If you have been on a Hampton, or watched the videos, you know most of them are built with very luxurious and functional crew quarters in the aft section. I'd be totally happy staying there, it's that nice. However we don't plan on crew, nor enough guests at one time to warrant crew quarters. OTOH, I'm a guy that loves his garage/workshop space. So we built out this area in that fashion. Without further ado, let's take a tour! I took these pictures on the last day of our Shanghai visit. The laz was not quite finished, but probably at the 95% level. There are two ways to enter the laz, in this case from the swim step. There is a large "aircraft style" door. Here the engine room door is open and we look all the way through it as well. As there are steps down as you go through the door, minimal ducking is required. POV: I'm backed into the starboard aft corner, looking forward to port. In the center you see the other way to enter the space, via a nice set of stairs from the salon. This means accessing the laz and the engine room without having to go outside the boat. It's deluxe. In a crew quarters build, there is no door at the bottom of the steps. (There's a way to close off this area from the top of the steps.) Hampton had never designed a door here before, so during our December Shanghai visit we all put our heads together to work this out using plywood mockups. Due to the wide angle lens, the perspective is a bit off in this image. At left, that stainless steel bit, that's the trash compactor. We didn't want to give up the cabinet space in the galley, so we located it here. Just to the right you can see there is a small sink. Above the compactor is one of many storage cabinets located here. Then the doors to salon and engine room. And oh yes, the tool box and workbench! Above the workbench is a stainless backsplash, currently covered for protection. The entire design of the laz began with the workbench, since it is the largest single element. Here's a shot I took in December when we were designing the space! Seems like yesterday. POV: I'm standing in the doorway coming down from the salon, looking aft/starboard. In our contract, I specified a vice on the workbench, but left it up to the factory to pick one out. You can see it there on top of the workbench, it's a very cool low profile unit. Does the job without being a gigantic piece. You can see there is a large empty space to the above/right of the workbench. This was sized for the watermaker. I'd rather have this hidden somewhere else, but you have to fit everything in somewhere. In the middle of this picture you can see the 40 gallon water heater, the (ahem) stripper pole, and the motor/bin for the glendinning power cord (there are two, one is in the other corner). It will be easy to change the zincs in the water heater, they are right on top. The factory really paid attention to headroom in this space, and for American size people! The ceiling above the standing area was reworked to get another 1.5" of headroom. The area in the middle of the shot with the two steps are really the only place where we don't have full standing headroom. Below the the taller step, and under where the compactor is, those are prop tunnel spaces. In case you were wondering why the compactor is elevated a bit. POV: On top of workbench, facing aft/port. At left you can see two storage cabinets. The lower one has been sized for a storage unit with slide out drawers I found on Amazon. The space right behind the tech is a "wet locker." In crew quarters builds, this is the shower. I decided to basically keep it that way. There is a drain and a hose bibb. I have adjustable shelves. I expect to store crab/shrimp pots and things like that in there. You can see the louver at the bottom, and there is also an opening/screened porthole for fresh air (you can't see this in the picture). Behind the sink you can see an area with louvered doors and empty space above. That's where the freezer is going. It's a SeaFreeze unit that has the motor/coils separated from the box. They will go in the louvered area below. At the right you can see there is an electrical panel. There's actually another one to the left that is hidden in this shot. These are for the generators and inverter service. Here I have moved closer to the same area. Peekaboo view of some equipment in the port/aft space. This aft/port area is mostly dedicated to electricity. At left what just looks like a counter top is one of two boxes full of AGM batteries. There are some temporary cables there. The Glendinning I mentioned. FYI at center/top, those are the stair steps coming up to the cockpit from the swim step. Luckily Hamptons come with an excellent owner's manual so I'll know exactly what all this equipment does. Solar pre-wire: four #8 AWG wire. This routes through the boat up to the fly bridge hard top. I will probably do solar panels next year. POV: standing in the aft end of the engine room, looking straight aft. Under the sink, you can see two separate cabinet storage areas. Looking at the steps, you can see they lift up for access to a couple of pumps and the rear thruster. At left you can see the starboard rudder. Access is very good to all that kind of equipment. One last shot. At the rear exit of the laz, the techs mounted these handrails, and if you look to the left of the current location you see screw holes. When they were mounted there, the knuckle clearance on the right was pretty tight. Deb pointed this out, but I had asked for so many changes over these days I felt bad about asking them to solve it.
I was mulling this over when owner Jeff Chen went to use the handrail and then stopped in his tracks. "Clearance is too tight, this isn't working!" he said. He said we could either move them to the wall as shown here, or grind off the inside portion of the flange to get more clearance (i.e. be able to mount them closer to the door frame. We opted for the wall mounting. Just one example of how dedicated the HYG people are to building the boat, and especially this space, to be as awesome as it can be. Hope you enjoyed the tour, feel free to comment / ask questions. Can't wait to start using this man cave!
1 Comment
Alan Muskett
4/24/2018 02:40:18 pm
Great tour of the shop and laz. Amazing how much room there is without the crew quarters. That's a lot of engineering just so you can drink in private
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