It all started when Raymond Alexander Bregher decided to build his dream boat.

After seeing a custom-built boat that wasn't for sale, Bregher set out to build by hand his own version of the boat in his backyard in Southern California. In the end, he crafted not just a vessel, but also a "retirement" business that now occupies a converted horse arena in Otis Orchards.

The business, Alexander Boats LLC, sold its first commercially built craft, a 31-foot mahogany boat it calls the Stella Nova V-31, last year for more than $500,000.

"I wanted to build the Stradivarius of boats," Bregher says, referring to the famous 17th-century maker of now-priceless violins.

Now, with the pressures of the economy curbing luxury purchases, the company, which Bregher owns with his wife, Stephanie, also has introduced a 25-foot version of the boat that is just as sleek as the original, but with fewer bells and whistles. The price tag on the new model, which is as yet unnamed, is between $250,000 and $275,000, depending on options such adding a propeller drive similar to that used in the Stella Nova.

Altogether, Alexander Boats has sold just two vessels, but has five of the smaller version in process, and one large boat in inventory ready to sell. In addition to the Breghers, it employs one other full-time employee and one contract painter.

While the 3,200-pound Stella Nova has a 900-horsepower custom-made engine, the new 2,000-pound boat has a 505-horsepower Corvette engine that the company converts for marine use. Where the Stella Nova boasts a German leather interior, the 25-foot version is made with Italian vinyl, and where the engine compartment in the Stella Nova has a fully automatic electronic opening system for the engine compartment and tie downs and boat lifts that are concealed until hydraulically activated with the push of a button, the scaled-down version has manually applied mechanical mechanisms, Bregher says.

The smaller boats are faster to produce. While a larger boat takes about 11 months to build once the frame is complete, a smaller one takes about six months, Stephanie Bregher says. Currently, Alexander Boats has one of the larger boats completed and in inventory, and five of the smaller models in various stages of production, she says.


Fulfilling a dream
Ray Bregher was a semi-retired owner of a chain of beauty salons called Great Cuts Hair Care, in Yorba Linda, Calif., in 2001, when he saw a custom-built speedboat made of hardwoods in a boating magazine, his wife says. When he contacted the manufacturer to see if he could commission a similar boat, the company told him it had been far too time-consuming and expensive to build, and it didn't plan to make any more of them.

The industrious Bregher, who previously had owned other wood-products businesses, including a ski-manufacturing business, and who had dabbled in boat-building in the past, decided he would re-create for himself a boat like the one he had seen in the magazine.

"It was a dream of mine to own this kind of boat," he says.

Stephanie Bregher says her husband seems to have an innate sense of proportion, and that he figured out the amount of wood he would need for a 31-foot wooden boat, bought it, and set about building the boat in the couple's back yard, without blueprints or help.

"As I would come home from work each day, he would be a little further along," she says. Before long, the couple's entire neighborhood became enamored with the project, and people would stop by to see its progress.

Ultimately, the boat, which took Bregher nearly two years to build, became the prototype for the Stella Nova 13, and Bregher then had it reverse-engineered to create the blueprint for production of the boats.

Finding the parts Bregher wanted for the boat sometimes was challenging, she says.

"He wanted a stainless steel engine, sleek and shiny, polished and fast. Finally, we found a young guy who had done engines who said he'd try to do what we wanted," she says. The custom engine that man's company, GT Performance Engineering, of Upland, Calif., builds for the Stella Nova can produce speeds of up to 90 miles an hour, she says.

When he brought the boat to GT Performance, his project caught the eye of a member of the Southern California Marine Association, who insisted on showing the boat at the Los Angeles boat show.

The show organizers positioned the glamorous wooden boat right at the front entry of the show, where it made a big splash, garnering so much attention and so many inquiries from potential customers that the couple began to consider production a possibility, Stephanie Bregher says.

"At the end of the show I said, 'Honey, it's too bad you don't have one or two to sell,'" she says.

They decided they just might have something, so Bregher did a feasibility study. He determined that such a business would need at least a 5,000-square-foot facility, but the operating costs for such a space in California would be too high, given the low volume he anticipated, pushing the cost of the boats up to about $2 million each.

They began considering other locations, including Seattle. A Seattle real estate agent, however, told Bregher that prices there wouldn't be much of an improvement over California, and directed him to check out the Spokane area, where he thought perhaps someone in the farming community might have a structure that could be suitable for the work.

Sure enough, Bregher stumbled across a piece of property for sale in Otis Orchards that happened to have a large, indoor horse arena on it along with a house the couple could live in on the property.

They bought the property in 2005 and spent about $2 million to convert the 10,000-square-foot arena into a manufacturing facility, including installing a specialized dust-free chamber called a downdraft spray booth, for painting and finishing the boats.

Stephanie Bregher says the location has worked out well for the business, as the facility is near Interstate 90, making deliveries by large trucks relatively easy. They've purchased the production equipment as they've gone along, staying out of debt, and intend to produce the boats at a comfortable rate so they can focus on the quality, they say.

Making the boats
Bregher says he seeks to execute his original vision in each boat the company builds. It uses imported special woods from 13 different countries, including mahogany from South America for the outer skin; Russian marine birch that's used for the ribs in the boat's wooden frame; and a species called Okume that's grown in Africa and turned into a marine plywood in France, then certified by Lloyd's of London, Bregher says.

That marine plywood is cut into 8-inch strips that are built onto the frame in two crisscrossed layers, Bregher says. The larger boats are built with 15 ribs and the smaller boats are built with 13 ribs. White oak and Douglas fir grown in the U.S. are used for the support beam, called a keelson, that runs the length of the boat on the bottom.

All of the mahogany for each boat comes from one tree, he says. Once the body is constructed, the boat is block sanded by hand, then stained and finished with multiple coats of epoxy resin and polyurethane, with sanding between each coat.

In addition to the engines, Alexander Boats constructs the frames for the seats, but outsources other parts needed for the boats, and assembles the pieces here.

While the economy has spurred the company to introduce the scaled-down Alpha Z model, Bregher says the workmanship and overall beauty of the boat remains one of his primary concerns. He says the joints have less than a hair's width of space between them.

"You don't see any screws, you don't see any fasteners—my husband wanted to build a piece of art," Stephanie Bregher says.

"We don't expect to sell 50 boats a year," Ray Bregher says. Currently, the Breghers hope to sell about five of the smaller boats each year, he says. Bregher now has turned more of the construction over to his nephew, who worked as an aerospace mockup engineer for 25 years before joining the Breghers at Alexander Boats. The company also contracts with another man to paint the boats. Bregher says he has developed a lung disease that requires him to stay out of the shop when extremely dusty work is being done and away from harsh chemicals.

Stephanie Bregher says that since it's a retirement business for her husband, there may not end up being very many of Alexander Boats' creations around the world, which could serve to highlight their artistry. The first boat was purchased by the royal family of Dubai, who sent Bregher a pen with which to sign the hull of the boat, she says.

Now, Bregher plans to make more time for driving his own boat, the original prototype of the Stella Nova.

"It rides just like a Cadillac," he says, smiling.