Many of the team at Oyster are passionate sailors who love to race.
CEO, David Tydeman is a competitive yachtsman and former Rear Commodore of the Royal Ocean Racing Club. David has owned 16 different race yachts over the last 25 years, with thousands of successful offshore and inshore racing miles. Buying the European licence for the Melges 24’s in 1994, David set up Class Associations across Europe to achieve “International One-Design status” for the boat and the first official Melges 24 World Championships generated 96 entries from 14 countries including 22 Olympic medalists. David’s best placing was 8th! His most recent successes include beating the Class Captain with a 3rd in the Quarter Ton Cup on his newly restored Joubert Nivelt 1979 designed ‘Snoopy’. He regularly sails in custom one-off campaigns as starting helm and tactician.
Oyster's founder, Richard Matthews, has taken part in 20 Fastnet Races, won three transatlantic events, has been East Coast offshore champion six times, twice won the coveted Royal Yacht Squadron Britannia Cup and won the Queen's Cup, Imperial Trophy, Burnham's Town and Commodore's Cup and the Ramsgate Gold Cup. In 2001, sailing in the 150th anniversary of the America's Cup Jubilee, Richard beat two times America's Cup winner and Olympic gold medallist Russell Coutts during the international 12 Metre class regatta. More recently Richard won the 2005 RYS Rolex Race Around the Isle of Wight sailing an Oyster 72, and in 2008 the Oyster research and development yacht Oystercatcher XXVI won her class in both the Heineken Regatta in St Maarten and Class Zero in Cork Week, with six firsts.
Our racing background means we are serious and authoritative about performance and this is reflected throughout the entire Oyster range and its development. Oyster's philosophy is 'fast is more fun than slow' even when cruising.