Many years ago, a young wide-eyed boy went for his first boat ride in his uncle’s vessel on the Swan River in Perth. Fast forward several decades, and that boy now heads up an innovative boat building company in Sydney, alongside his own son.
The boy was Derek Rodway, who along with his son Samson, created the successful boat brand, Oceanworx. Who would have thought that that first ride on the Swan River would resonate so deeply, and would have the ripple effect it has had. Derek and Samson have now launched their latest model, the Tempest 5.3. Derek grew up in Adelaide and while he loved surfing, he didn’t have access to boats, until that first fateful trip on the Swan River in Perth on his uncle’s boat. Derek was eight, and he says he will never forget that moment.
“I sat at the very back of the boat looking around, watching the engine and there’s photographs of me smiling from ear-to-ear,” says Derek. But it took quite a few years before Derek could scratch his boating itch. “It wasn’t until we moved to Sydney that I got a sailing catamaran to start with, and then I bought my first powerboat and have never looked back from there.”
Derek established two marine businesses in Sydney’s south, Good Times Marine and Roswell Marine (roswellmarine.com.au) with great success. But when Samson started showing his incredible design skills, Derek decided to start building his own boats.
School for thought
“When Samson finished school, he was doing a marine mechanic apprenticeship and he was producing these amazing boat designs – incredibly detailed, beautiful hulls,” says Derek. “So, we decided that they were too good to leave on a computer and that we should build one. We did, and it performed exceptionally and we went, okay, let’s build a business out of this. We started the company, and Samson went full-time designing boats and working on production and here we are.” That is how Oceanworx came about, and Derek is proud that it was his idea to use the ‘x’ on the end. “It’s my philosophy of making people look at something twice because it’s a bit different,” he says. “It just suits the brand.”
Asked what it is that makes Oceanworx different, Derek says: “A lot of boat brands design a hull that’s going to be quick, easy and efficient to build. We build our boats around the performance of the hull, and then we work out the internals. It’s a very different approach. We come about it from a product performance point of view not a high-volume, high-profit approach.”
Oceanworx boats are built from the water up. “Samson and I are both mad keen boat-driving enthusiasts,” says Derek. “We love the interaction of the hull with the water and how small incremental changes in angles and curves can dramatically impact the performance of the boat in all different conditions.”
Family first
“Samson was lucky enough to grow up in a trailer boat shop where we’ve driven just about every possible brand there is,” says Derek. “His thinking isn’t about the sun and fun, it is about ‘is this hull performing and where is the water dispersing from?’ He thought about boats from an engineering point of view from a young age.” Derek is obviously thrilled that Samson loves boating as much as he does and says his whole family is involved in his marine businesses. “Zoe, my daughter, does all the administration for Good Times Marine and she runs our Roswell business,” says Derek. “Asher is my youngest, and he has just finished a shipwright apprenticeship and is involved in all aspects of Good Times Marine.”
Introducing the Tempest 5.3
Another thing Derek is proud of is the new Tempest 5.3, the first Oceanworx cuddy to be released. It leverages off their 5.3m high tensile hull, which they originally released in a side and centre console. “It’s our first enclosed foredeck boat,” says Derek. “It’s different because most people are used to seeing a cabin and then seeing a windscreen on it. And that’s a standard way of building a half cabin. But when driving boats like that, very rarely do you even look through the windscreen. What we’ve done is take the traditional spearfishing concept of a wave breaker with a forward lip, which acts like a windbreak. It also has a deflection for any spray that might come up and creates a storage area up the front. There is just enough room to sit in there if you wanted to, but it is more about dry storage and ensuring there’s enough room for up to four people to fish at the back of the boat.”
There are plenty of features that set the Oceanworx Tempest 5.3 apart. “The Tempest definitely targets people who are going to be pushing offshore regularly and just want that extra protection, but don’t want to have to store a massive boat,” says Derek. “There are no extrusions in the construction, which is where you use a piece of metal to join two bits of metal. Extrusions can cause a lot of issues with boat performance, so we don’t have any extrusions. We also don’t have any running strakes, and we run a convex hull shape with curves in every direction. A lot of things are very different to what many boatbuilders do when they assemble their boats. We want Oceanworx hulls to perform phenomenally well in the water, and these are the ingredients we use to make that happen.”
Future plans
With such a forward-thinking, go-getting family, it’s no surprise to know that Oceanworx will be expanding its sphere. “We are very advanced in a plan for North America,” says Derek. Canada is also on the radar, he reports, with another family member playing his part. “My brother lives in Vancouver, so we’ve already got people on the ground to launch the business model for North America,” says Derek. “We are hoping to get manufacturing up and running in Seattle. That is what we’re looking at first. Hopefully, we will have some announcements in 2026 about that.”
Oceanworx also has a number of model releases to look forward to in 2026. “We’ve got new Squadron models coming,” reveals Derek. “We’ve got two to three new hulls coming out for the Squadron series, and in High Tensile we’ve got two new models coming out. Then other variations to the Tempest, Axcess and Airier models.”
Final word
Derek has a lot to be proud of, but one of the things he loves most is the feedback Oceanworx receives. “The sheer excitement and pride that our customers have when they pick up their boats, like they’ve just ticked off one of life’s goals, gives us all a thrill,” says Derek. And when not boating, former Adelaide surfer boy Derek still loves to surf. “We all love to surf,” says Derek. “We are Cronulla locals and there’s a break there called Voodoo, which is a favourite.”
Derek says his whole family are self-professed thalassophiles. “A thalossophile is loosely defined as someone whose life is improved by being in and around the water,” explains Derek. “We use that term a lot.” Through Oceanworx, Derek and Samson are well on their way to building a community of loyal Oceanworx owners and fellow thalassophiles who get just as much joy and contentment from their on-water lifestyle.
Words: Helen Hayes
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