The early days…

Starting off in the early 1990’s, Peter Rae started manufacturing small award winning twin hull dinghy’s for the New Zealand market, alongside completing a wide array of fibreglass repairs, all under the Rae Line brand. However, it wasn’t until May, 1998 after having developed and built the 2.5, 3.2 & 130 C twin dinghy’s, that together with Ian Williamson, the brand was formed into a company and managed to secure a contract with Sea Ray (then the largest fibreglass boat manufacturer in the world) to build a few of their models under license for the New Zealand, Australian and South Pacific markets.

The building of NZ made Sea Ray’s…

Starting off with their current 180 OB and 180 BR models, the NZ built Sea Ray boats were a huge success and resulted in more Sea Ray models being sent over for manufacture, those being the 190 CC and the 235 EC. With strong demand for the NZ built Sea Ray’s in both NZ and Australia, work began on developing a new Rae Line model to fit within the market at the time. After 7 years of well produced, high quality boats, Sea Ray reviewed their forward plan and decided to withdraw in early 2006 from the licensing agreement and left Rae Line to continue to produce all their previous models (which were no longer in their current model range) for the New Zealand and Australian markets, all under the Rae Line brand.

A photo taken from the Sea Ray plant in the late 90’s as Peter Rae went over to learn the process of building them.

One of the first 186 C’s off the line, presenting amazing value with is 4-stroke 3.0L stern drive power plant.

The first new Rae Line cuddy cabin…

Along the same timeline, Rae Line released its first new model in a number of years, being the 186 C. With great praise for its price point, quality and offering a 4-stroke stern drive power option while most locally build boats were still running with 2-stroke outboards, the 186 C was a real hit and resulted in over 200 being built in the first few 3 years of production. Along this same time, what was the Sea Ray 235 Express Cruiser got an upgrade to become the Rae Line 235 HT or hardtop. It was the one of the only stern drive powered hard top’s at the time and boasting a large external swim platform, it provided a great base for all kinds of water activities and adventure.

Extending to the UK & Europe market….

With all models now effectively branded as Rae Line and the New Zealand Dollar well placed for an exporting market, new boat dealers were setup in the UK to sell over into those markets. However, with all products entering Europe & the UK, they required to be CE Certified. This was a process that took some time and a good amount of testing to ensure all of the Rae Line models were capable vessels. The process involved completing drop tests on all the models to be exported. These tests were setup with a crane and done locally at the Cam River in Kaiapoi. With all boats passing the test and receiving their CE Certification, Rae Line made its entry into the UK market place for the first time.

The drop test being completed on the Rae Line 180 E Series as part of the CE Certification process.

Rhys on board the Rae Line 185 E Series in Picton, NZ.

The rise of a new era…

However, all good times come to an end and as the global recession hit NZ in 2008, the production started to slow off to a point where the company went into an extended slow period and as staff started to transition off into other industries and opportunities, the production slowly ground to a halt at the beginning of 2011.

With Rhys Williamson (son of Ian) recently returning to NZ after completing a stint as a Mechanical Engineer at Sea Ray’s PD&E centre in Merritt Island, Florida the opportunity arose to learn to build boats from the ground up and kick Rae Line back into a bit of action with the help of Peter Rae and some ex-staff members. Rhys and Peter started to build and repair boats again at the end of 2011 and with a few orders starting to come through from both NZ and Australia, and having run as a 2-man team for the whole of 2012, it was time to bring on a few new team members. 2013 represented a new start, with new staff coming on board for the first time in a few years and Peter Rae moving on from Rae Line to focus on his farming activity, leaving Ian, Rhys and the new team to start progress towards a new future for the brand.

Product development began again…

With product development at the fore for the new Rae Line team, it was not long before new developments kicked into progress. Starting off with re-developing our 186 CX model into the new 186 OB in 2014.