I mentioned in yesterday's post being surprised how much water drained out of each stabilizer fin. A couple of people emailed asking me what was up, so I emailed the west coast service rep for ABT Trac. He replied a few minutes later:
"Yes you are correct a lot of water will come out of the fins as they are hollow and designed to fill with water. They are this way so they will become neutrally buoyant when under the vessel. There is a small foam piece in the very front of the fin (forward of the socket ) than will keep the fin from going to the bottom but otherwise the rest of the fin is like an airplane wing that is hollow in design. And if it were sealed it would want to float." So now we know!
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Does everyone feel a little anxious when their boat is going to be hauled out? Boats are meant for water, not land, right? Part of the commissioning process involves a haulout for several procedures which I will touch on below. Okay this is the weirdest thing ever. I have watched plenty of boats being hauled out. It's different when it is your boat! Looks like the stabilizer fins hold quite a bit of water. It's kinda like parking cars. But there's a little more at stake. Speaking of the stabilizers, here Jeff Owen of Yacht Systems NW gets ready to mount the kelp cutters. The props are being removed, to be sent to Seattle firm Kreuger, for balancing and anti-fouling treatment. Look at the size of the threads on this SeaTorque shaft. Jeff Fitzge of True Phase. Jeff is an incredible engineer, and his company specializes in vibration/rotation analysis. Anything that rotates, Jeff uses his test equipment to make sure it is perfectly aligned and everything is up to spec. And he does more than that. He almost has a sixth sense about everything mechanical. (I almost got that "beam of light" right on him, didn't I?) He travels with $60,000 of test equipment.
He just became the West Coast service center for SeaTorque. Jeff can find things wrong with new boats that would not appear for a couple of years. And then would be mega-expensive to rectify. It says a lot about Hampton Yacht Group that they hire him to go over every build, verifying and correcting what the factory has turned out. He also visits the Shanghai factory regularly to help the Chinese technicians there build a better boat with each build. Today I asked him how long he would be there with Mahalo. "As long as it takes to everything under my control to be perfect." When I left the boat he was removing the trash compactor in the lazarette so he could check the torque on shaft strut bolts. Gotta love that. A few blog readers that are interested in possibly owning a Hampton have been in touch with me. I was speaking on the phone yesterday with one and he said "are you really as happy with everything as it seems, reading your blog?" I have to say that I kind of downplay how stoked we are. I don't want to seem like a "fanboy." But things are GOOD! I think today I'll give you a few more glimpses of what it is like being at the factory in Shanghai. The factory is a very modern building with all the necessary departments, offices, conference rooms and so on. That building in the back is Hampton's "dorm." Workers can stay here for free, and meals are provided. Just to give you a little perspective on the size of the buildings. That's Robert Fiala, the managing partner of HYG Seattle. One of the advantages of being at the factory is designing various elements in real time. This is one of the standard masts offered, but it only has room for one radar. As we have two, we got to decide exactly how it would be made. Left to right, factory owner Jeff Chen, Scott Hauck of Seattle, the guy that makes the masts (!), and foreman Lu Wenquan. When we got to the boat, they had already finished out the area under the kitchen sink. We plan to put a garbage can there, so we did a quick redesign with old fashioned binder paper. For all the important stuff, CAD drawings are created. Lu is a CAD master! We would often talk about some modification, and literally minutes later we had a new printout. This shot is kind of random, but as I was going through my images for this post, I realized I never mentioned the cedar lined closets before. Awesome. There is a mix of modern and old tools around the factory. This one is a beauty. Giving the turtle ohana some love. All the granite and marble was sealed and polished at the factory. Yaay, one less thing for us to do. Checking out the beautiful veneers made at the factory. One of the first things we did during the April visit was go through every line in the specifications contract and our change notices (only 3!). Scott Hauck suggested this. It's great having someone like him looking out for our best interests. We indeed found a few items that had been missed, which the factory quickly rectified. We found the Chinese to be very agreeable, gentle, and quick to laugh. They all got a kick out of my t-shirt. What's it say? Hey, it's not my fault if you can't read Mandarin!
There's a lot more I could say about the factory experience. I hope some of you can experience it yourself. As always many thanks to Jeff Chen and everyone at the HYG factory. It seems one of the inevitable facts of PNW cruising life... is The Pile of fleeces and coats. Every boat I have been on, you just end up with "The Pile." That's because we need several kinds of outerwear here. You need fleece for warmth, a shell for rain. When there's four of you, it's easy to end up with 10 garments of various kinds. You come in from say anchor duty, it's time to depart the anchorage, so you don't go below and hang up your coat, you put it on The Pile. Same with PFD's. They go on The Pile. Building our boat with lots of customization possible, Deb and I wanted to do something about this. If you know Hampton Endurance boats, you know that they have bar stools in front of the galley. In the Youtube video, Captain Steve makes a big deal about the clever way Hampton captures the front legs of the bar stools to prevent them from falling in a seaway. But even on a boat this large, the bar stools create something that has to be walked around. We didn't think they would be that useful in our situation, so we decided to eliminate them and use this space for The Anti-Pile. We thought we would just buy some kind of hooks at Home Depot and attach them underneath the bar counter (since they aren't really seen anyway). But the factory insisted on making something custom. This large hook Deb is placing is for PFD's. It can hold perhaps six inflatables or two/three standard ones. The factory made a mockup of the hooks, which we approved. Then in less than two hours they had made these beauties. Installing the hooks at our desired spacing. Factory owner Jeff Chen looking on (talk about hands on...). First demo of our new coat hooks! We see this usage for cruising. Obviously when not cruising we won't have a bunch of fleeces just hanging around in our nice pilothouse.
I am second guessing the no barstool idea. I think one there in the corner would be nice. So someone can have a seat and talk with the chef. We can always have the factory make us one and ship with another boat heading to Seattle, no biggie. What's the other Pile you often find besides coats/pfds? That's right, shoes! Well see those shelves at the end there? That's right, sized to store "outside shoes." When we first really determined we were going to move forward with building a Hampton Endurance, the Hampton guys told us we would really enjoy our trips to the factory. I'm always up for travel, and having only been to Hong Kong and Singapore in Asia, I was looking forward to seeing China. But we ended up enjoying it much more than we thought. The people are just great. Very easy going, easy to laugh. And of course the yacht engineering and craftsmanship is top notch. I'm going to do a couple of posts just with pictures and some descriptions to give you a flavor of what it is like to visit the Hampton Yacht factory in Shanghai. What a feeling, seeing your yacht nearly ready to ship! Debbie is a six footer. She draws attention wherever she goes in China! Tools of the trade. They use these traditional brooms all over the factory. Shanghai scaffold. In many cases, women do the most intricate work. She makes small stainless parts with her lathe. The polishing work seems endless. No shoes in the boat! Factory approved boat shoes! They waited to mount the "bar" granite until we got there, so we could determine our own overhang. Here I'm checking out the sliding windows. I wanted to be able to get fresh air in the galley. We went through quite a few different ideas, portholes and such. In the end we went with sliding windows on each side of the boat. It's a very protected area. Hopefully they will work out well. The timing of our visit coincided with the China F1 race, sooooo, gotta do that. The factory supplied our driver so dealing with getting there and back was a piece of rice cake. Debbie doesn't think I make a very good Leo DiCaprio...
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