Shower window

The shower in the forward head is small at best. To make it feel larger, we first added a hatch above. That allows in air as well as light which will help dry out the shower. Then we added a window into the forward cabin. But rather than just a plain glass window, Fay found an artist in Sonoma, Vincent Taylor, to create a piece of art for us to look through. He finished it today and is shipping it to Lyman Morse to be installed.

3D Modeling

At Fay's insistence, and over my protests, we asked Lyman Morse to model many of the interior areas of the boat to facilitate our discussions on the phone and via email. They turned out to be invaluable and we soon found new ones were popping up in the mail from JB whenever he had a question. Now we don't know what we would have done without them. We've posted them in the Mockups section of the photos. Enjoy!

First mast photos

Today we received the first photos of the mast from Offshore Spars. It's bare carbon now, but will be painted white eventually. You can see the masthead on the left, and the forestay tang on the right.

The rudder arrives

We were in Maine last week (and caught the big storm that hit Boston).

The big news was the rudder arrived and looked great. They wasted no time in getting it fit into the boat to see how the quadrant fit and confirm the additional structure that will be built to support the rudder bearings. Now they'll send the quadrant back to PYI to be beefed up to accept the autopilot cylinders.

It was also our first opportunity to sit in the cockpit under the dodger and it was wonderful. Good view out and protected from the elements, yet with immediate access to the helm and lines.

We made numerous decisions about the final location of various pieces of joinery and equipment, adjusting their positions by 1" - 2". This included the location of the lead blocks, cleats and clutches in the cockpit and on the quarter decks.

The joinery is all coming together nicely and we made the final decisions regarding the upper cabinets in the salon and the materials that will finish the headliner and inside of the hull (aka ceiling). I'm not sure if they are white or off-white, but Fay does!

The convertible becomes a hardtop

Yesterday they lowered the hard dodger onto the deck, totally transforming the look of the boat. The center (opening) window will be larger than what you see after they cut it out to install the real window. Offshore Spars also began construction of the mast and boom last week.

Steady progress

Last week the toilet was installed in the forward head so we'll call that progress! Also more joinery was added to the interior.

Inch by inch.

I just returned from Maine. The deck was fastened down the previous week and what a difference! I've updated the photos so you can see the progress.

Now she looks like a boat and the emphasis really shifted to the interior. For three days I made decisions about inches. Literally moving things by 1" - 3". We discussed some things for thirty minutes before moving them 1 - 2"!

We also went over the helm stations and winch peninsulas in great detail, locating the winches, fine tuning the sheets bins, finding homes for the throttle/shifter, bow thruster controls and hydraulic panel, etc. The aft five feet of the cockpit is very compact. I think it will make handling the boat very easy because everything is within reach, but it requires locating everything very carefully, or in some cases just trying to find any location at all!

A few other updates include the latest version of the spec and the September cover of Ocean Navigator featuring a great shot of JB Turner.

Good Show!

Flying home from Ft. Lauderdale, it was a good show. Furuno introduced their NavNet 3D product line which looks very good.

I'm also giving a hard look at their boat instruments and autopilot.

We found some excellent LED lighting from i2 which we think can satisfy about 80% of our lighting needs with about 80% less power consumption than if we had used halogen lights. And since that 80% difference mostly went to heat it should also stay a lot cooler below decks.

After that we collected an assortment of information on the availability of enhanced models of various equipment we'd been considering, from watermakers to furlers. And of course the usual assortment of boat gadgets, some of which could actually be useful!

While we were at the show they lowered the deck onto the hull for the first time. This allows them to scribe the bulkheads and begin cutting them to fit the deck to ensure a precise fit. With the deck on the hull she's starting to actually look like a boat!

Dimensions & Lines

I added the basic dimensional data, metrics and ratios to the Design page. While I haven't had time to flesh out the design story, at least you can see the basic parameters of the boat. I also added the hull lines to the Hull, keel and rudder page with a link to the pdf of the drawing.

Blog and FLIBS

The "style" add-in that I use for this site was updated today, fixing a problem with formatting the blog. Now the site has a proper blog!

FLIBS is the Ft. Lauderdale International Boat Show which starts next week. At the show we hope to find some nice LED interior lighting which will keep the boat bright and the power consumption low. We'll also see the new electronics and make decisions about the core electronics systems (radar, plotter, communications, etc.).

Construction progress continues and I posted a few new pictures. I also added V6.0 of the specification and a link to a nice article on Lyman Morse written by Ben Ellison in Power and Motoryacht.

Deck out of the mold

Last week they pulled the deck out of the mold, flipped it over and put it back in the shed. Fortunately the weather was perfect so it was a drama-free process. This week they begin initial fairing of the deck. It will be fitted to the hull in 2-3 weeks.

Back from Maine

I just returned from Maine. The weather was uncharacteristically beautiful with warm temperatures and clear skies. The leaves had not really started to turn and it did not seem like the last week of September.

We made a number of design refinements to the interior, clarified the spec in many places and began the design of the upper cabinets in the salon. I reviewed the preliminary layout of the electrical panel and we made some minor adjustments to the electrical system. The engine had been put back into the hull, the shaft fitted and the strut was being glassed in while I was there. As always it was a pleasure to work with the Lyman Morse staff.

I added some pictures of the furniture and joinery that has been fitted into the hull in anticipation of the deck being put into position in the next 2-3 weeks. I also added a few pictures of Maine and of the Lyman Morse facility.

The next big event is the Ft. Lauderdale Boat Show, the last week of October, where we will review our options for interior lighting and nav/comm electronics. We hope to make the final selection of lighting fixtures by mid-November.

Updates

We started the detail design of the hanging locker in the forward cabin and did a second iteration of our plan for the switching requirements at the electrical panel.

Ben Ellison, who writes the marine electronics blog Panbo (and articles in major boating magazines) accepted my offer of dinner next week. I'm looking forward to picking his brain in advance of the Ft. Lauderdale Boat Show where we'll pick the nav/comm electronics.

On the web site I added a sidebar on Why Fiberglass, almost finished the Why a custom boat? section, and made an assortment of corrections and minor updates on other pages.

New web site

Published a major revision to the web site. There were problems with formatting a proper blog [now fixed] so this is the temporary substitute, hopefully the problems will be resolved soon.

Added some new pictures. Great to see the companionway starting to be installed. Exciting to see maple inside the boat instead of fiberglass!

A lot of open items have been put off until next week when I'll be at Lyman Morse in Maine.

Fuel system and electrical outlets

Normally it's not good to mix fuel and electricity, but when we're talking design it's ok. The fuel system is pretty well finalized as we're up to rev 1.5 of the design. Darius found a stacked valve that will let us switch both bypass lines with a single lever to simplify the operation of bypassing the day tank (which I hope we'll never need to do).

I made a first pass at the location of all the AC and DC outlets. It's mostly a matter of convenience as I don't expect too many things to be plugged in at once, but it wouldn't be good to be running too many extension cords! Of course convenience has it's cost with more wires running around the boat so I tried to strike a proper balance between convenience and thrift.

We still haven't found a home for the "rechargeables" locker, though we did disqualify two potential locations (I think that's progress). This is where the ever increasing population of rechargeable gadgets can rest and be renewed from their electrical source of choice (110vac or 12vdc). Cell phones, iPods, cameras, spotlight, handheld VHFs and probably half a dozen things that I don't yet know I'll be owning in the future. They need a home.

Shorepower

This week we wrestled with shore power. 110v / 60Hz, 230v / 50Hz and/or 220v / 60Hz? Isolation transformers, solid state or toroidal transformers? In the end we decided to further simplify the electrical system (always a good thing). We decided to accept 220v/60Hz and 230v/ 50Hz shore power, but it's really any 200+ volt power with either one or two hot legs. The only components connected to shore power will be the charger and the hot water heater and neither of them is very fussy about voltage or frequency. So we eliminated the isolation transformers all together saving time, weight and money. With the exception of the water heater, all the other AC consumers will be run from the inverter which will produce nice clean 110v / 60Hz power.