Erwin Chvojan
0411 285 188
February 7th 2004.
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Apology. |
Hydrofield Marine Pty Ltd has been deregistered. Hydrofield Marine Pty Ltd. was formed (around May 2000) supposedly as a partnership between Leon Field & myself. In November of 1999 my spouse and I bought this shed as part of our commitment to the joint company. From the beginning of the 2000 school year, until the week before our arrival at the shed, Leon Field's wife and children lived at our shed. Leon joined them permanently when he finished the 10m hull mould he was building at his previous premises. From late April to June of 2000 I helped Leon Field move his moulds and equipment (his supposed commitment to the joint company) to our shed from his previous premises. (View Leon Field's previous premises here). At the beginning of August my spouse and I joined Leon who had just commenced laying up a 10m hull in our shed at Halfway Creek.
We had sold our house and moved to Halfway Creek. Had Leon been ready at Christmas of 1999 as he had originally told us, or had he let us know he would take a further 5 months, we could have met our commitment to the joint company without selling our house. Unfortunately Leon kept saying that he would be ready soon, so I declined extensions to the contract I was employed under (approx $10,000/mth) so I would be ready for Leon. After a few months with no income it was clear that the only way we could meet our commitments to the joint company was by putting our house up for sale.
In October of 2000, Leon announced his intention to retire after the 10m boat we were working on was finished. Leon offered me the opportunity to buy him out. But without the skills to do the work myself or to supervise others (at least 2-3years experience), and as Leon had said the boat would be completed in around 8 months, I declined his offer. The decision to decline his offer was also based on the price that Leon had placed on his moulds & tools. An amount almost 3 times greater than he had valued these items for the purposes of forming the partnership, and far in excess of any finance I might be able to secure. In December 2000 my spouse and I returned to Canberra so that I could secure work back in the IT field.
Around January 2001 Leon said he would be finished the 10m in 6 months. Over a year later, around February 2002 we put our shed on the market. Leon had still not finished the 10m boat. I linked the original shed sale site, to the Hydrofield Marine site I had built, as Hydrofield Marine Pty. Ltd. was no longer operating. Leon Field however hijacked the site for his own company (Hydrofield International Marine Pty. Ltd.), that still owned the moulds and was now operating out of our shed. All evidence of my authourship was removed from the web site, it was changed to Hydrofield International Marine Pty. Ltd, and a pop up apology stating that the site had been vandalised by an "ex-employee" was added.
Leon Field and his company were finally given a months formal notice to vacate in May of 2002. Leon Field and Hydrofield International Marine Pty. Ltd. then continued sqatting in our shed until finally leaving in January 2003 under threat of Supreme Court action. The action went ahead in order to recoup some of our losses and the legal costs we incurred to extricate Leon and his company from our shed. Leon had originally been given permission to use the shed, for a reasonable period of time, in order to complete the 10m boat. But, as this link shows, more than one 10m boat was being built in our shed..
In December of 2003 the Supreme court of NSW found in our favour, awarding us a small amount (equating to rent from June 2002 to January 2003, plus costs). The final amount (not including costs), being less than 5% of the roughly $300,000, that we are now worse off by, because we went into this venture with Leon Field. To this date,
, we have not recieved a cent of this judgement. Leon Field claims to be broke and no longer making boats. As for the moulds, the claims have ranged from sold, to damaged in a storm and disposed of, and finally, in a letter produced to the Sheriff (an officer of the Supreme Court) that they were GIVEN AWAY !
But, what have we here, looks like some moulds. These don't look like they've been disposed of at the dump. And if they've been sold, how come they are next door with a friend rather than the boatbuilder that would have bought them. But maybe they were given away in leiu of wages, after all they are only moulds for a 10m boat & a 13m boat, hardly worth anything.
And mores the pity for you, the public reading this apology. I believed that the only reason Hydrofield boats did not outsell the competition, was that they had never been marketed properly. That was the main reason the parnership looked attractive to us in the first place. With some half decent marketing, a few improvements to their customer contact, and a bit of hard work, it would have been flourishing by now. Unfortunately that was not to be. I was stopped from promoting the Hydrofield Marine web site as we were getting "too many" enquiries. I was stopped from creating a quotation system that would have cut our quotation time from days to minutes. We were treated like employees, not partners. Most of the people in the district believed that the Field's owned our shed. Some even believed we were poor, "down and out" friends of the Field's and that they were helping us out with jobs, and a place to stay (caretaking the shed). It took the viewing of our title deeds (for the property) to convince some locals, that we were in fact, the owners of the shed.
| Sincerly Yours
Erwin Chvojan 0411 285 188 February 7th 2004. |
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