Oh boy, it's getting close. I just got back from my second trip to the yard in China to check in on build progress. My thinking was that the boat should be far enough along to be able to inspect the vast majority of the hull and systems, but with plenty of time to address any issues without undue delays. In that respect (and all others), I'd say the trip was a success. I'll just go through it all based on the pictures, of which there are quite a few.
Here you can see one of the stabilizers (no fins yet), the grounding plate, and the keel cooler for the main engine.
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| Stabilizer, grounding plate, and main keel cooler |
The prop shaft is all installed and set up with the line cutter, prop nut, and zinc. The prop itself is still in the stock room, but I got a quick look at it.
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| Prop shaft |
The wing engine is all set up too with shaft and strut, but the shaft seal isn't installed yet, and the shaft end needs to be machined with a taper, threads, etc.
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| Wing prop shaft |
The trademark Nordhavn bow plate is installed, and you can see the snorkle/nozzle for the anchor wash. It will be quit a luxury to not have to lean over the rail and hose off anchor and chain as they come up.
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| Bow plate and anchor wash nozzle |
Up on the fly bridge, a bunch of cutouts are awaiting instruments and controls. Unfortunately, I think one a couple of them are wrong. It's hard to tell for sure, but they will fix is needed, I'm sure.
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| Fly bridge helm station |
Still on the fly bridge, and looking aft down onto the boat deck, you can see the davit and railings. When we first arrived they were finishing up fitting all the railings, but they are all just tack welded. By Wednesday all were gone, presumably off to be welded, ground, and polished.
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| Boat deck |
Here's the fly bridge settee, sans cushions and table.
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| Fly bridge settee |
The whole stack is in place and the exhaust system all fitted, but parts of it were just tack welded too, along with a number of cooling pipes in the engine room. All these disappeared on Wednesday as well, and to be welded fully. If you look carefully, you can also see the Simrad 4G radar dome.
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| Stack, exhaust, and 4G radar |
Up at the bow, all the anchoring gear is now installed, though it's covered in protective wrap. You can see the cleats, windlass, and the foot button controls.
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| Anchoring gear |
Here's the windlass from down below in the chain locker. Probably the most import thing this picture shows is that I can actually get into the chain locker despite my size. And since I'm writing this, you also know I got out. Anyway, the black think is the windlass gear box, the blue thing is the hydraulic motor that drives it, and the hydraulic hoses run off to the left.
One thing I discovered while reading the manual for the windlass is that only the hydraulic version can develop the full specified lifting force. I assumed the electric version would perform the same, but it's much lower power. The electric variant can lift about 1300lbs, where the hydraulic one can lift the full rated 3500 lbs. That's a big difference and was a surprise to me.
In a worst-case scenario, the windlass needs to be able to lift all 400' of 1/2" chain plus the anchor. That totals up to 1300 lbs so the electric windlass should be able to do it, but it's cutting it close. The hydraulic version, on the other hand, has an almost 3x safety margin. But this worst-case would only happen if somehow the anchor and all the chain found it's way overboard in deep (greater than 400') water. It could happen, but is a real corner case. In a realistic deep anchorage you might be in 100' of water with 4:1 scope and have out all the chain. But you are never lifting more than 100' at a time, with the rest lying on the bottom. The worst case is just as you lift the anchor off the bottom and have 100' of chain plus the anchor hanging in the water. So a normal deep-anchoring lift would only be about 500 lbs (the weight of 100' of chain plus the anchor). That's no problem for either windlass.
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| Hydraulic windlass mechanism |
Back in the cockpit we are standing by the boarding gate looking aft (on the left) through the gate. Looking from the middle across to the right is the cockpit settee. Just left of center there is a white cover where the aft helm is located.
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| Cockpit settee and boarding gate |
The next set of pictures walks around the salon which, as you can see, is pretty much finished. The whole time I was there a crew of gals were working their way through the boat doing a detailed cleaning. Every drawer comes out and gets cleaned on every surface, track, etc. I take it as a really good sign that things have shifted from making dust to cleaning up the dust.
Looking through the pictures, you can see that the ceiling panels are all finished and the lights have all been installed (and they work).
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| Salon Settee |
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| Salon settee and kitchen bar |
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| Salon kitchen bar |
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| Salon stairs to pilot house |
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| Salon view into galley |
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| Salon cabinet and heat duct |
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| Stairs to pilot house, and space for Ekornes chair to right |
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| Wall where Ekornes chairs will live |
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| Ekornes chair location and door to cockpit |
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| Aft view of salon |
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| Looking into the galley from the salon |
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| Another peek into the galley |
Moving into the galley, all the appliances are installed and ready to go. I really like the industrial fridge door handles. We borrowed the idea from another boat, and they ensure the doors are locked at all times without having to use slide bolts or other latches.
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| Galley view |
The layout, working around from the far left, we have the sink, dish washer, oven, cooktop over the oven, then microwave over that.
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| Galley |
The cooktop is propane. Lots of people go for all-electric boats to get rid of the hazards associated with propane, and if you run a generator all the time anyway I suppose it makes sense. But we don't run a generator except when needed, and greatly prefer cooking with gas. To each his own.
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| 5 burner gas cooktop |
Moving into the master stateroom, you can again see that it's 99% finished.
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| Master stateroom looking forward |
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| Master stateroom |
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| Master, port side |
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| Master, facing aft |
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| Master, facing starboard |
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| Master, starboard/aft |
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| Great storage under bed |
The heads are all done too, including fixtures, grab handles, doors, etc.
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| Master head |
The guest stateroom and office are similarly complete.
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| Guest cabin, aft |
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| Guest cabin, aft/port |
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| Guest, port |
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| Guest bunk with lots of storage underneath |
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| Looking into forward head |
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| Forward view of guest bunk, through to head |
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| The business end of things with flush buttons and diversion valve |
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| Office, facing aft |
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| Forward shower |
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| Storage behind shower door |
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| Guest head |
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| Guest head |
Below the forward compartments is the "basement" which is 4 small compartments with equipment and lots of room for storage. Right now all the plumbing and wiring is exposed, but there are cover panels that go up to create a nice finished look.
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| Basement compartments 2 & 3, port side |
In the forward-most compartment (#1) live the bow thruster, anchor wash pump, and controls including those for the windlass. Everything is nicely accessible in case of service.
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| Basement compartments 1 (bow) and 2. |
Back in compartment 4 we have all teh fresh water systems. including the pressure pump adn tank, how water heater, distribution and shutoff manifolds, and the water maker. The hot water can be heated three different ways. First is via electricity from either the generator or shore power. The second is via waste heat from the main engine while underway. The third is via the diesel heating system. Each of these sources will heat the water to a different temperature, and it can get quite hot, especially when heated by the main engine which will bring it up to around 180F. Not only are the temps unpredictable, but they can be downright dangerous, so a tempering valve is mandatory right at the output of the how water tank. This valve mixes the hot water with some cold water to maintain a more reasonable range of water temps.
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| Fresh water systems |
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| Hot water distribution and control manifold |
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| Cold water distribution and control manual |
The pilot house shows great progress, but is also one area where there is still plenty more to do before everything is finished. Like the rest of the boat, the ceiling panels are all finished, but in the pilot house they are all black for light control at night. In the overhead control panel lots has been installed. The control panels for the generator, main engine, and wing engine are installed, along with the hydraulic controls, VHFs, SSB, and various bilge and fire alarms. Also installed are the gray and black water tank gauges and pump out control switches.
The lower console is in place and finished off in black material, but none of the monitors are cut in yet.
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| Pilot house controls |
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| Heat controls in Captain's bunk |
Lots of wiring has been completed, but a number of things still need to be completed. But what's there is really neatly done - one of the hallmarks of a good boat.
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| Wiring neat and tidy |
Moving into the engine room, lots has been completed. The first view is of the supply tank with its calibrated upper section that can be used to measure/confirm fuel burn rate. All the fuel lines are plumbed in, and PAE has added a nice inspection/clean-out port on the side of the tank.
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| Fuel supply tank |
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| Fuel filters and distribution manifold |
Here's the wing engine (Deere 4045) with the engine room automatic fire extinguisher in the background.
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| Wing engine and fire suppression system |
The main engine is all hooked up with safety railing and exhaust pipe to the stack. All the pipes were subsequently removed and taken back to Santa's workshop for complete welding. They are just tack welded in this picture.
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| Main engine, exhaust, safety rail |
Next is a view forward in the engine room looking between the main and wing engines towards the fuel filters and manifolds
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| Engine room looking forward |
I opened up the generator should shield to check it out, and to get part numbers and serial numbers so I can start ordering spares to keep on board.
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| Generator with sound shield removed |
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| Close-up of exhaust |
ABT has done a great job integrating a whole pile of valves and controls into a single "block". What used to be an entire wall of discrete hydraulic components has now been reduced to this. This is the on/off, pressure control, and flow control for the cooling pump, plus a single block that gathers all the case drains together before returning them to the tank. This is a huge improvement.
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| Hydraulic controls |
And now for some outside views. For the first time you can really see how it's all come together into a boat that actually looks like the pictures in the brochures.
OK, that's enough. Back inside the boat we go, this time to the Laz.
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| Steering manifolds |
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| Diesel heat manifolds and controls |
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| ABT stabilizer actuator with automatic locking mechanism |
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| Washer |
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| Drier |
Jumping back up to the pilot house again, a bunch of the electronics components have been installed to one extent or another. In the picture below are the dual autopilot computers partially wired up. I could barely see them, let along take pictures, the the radar boxes, network boxes and N2K power tap have also been installed. There is probably more, but I couldn't get behind the pilot house overheat to see for sure.
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| Dual Autopilots |
One of the on-going challenges has been the routing of the exhaust from the diesel boiler, and one of the top goals of this trip was to get it figured out. Here is the result. We had to find a swim ladder to temporarily put in place, mark a line that is 3 feet above the water line, find space for the water trap box which is about the size of a gallon milk jug, and find a path to connect it all together. Below is the desired location for the exhaust flange where the exhaust exits the hull of the boat. In a perfect world I'd like to have more side clearance from the surrounding items, but boats are all about compromises and this is no exception. With the exhaust blowing outward, I counting on the adjacent areas not getting too hot. I've seen other boats set up like this, so have reason to believe it will be OK.
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| Diesel heat exhaust location |
There are a few pieces of woodwork that are still not in the boat. There is a small cabinet that goes between the two Ekornes chairs, the salon settee table, and the pilot house settee table. We are pretty sure we found them all up in the woodworking shop, but I only got a picture of the salon table.
Well, that's all for now. The list of things remaining gets shorter and shorter every week, and at this point I think we probably have 6-8 weeks more to finish everything up. There are a few missing parts/pieces of equipment, but all are due in over the next week or two. Other than that, I don't see any real obstacles other than workers getting pulled off onto other projects. I'm told my boat will be the next one out. There are two other lower hull numbers, but they are much more complicated builds and are not nearly as far along.
The next big milestone will be the test tank....... After that, I'm leaning towards making another trip over for final inspection. This trip surfaced a bunch of little things that probably wouldn't have been caught, adn I want to catch as many as possible before the boat ships.
