the skills and ability we already have to a new market,'' Forrest said.

``There's an inevitability to Hampton Roads becoming a major yacht repair center,'' he said. ``We're at the crossroads of American yachting because we're at mile zero of the Intracoastal Waterway.''

Beginning on the Elizabeth River between the Norfolk and Portsmouth downtowns, the waterway winds its way south to Florida, providing boaters with a sheltered passage.

Every year, scores of yachts sail through Hampton Roads on an annual trek between the Northeast for the summer and Florida for the winter.

Like any other vessel, these luxury craft need an occasional repair, modernization or overhaul, but until recently little of that work was done in Hampton Roads.

The region's waterways are littered with small boat repair yards, including some that can haul boats up to 70 feet or so out of the water for repairs, but none can work on these 100-foot-plus floating mansions, said Bob Williams of Bay Yacht Brokers, the sales arm of Taylor's Landing Marina Center at Little Creek.

Most of the work on the so-called mega-yachts was done in yacht yards in Florida, said Williams, who has never dealt with such vessels but is familiar with the market.

Increasingly though, the bigger vessels need a full-service shipyard like Colonna's.

``The level of sophistication on these ships has evolved to that they are really little cruise ships,'' Forrest said. ``We haven't evolved to serve them, they have evolved up to our type customer.''

That evolution in technology, design and machinery is allowing Colonna's to compete with the traditional yards in Florida and even those around the Mediterranean Sea.

``They just don't know how to fix them and we do,'' Forrest said.

But working for such clients is a whole different ball game, Williams said. To succeed, Hampton Roads' gritty shipyards have to clean up their act.

``You've got to become a little more civilized,'' Williams said. ``These boats have a lot of luster to them . . . and the owners expect a certain environment.''

Part of that is environment is privacy. The rich owners of mega-yachts don't like to attract too much attention.

``Discretion is key to this business,'' Forrest said.

Yacht repair is also a market niche that complements the Colonna history in wooden ship repair.

The Zaca A Te Moana is following another schooner into Colonna's. The shipyard just finished restoring the hull of the Bill of Rights, a 136-foot wooden sailing ship.

``We did a tremendous amount of structural work on her,'' Forrest said. ``We're one of the few shipyards in the country that's able to reframe and lay planks in ships like this.''

The Bill of Rights was built in the 1970s for a pleasure cruising company in Maine. It was recently purchased by a maritime academy in Long Beach, Calif.

Unlike the Bill of Rights, the Zaca, which looks like a wooden ship, is actually steel-hulled.

Colonna's will preserve the outside look of the Zaca, but will replace her guts. Built in a Dutch shipyard in 1992, the Zaca has a modern European-style interior. The owners want Colonna's to make the interior more traditional, which it will do in-house with the help of local artisans, Forrest said.

Colonna's is also replacing the Zaca's engines and its entire electrical and heating and air-conditioning systems, he said.

The owner plans to take the Zaca on a three-year world voyage once the overhaul is finished, Forrest said. ILLUSTRATION: BILL TIERNAN COLOR PHOTOS/The Virginian-Pilot

Chris Welton...

...Doug Forrest...

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