The Factory Experience I

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...