Dickey Boats

Dickey Boats began life in 2005 when marine engineer Jason Dickey returned home from super-yacht work and sketched an aluminium launch that could handle Hawke Bay’s steep chop without guzzling fuel. Working from a modest Napier shed with one other craftsman—and plenty of support from his wife Tristin—he built the plumb-bow Semifly 28, which won its class at the 2007 Auckland Boat Show and sold on the spot.

Buoyed by that success, Dickey formalised the business and set up a purpose-built facility in Napier’s Ahuriri precinct. The follow-up Semifly 32 soon appeared, bringing walk-around decks and super-yacht-style fairing to a sub-10-metre sport-fisher, while reviewers praised its low fuel burn of roughly 1.6 L per kilometre at 25–28 knots.

Through the 2010s the range broadened in two directions. Upwards, the Semifly family grew to 36, 40 and 45-foot models aimed at blue-water anglers and family cruisers. Downwards, the trailerable Custom series (750–950) offered the same rigid space-frame construction for weekend fishers towing with a large 4×4. At the 2014 Hutchwilco Show the Custom 950 scooped four trophies, and in 2015 the Custom 850 and 800 collected three gold awards.

Super-yacht thinking became Dickey’s hallmark: laser-cut 5083 alloy plates slot together like a 3-D jigsaw before full welding, hulls are faired and painted to a gloss finish, and technologies such as C-Zone digital switching, joystick docking and gyro stabilisation appeared years ahead of the aluminium-boat curve.

The next leap came in 2023 with the reveal of the Pacific 62—a 19-metre, 4 000-nautical-mile explorer aimed at owners dreaming of cruising from New Zealand to the Galápagos under their own steam. Hull #1 splashed in early 2025 and will headline the Auckland Boat Show, marking Dickey’s move into true passagemaker territory while retaining the brand’s sport-fishing DNA.

Today the Napier yard employs a few dozen tradespeople and turns out roughly a dozen highly customised boats each year, many bound for Australia and the wider Pacific. Yet every owner is still invited to sea-trial their boat on Hawke Bay before hand-over—a reminder that Dickey Boats’ journey from backyard build to internationally lauded marque remains grounded in family-run passion for better boats.